I spent this weekend getting in touch with my cultural roots (or something like that) in Croatia this weekend with Kate on a Bus2Alps tour.
I've always dreamed of going to Croatia since I am part Croatian on my Dad's side. I've always thought it was kind of cool to be able to tell people that I am Croatian because that's not something you normally hear. I'm also German and Irish, but so are most other people, it seems, so the whole Croat thing adds some mystery and interest (at least, that's always been my notion... I know people aren't really interested).
The most mysterious part of this for me, has always been the fact that, until this weekend, I never really knew anything about Croatia. We learn all about Germany in school and I've seen enough photos and videos that I have a solid mental image (albeit possibly inaccurate image of Germany) of the place and the people. The same goes for Ireland. But not so much for Croatia... Honestly, I didn't even realize how close it is to Italy until I got to Italy, and I had no idea what it looked like (I always had some mental picture of a giant dark fairy tale woods, not unlike my idea of the Albanian and Black Forests in Harry Potter - which, on a completely unrelated side note, makes sense to me now that I've lived in Europe because all Europeans hate Albanians).
Luckily, real Croatia is a little different than imagined Croatia, but it's still very woodsy.
Kate and I began our voyage Thursday night. We took a twelve hour over night bus ride from Santa Maria Novella to Split, Croatia, stopping in Slovenia for a little while to have our passports stamped and get some food.
The bus ride was somewhat miserable and I didn't get much sleep, but it was better than my 26 hour ride to New Orleans in high school, so at least that was something.
We got to our hostel in Split just after 9 a.m., checked into our room (we shared it with four other girls... each of us had our own bunk inside the wall and the room was long and narrow... it felt like we were sleeping on a ship, but the beds were comfy), then ate a complimentary breakfast.
After breakfast, Kate and I went off to explore Split. We began at the fish market down the street from our hostel, where fishermen sold all kinds of freshly caught fish, eels, shrimp, and other sea creatures.
We then wandered down the boardwalk and climbed Marjan Hill.
Marjan Hill is a scenic overlook on the Adriatic Sea, with a beautiful nature trail to the top. Kate and I took our time on the way to the top, stopping at every lookout and in every tiny neighborhood on the way up the hill.
When we got to the top, we found the Marjan Zoo and were happy to discover that the ticket price was only 10 Kuna, or $1.77. Drawn by the call of peacocks and a telltale green and blue plume in one of the trees, Kate and I bought are tickets and got in line.
The only other zoo I really remember ever going to is the Pittsburgh Zoo, and the Marjan Zoo is very different. For one thing, it's a lot smaller: It might have five minutes to walk from one side to the other if we hadn't stopped to look at any animals. Another thing is how close you are to the animals. You were able to get right up to the fence and feed the animals in every pen except the tiger, wolf, and bear (one dad was walking around with a backpack full of carrots for his little girl to feed and pet the donkeys, monkeys, sheep, birds, boars, rabbits, horses, etc.).
Of course, my favorite part of the zoo was the six peacock couples that roamed freely from pen to pen and up and down the sidewalks. I was even able to pet one of the peahens when she came up to search me for food.
Since the zoo was so small, we walked through a few times, going back to our favorites before moving on. After the zoo, we went to a playground, then back to the hostel for lunch.
I ordered a chicken sandwich and Kate got a burger, which we ate on the patio of the hostel. We were in a very busy square, so we enjoyed people watching (Fact: All Croatians are models. All of the women were my height or taller and super skinny, and all of the men were the same way, but they all looked good).
After lunch, we walked to the nearest beach, where we ran around in the surf then laid out for a few hours. When we were finished with that, we walked back to town and tried to souvenir shop at the Split Bazaar. No luck. There weren't any souvenirs, but we did have a good time browsing and people watching/listening (Croatian is a really harsh language).
The last event of the day was supposed to be a pub crawl. Neither Kate nor I was very interested in that, but as we were sitting out on the hostel patio again that evening, our guide Buck came and sat with us for awhile and talked us into attempting the bar crawl.
So we set out with everyone else just after sunset, but realized as soon as we got to the loud, overcrowded pub that this crawl wasn't for us. Instead, we got some wine and sat out on the pier with our feet in the water for awhile, then wandered around town some before bed.
