Rained in in Skradin

October 7, 2020

As expected, today was an unsuitable one for visiting the national park, or even for stepping outside our door:

So we didn’t. Not a problem though. We’ve gotten plenty of exercise recently and know what to do with days like this. Our apartment is a spacious place that’s easy to spread out in. We have books, and we have some planning to do anyway. With our scheduled departure for Italy only a week away now, it’s time to get a bit more serious about next steps. We send off an email to the COVID testing site in Split to request an appointment, and settle on our plans for our first few days in Italy. Then, we just settle and wait for the deluge to pass on, which it finally does - at about four in the afternoon, just in time for us to walk around town a bit before dinner.

The clouds are just passing as we wander out from our refuge.

Crkva Male Gospe (Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary), in a chiaroscuro look.

Near that church is its iconic baroque bell tower, oddly detached from the church itself.

Skradin is a small place, just right for a short exploration while you’re waiting for dinner.

Skradin’s main thoroughfare parallels the face of a hill. Side alleys on one side open up to the waterfront, and the ones on the other side look more like this.

Here’s a door that looks unused for quite some time.

Skradin is the springboard for the second most popular national park in the country. You can catch tour boats from here that take you into the heart of the park. When we passed through here two years ago late in early September, the place was packed.

The Eastern Orthodox Church of Saint Spiradon looks like it’s been around awhile, but it’s really quite new. It was built in 1876, funded primarily by Emperor Frank Josef I of Austria when Skradin was part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.

Looking down on Skradin from the ruins of its small fortress. The bell tower, the most pronounced feature of the skyline, also dates from the Austrian-Hungarian era, erected in 1872.

The view toward the sea from the fortress. Looking straight ahead is the channel of the mouth of the Krka River. We’re fairly far inland here, but essentially at sea level. The channel is navigable from here all the way to the sea.

Still at the fortress, we’re looking here toward the access to the park. The river flows through the gap ahead, and the lowest and most visited of the famous falls is only about two miles away.

Having completed our tour of the town, we stop at Bonaca for dinner - again. It’s too chilly to eat outdoors as we did last night, so we take our lives in our hands and dine indoors. We’re the only customers tonight though and our server is masked, so it seems safe enough.

This is Saint Spiradon Church again, seen from the back side - it’s at the end of the short alley our apartment faces on to.

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