Category: Zadar

The airport lounge in Zadar is small, with seating for only around twelve people and so there was no guarantee that I’d get in. When I arrived, the receptionist checked and she confirmed that there was enough space for me, so I took the only unoccupied seat and thought it was all a bit intimate. Indeed, I had to ask a helpful German couple if they could plug my laptop cable in as the plug socket was nowhere near me and quite near to them. It’s good to chat I suppose.

The receptionist was polite to me, although she was perhaps a little direct to a couple of other people coming in, but she is trying to manage quite a small space and that would likely get to me after a while. There were three people who were refused entry into the lounge because of a lack of space and she told them to sit near the entrance and she’d call them when there was availability. It all felt a little sub-optimal.

I usually try to avoid taking photographs containing identifiable people, but almost the entire lounge fitted into a single frame, making that rather difficult. Given that little challenge, I’ve blurred the faces, but it demonstrates how little space there was.

There were a couple of beers, so I thought that I’d take the opportunity to try the Ožujsko beer from Zagrebačka Pivovara which was light, dull and uninspiring. There was also a range of soft drinks in the fridge, while the receptionist prepared hot drinks on request. I tried a few different Schweppes drinks to ensure that I remained suitably hydrated for the flight.

There were some odd-looking pre-packed sandwiches that I decided to ignore, so crisps were the mainstay of my food intake in the lounge. I couldn’t work out how to access the cupboard containing the crisps, so I waited patiently for somebody else to access it so that I could carefully watch their technique. I didn’t want to cause a scene or appear to have been defeated by a cupboard.

As this was included in my annual lounge pass, it was a perfectly good way to spend a couple of hours, have some notionally free crisps, beer and soft drinks all whilst charging my devices. I’m not sure that I’d pay to go in here though, the selection was limited and gaining admission appeared to depend partly on timing and partly on whether eleven other people had already had the same idea.

My initial plan was to get the airport bus to, well, the airport. As can be seen here, I was doing very well with this strategy, until a customer in the queue told me that the card machines had all broken on the buses. As a card only person and with no Jonathan available, that meant matters were becoming more complex. The bus driver told me that there was another bus, but when pushed slightly, he admitted that the card machine was broken on that too. I did think to myself that this wouldn’t happen in Poland, but I decided not to say anything.

So, I came up with a plan. It’s quite hard for me to withdraw money due to how my card set-up works, and it would cost around €7 in fees to do so anyway on top of what I drew out. I had a look at Uber and realised that a taxi would cost €13. My plan was to walk towards the airport while waiting for the Uber fare to fall. Against all reasonable expectations, this strategy actually worked. I watched the price decline from €13 to €11 and finally to €9, transforming an inconvenient walk into a very small but surprisingly satisfying exercise in transport market speculation.

At that point, I ordered the Uber, which immediately sent a message to my friend Liam as part of my security settings. This was a pleasant little interruption for him, as he had presumably begun his day hoping to become my remote Croatian transport supervisor. The driver arrived promptly and, with all that arranged, I reached the airport safely and in good time for my flight to Poland.

By now I was back on my own, I thought I’d pop and get a pizza and a beer as that seemed a sensible decision. Pizzeria Tri Bunara was well reviewed and it also had some seats on its terrace and so I opted for that.

I selected a table for two, while customers who occupied tables substantially larger than their groups required were soon repositioned by the waiter. I approved of this positive intervention and it added some drama to proceedings.

I was served promptly and the waiter seemed friendly and helpful, so this seemed a pleasant place to spend an hour or so. Some local cats provided additional entertainment by meandering through every now and then, making it feel like a basic cat café without the tiresome requirement to pretend that I had visited primarily for the cats.

The pizza arrived after around ten minutes and was larger than I had expected, which immediately pleased me. I had ordered the Picante, topped with salami, spicy pepperoni, bacon and whole pickled green chillies. The chillies added some welcome heat and acidity, while a bottle of chilli oil was provided immediately on request. The pizza tasted freshly made, with a generously topped centre and a well-risen crust.

The beer was Karlovačko Crno, a 6% Croatian dark lager brewed using three varieties of malt. It had a roasted, caramel character and rather more flavour than some of the pale lagers I had encountered during the trip, so it proved a good companion to the pizza.

I spent a relaxing hour watching the world go by and observing further customers being repositioned by the waiter. The prices were reasonable, the pizza and beer were both enjoyable and it was nearly time to make my way towards the airport. Jonathan had left me unsupervised, but surely nothing could now go wrong.