Saturday we got up early for breakfast, then headed to the pier to meet for our island hopping cruise. The cruise was a bonus package on our Bus2Alps tour and well worth it. We set sail on a little ship called the "Antonio Fish Picknick" and spent about 45 minutes cruising through the Adriatic to the island of Solta. We had two hours on Solta to do whatever we wanted. Kate and I walked around some of the shops, then hit the beach for the remainder of our stay.
Our next stop was the island Brac, about an hour from Solta. We ate grilled fish and coleslaw for lunch (the fish was overwhelming to look at since it had its head, eyes, scales, flippers, and all, but it tasted pretty good. Kate and I sat with a couple studying in Perugia, so we talked to them the whole way about study abroad and how Amanda Knox has affected their stay.
Brac is much less touristy than Solta, so Kate and I went straight to the beach. We played Frisbee with Buck and some guys from Long Island, then switched to bocce. After a few hours at Brac, it was time to head home.
We got back to Split around 7 p.m. and had just enough time to change for a group outing to Trogir, a city about an hour from Split.
By the time we got to Trogir, Kate and I were starving. We sat down at the first promising looking restaurant on the boardwalk and ordered a fish dinner for two. We got a potato and zucchini appetizer, a fish platter with two types of fish, prawns, and calamari, then strawberry ice cream for dessert.
And it was without question the BEST ice cream I have ever had. I don't know what made it so good, but it was pure heaven on a plate, topped with whipped cream and strawberry preserves. We both powered through the ice cream (not quite ice cream and not quite gelato; something completely it's own), then literally licked our plates clean.
When the waiter brought our check, Kate and I were ready to tell him how good the ice cream was, but he was already smirking at us.
"How was the ice cream?" he asked.
"Excellent. Delicious. So good."
"We make the world's best ice cream in our restaurant."
Point taken.
After that tantalizing little taste, we only wanted more ice cream. So we set off through the maze of alleys, shops, and apartments that is Trogir and picked an ice cream shop that looked promising. I ordered a mixed berry ice cream and Kate got strawberry - and they were every bit as good as at the restaurant, except missing the whipped cream and preserves.
We spent the rest of our time wandering around eating ice cream, before heading back to the bus and returning to Split.
Sunday morning we were up early again for breakfast, packing, and loading the bus for our three hour drive to Krka National Park.
If you have never heard of Krka National Park, don't worry. It's just the most beautiful place in the world.
It's acres of woods and waterfalls and I can't even begin to put into words how breathtaking and mind-numbingly perfect this park is. Kate and I wandered around for three hours with our mouths open, taking photo after photo and complaining that there is no possible way you could do justice to the splendor of this place. But here are a few of my best attempts.
We got lunch (turkey kabobs and French fries) in the park before getting back on the bus for our grueling trip home. We left Krka just after 2 p.m. and pulled into Firenze at 1:30 a.m. So it was rough (especially with an Italian final at 11 a.m. Monday), but well worth our amazing weekend.
I'm sad that this was my list trip this semester, but tallying it all up, I've stayed in five countries in four months, and many more cities than that. That's not a bad track record.
Now I'm going to go drink wine and cry for a while because I've got the travel bug and I never want to go home. Don't worry about me.
I've always dreamed of going to Croatia since I am part Croatian on my Dad's side. I've always thought it was kind of cool to be able to tell people that I am Croatian because that's not something you normally hear. I'm also German and Irish, but so are most other people, it seems, so the whole Croat thing adds some mystery and interest (at least, that's always been my notion... I know people aren't really interested).
The most mysterious part of this for me, has always been the fact that, until this weekend, I never really knew anything about Croatia. We learn all about Germany in school and I've seen enough photos and videos that I have a solid mental image (albeit possibly inaccurate image of Germany) of the place and the people. The same goes for Ireland. But not so much for Croatia... Honestly, I didn't even realize how close it is to Italy until I got to Italy, and I had no idea what it looked like (I always had some mental picture of a giant dark fairy tale woods, not unlike my idea of the Albanian and Black Forests in Harry Potter - which, on a completely unrelated side note, makes sense to me now that I've lived in Europe because all Europeans hate Albanians).
