JULY 24 - Croatia’s ride sharing version of Uber is called Bolt. We first used Bolt in Lithuania, and have seen it almost everywhere since. Unlike Uber and Lyft, the cars for Bolt are painted certain colors (black and white in Croatia) and have the name written on the sides. Our Bolt today decides to wait for us on a back street, so I have to run around the block to find him. To the bus station, where it becomes clear that the volume of tourists is exceeding the capacity of public transport. The seats on our bus are mostly double booked, causing much unhappiness and profanity, and it appears that everyone on the bus is a tourist.
I end up next to a older French guy, and we talk travel and politics just about the whole three hours of the trip. Much of our ride hugs the coast, and we pass uncounted spots where people are crammed into one to ten meter spaces where there is a bit of gravel beach to be enjoyed. The town of Šibenik looks quite historic and interesting, and would have been a good stop had we been able to do so. Unload at Trogir, a small town about 30 minutes from Split. I chose it because I thought it would be quieter, but still close enough to do Split as day trips. It is also considerably cheaper, almost half the accommodation cost of Split.
Lug the bags to the apartment, which is just off the main road and has a pleasant balcony. Turn around and go into the old city of Trogir, which completely covers a small island that is separated from the mainland by a 10 meter wide canal.
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One thing I had to deal with today was credit card theft. In the morning, I saw a reversed charge on my card for a subscription to Hulu. We were in a hurry to pack up and go to the bus station, so I did not spend the time to find out if one of us had clicked on something by accident. We spent all of the morning and early afternoon traveling, and I had no wifi. Once we arrived in Trogir and into our apartment, I saw that clearly something was up. The card was being ‘tested’, that is, very small (less than $1) charges were being made, and there was one larger charge for $40 that I did not recognize.
It seems like it should be easier to identify fake charges, but the truth is that this card was being used several times a day, and for such a variety of things that keeping track of what charge name and description refers to what is very difficult. There just isn’t a lot of detail to really know, and often the charge name is just an abbreviation without a clear origin. I activated my phone for calling and got in touch with the credit card company. By that time, some more charges were showing up, all less than $100, but they were already being flagged and reversed by the company. After figuring out the logistics of how I could replace the card, I cancelled it. Within an hour or so, the thief really went for it, making a few charges that went north of $1000, which were obviously being declined but I could see it happening anyway on the statement.
I was fortunate that (a) the credit card company algorithm is good at detecting spending anomalies, for a client who is purchasing things all the time across a wide geographic range, and (b) that I was able to see the problem when I did. My fear has always been (b), as it is not always possible, relying on wifi, to see what is going on at all times. In retrospect, I should have been all hands on deck about this when I saw the Hulu charge.
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