12/30 Zagreb to Zadar

4th Century Church in Nin

Drove to Zadar (about 4 hrs away from Zagreb) to meet our boat. At our first rest stop, I discovered Magnum Bars (the world’s best ice cream bar, which we had found only in Turkey so far) and I had one at 10am!  On the way to Zadar, we stopped in in Nin, a VERY old town – had a teensy 4^th century church with tall, coved walls but no interior decorations.. There was a statue of a saint – if you rubbed his toe, your wish is supposed to come true, so I did.

In Zadar, we boarded our ship and then headed out for our Zadar walking tour. Our guide, Marina, was interesting and the old city looked pretty cool. Much of it was bombed in the waning days of WWII, so some old stuff had to be totally replaced, others have been majorly restored.. We went into the Church of Anastasia, an old Roman (fairly simple ) style of basilica. Anastasia had been burned alive for her beliefs before Christianity was generally accepted. We ended up at the Gold and Silver Museum, maintained by Benedictine Nuns, who still wear the traditional convent dress. This had artifacts like hands or faces in silver or gold, containing a relic of the person they were dedicated to, like a bone. There was a piece of the cross (in theory) and countless bone shards.