An early morning to catch the ferry across from Zadar to a new island, Ugljan and Pasman islands. We had 23 miles and wanted to make the 9.30 ferry to Zadar. With a coffee pot in the room and a bakery around the corner that opened at 6 am, it made it pretty easy. We were rolling out of Nin by 7.30 and the miles went fast in the cool morning air.
We had been told Zadar wasn't anything special so we were quite surprised when we rolled through an ancient city gate and into a beautiful pedestrian zone. Being early, it was quiet and serene with polished marble walking surface from the ancient gate through to the Roman pillar. We walked our bikes through and gawked in amazement and even forgot to take pictures due to the surprising beauty combined with the feeling of urgency to get to the ferry.
Once out the gate on the other side we remounted our bikes and chatted excitedly about what we had just seen and the pleasant ride along the town harbor as we entered the more industrial zone near the ferry. We were there plenty early and waited for our turn to board with all the cars.
Once across to the island, we found a cafe, which was of course on the top of the hill. Good view but always a steep climb out of a ferry port. Then a fun ride on the quiet island through the hills and then back down to the sleepy coast. We explored a church and cemetery with the densest population of giant spiders we had ever experienced. Then a stop at an empty restaurant on the water where we had a great lunch and the finally few km to the last minute place I reserved
Confession time: our original plan was to stay at what I thought was going to be a great, natural, campsite. I even made arrangements to have a site right on the water! Reading the site the night before we were going to stay there, I realized it said 'Naturalist' campsite, not natural campsite. Hmmmm. That sounds odd…. After some reading, I found buried deep in their website a list of rules: no clothing allowed at the beach or in the campground. Oops! The kids were very much not in favor of this, and I don't blame them! So we did a fast replan and I found a nice place right on the water instead for very reasonable as the island seemed very undiscovered. It was great, with wonderful swimming right out the door and a restaurant that cooked everything in a wood oven. I had something called 'monster fish' which was probably the best fish meal of my life! A good day with 55 km covered before noon!