The travel books tell you that it’s a good idea to check your luggage at the bus stop before you go looking for accommodations so that you’re more mobile and don’t let the hassle of lugging luggage influence the choice of lodging. I reflect on this as I roll my bag down the cobble stone side walks and down the white stone steps of the Old City, trying to keep up with my three guides. They are unsympathetic to my desire to pause here and there to absorb some history, like the Pile Gate, for instance.

The Pile Gate is the eastern entrance to the Old City, built in 1537 and containing the statue of St. Blaise, the city’s patron saint, set in a niche at the apex of the Renaissance arch demarking egress and ingress into this place.

Along the way, Eddy greeted and was greeted by someone every few paces. “I see that you’re the Mayor”, I said. “No, just lived here all my life”, he said. That would be about 40-some years, I thought.

http://www.photocroatia.com/GALLERY/photo.php?photo=9514&u=322|108

We are about a block into the Old City walking on the main thoroughfare, simply called “Placa” when I glance at Eddy to see who he is talking to. A tall blonde woman with a harried look has replaced the couple that was beside Eddy just a moment ago. Noting my confusion, Eddie enthused, “This is great. This is Ana and she has even a better place for you to stay… we’re going there now. I am committed to making you happy.”

Feeling defeated, I meekly follow.

Toward the end of the Placa, right across from St. Blaise’s Church, we turn into an alley, walk through a narrow door, and I bump my luggage up three flights of narrow stairs to a small three-story apartment. “This is Ana’s place”, Eddy says as he takes a seat at a round dinning table beside the room earmarked for me. Upstairs is the bathroom. Helene lives upstairs in a separate part of the apartment with her husband and kids. Her husband was wounded in the war.

“Hey, Ana, Joe can bring women here, right… make an exception is his case… he’s Croatian!”, Eddy says in what was becoming his characteristic heckle. In what was to be Ana’s only words to me, but not really to me, she replied, “I don’t care what he does”. That attitude precisely fit the quality of this dump, where I was to spend the next four nights. Gratefully, outside the building containing the dump was a wonderland.