After hearing from our Croatian hotel owner Dean (“like James Dean” he said) that lost bags on flights through Rome are quite common and often take five days to get returned, we were obviously a bit anxious, especially with a ferry booked for the island of Korčula tomorrow morning and Athens still a long way off. With one flight a day from Rome, arriving at 7:10 PM, and Allegra’s bike needing to be on it, we kept our fingers crossed. But it didn’t stop us from having a great day, the highlights of which were a trip to the market, a walk to the beach, an outstanding lunch of bakalar, a soup of salted codfish and potatoes, and pier fish fried with garlic and olive oil, tasty little things that are smaller than sardines and eaten whole.

    
 
  
The flight from Rome was of course late. So when it finally arrived in Split at 8:30 PM and Dean confirmed that Allegra’s bag was at the Split airport, we were elated. Until he told us that the delivery people had stopped working for the evening, so the bag wouldn’t be delivered until sometime tomorrow. Dean persisted and somehow convinced the airport people to put the bag on an airport shuttle bus into Split, which we retrieved from the bus station at almost 11:00 PM, quite relieved. The bike had, as you can see from the bag, a bit of a rough journey but we put it together and it seems to be OK, except for a small broken bracket for which we improvised a solution but will need to find someone to weld. 

But for now we seem to be in business and will be back on the road, headed south towards Athens, tomorrow!