Unexpected Delays on the Road to Zadar: A Travel Story

On our last leg to Croatia from Maribor to Zadar we were expecting an easy and relatively short ride of 400km. We could not have been more wrong. After 50km towards the border the gps started to show alerts about traffic jams ahead and delays increasing into the +2 hours range. We decided to exit the highway and take smaller roads to avoid the traffic jam. That worked well but the roads in Croatia are not really made for making a lot of headway, endless changes in speed limits without any obvious reason seem to be there to make you lose track of what the current speed limit is. And drivers didn’t seem to be paying much attention to whatever the speed limit was. But, the pace was slow and we were not progressing much faster compared to standing still in the traffic jam we were trying to avoid. At least we saw some scenery we would have missed. Around 1PM we needed a toilet and something to eat and found google directed us to Vilibald which was on the road we were traveling anyways. The place doesn’t have much going from the decoration point of view but the food was really good, copious and cheap. We sat outside and had a nice lunch for little money. While eating we saw a couple of guys going to an open fire outside with something that almost looked like a stretcher. Turned out they were putting a couple of sheep on the grill. If I ever was in the neighbourhood again I would definitely come back to test it. The weather, the furniture, food and low prices put us into vacation mode. After lunch we continued our way and got onto the highway again but some 100km further there was another huge traffic jam. We decided to take the smaller roads again and find some place to charge the car. Croatia is definitely behind the curve when it comes to electric car charing infrastructure. So much so that we ended up waiting half an hour at a Ionity station because there was no alternative in the wide neighbourhood. No food to be had and as a result an hour lost. Traffic jam seemed to have dissolved by the time we got going again but it was a false alarm and the last 150km towards Zadar were still slow going. We finally got to our hotel Mediteran at 10PM after an 11 hour trip and the owner of the hotel/restaurant insisted on still serving us dinner even though they were about to close the kitchen. Food, atmosphere and staff friendlyness were excellent and helped us forget the frustrating ride fast.