Honest waiters at the Caffe Bar North Port save a stressed traveller from potential disaster. A tale to gladden the heart.
The Caffe Bar North Port next to the Jadrolinija ticket office in Stari Grad harbour is highly frequented, especially when the ferries are arriving or departing, when crowds of people mill around and general confusion reigns. When Susan realized she had left her handbag in the cafe at Stari Grad port, it was one of those moments of heart-stopping panic followed by quick-thinking. She was on the ferry heading for Split in readiness for her flight home. Her handbag had remained on an outside table at the cafe, vulnerable to any dishonest passer-by.
Anyone could pick up an unattended handbag without arousing suspicion in that situation. Everyone familiar with the logistics of getting to and from Hvar will know that planning to get off the island in good time to get to the airport at Trogir is a matter of fine timing. There certainly isn’t any leeway for darting back and forth in search of lost handbags…
As Susan described in an e-mail to me a couple of days later: “our taxi was late and I desperately needed to use the wifi at the ferry café, as I had a really urgent email that I had to send before the ferry left (we had had no internet connection at our house).
In the end, I could not get my iPhone to stay connected to the app, so I had to give up and rush to the ferry before they closed the doors. It was only whilst I was trying to access the ferry wifi (also unsuccessful) that I realised I had rushed from the café without my handbag – containing money, credit cards, passport, ticket, local phone – everything, really! What a disaster, as then I thought that if it was stolen, I would be greatly delayed getting new travel documents, and would be unable to get new documents in time for my flight. So I was in a total panic…”
Quick thinking came to the rescue. Susan has the highest praise for the captain of the ferry who “very gallantly leapt into action and spent ages telephoning his colleagues to see if he could organize a private taxiboat for me (could not, and the expense would have been enormous – although perhaps cheaper than a new air ticket) or another means of sea travel..” Meanwhile, Susan rang her good friends and neighbours Anne Maria and Ratko, knowing them to be “ever-resourceful”, and they came to the rescue. They discovered that the waiters at the cafe had spotted the bag and removed it from the table for safe keeping.