Luckily, real Croatia is a little different than imagined Croatia, but it's still very woodsy.
Kate and I began our voyage Thursday night. We took a twelve hour over night bus ride from Santa Maria Novella to Split, Croatia, stopping in Slovenia for a little while to have our passports stamped and get some food.
The bus ride was somewhat miserable and I didn't get much sleep, but it was better than my 26 hour ride to New Orleans in high school, so at least that was something.
We got to our hostel in Split just after 9 a.m., checked into our room (we shared it with four other girls... each of us had our own bunk inside the wall and the room was long and narrow... it felt like we were sleeping on a ship, but the beds were comfy), then ate a complimentary breakfast.
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| Kate coming out of the wash room. Note the cubby bunks. |
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| Fish for sale. |
Marjan Hill is a scenic overlook on the Adriatic Sea, with a beautiful nature trail to the top. Kate and I took our time on the way to the top, stopping at every lookout and in every tiny neighborhood on the way up the hill.
When we got to the top, we found the Marjan Zoo and were happy to discover that the ticket price was only 10 Kuna, or $1.77. Drawn by the call of peacocks and a telltale green and blue plume in one of the trees, Kate and I bought are tickets and got in line.
The only other zoo I really remember ever going to is the Pittsburgh Zoo, and the Marjan Zoo is very different. For one thing, it's a lot smaller: It might have five minutes to walk from one side to the other if we hadn't stopped to look at any animals. Another thing is how close you are to the animals. You were able to get right up to the fence and feed the animals in every pen except the tiger, wolf, and bear (one dad was walking around with a backpack full of carrots for his little girl to feed and pet the donkeys, monkeys, sheep, birds, boars, rabbits, horses, etc.).
Of course, my favorite part of the zoo was the six peacock couples that roamed freely from pen to pen and up and down the sidewalks. I was even able to pet one of the peahens when she came up to search me for food.
Since the zoo was so small, we walked through a few times, going back to our favorites before moving on. After the zoo, we went to a playground, then back to the hostel for lunch.
I ordered a chicken sandwich and Kate got a burger, which we ate on the patio of the hostel. We were in a very busy square, so we enjoyed people watching (Fact: All Croatians are models. All of the women were my height or taller and super skinny, and all of the men were the same way, but they all looked good).
After lunch, we walked to the nearest beach, where we ran around in the surf then laid out for a few hours. When we were finished with that, we walked back to town and tried to souvenir shop at the Split Bazaar. No luck. There weren't any souvenirs, but we did have a good time browsing and people watching/listening (Croatian is a really harsh language).
The last event of the day was supposed to be a pub crawl. Neither Kate nor I was very interested in that, but as we were sitting out on the hostel patio again that evening, our guide Buck came and sat with us for awhile and talked us into attempting the bar crawl.
So we set out with everyone else just after sunset, but realized as soon as we got to the loud, overcrowded pub that this crawl wasn't for us. Instead, we got some wine and sat out on the pier with our feet in the water for awhile, then wandered around town some before bed.
Saturday we got up early for breakfast, then headed to the pier to meet for our island hopping cruise. The cruise was a bonus package on our Bus2Alps tour and well worth it. We set sail on a little ship called the "Antonio Fish Picknick" and spent about 45 minutes cruising through the Adriatic to the island of Solta. We had two hours on Solta to do whatever we wanted. Kate and I walked around some of the shops, then hit the beach for the remainder of our stay.
Our next stop was the island Brac, about an hour from Solta. We ate grilled fish and coleslaw for lunch (the fish was overwhelming to look at since it had its head, eyes, scales, flippers, and all, but it tasted pretty good. Kate and I sat with a couple studying in Perugia, so we talked to them the whole way about study abroad and how Amanda Knox has affected their stay.
Brac is much less touristy than Solta, so Kate and I went straight to the beach. We played Frisbee with Buck and some guys from Long Island, then switched to bocce. After a few hours at Brac, it was time to head home.
We got back to Split around 7 p.m. and had just enough time to change for a group outing to Trogir, a city about an hour from Split.
By the time we got to Trogir, Kate and I were starving. We sat down at the first promising looking restaurant on the boardwalk and ordered a fish dinner for two. We got a potato and zucchini appetizer, a fish platter with two types of fish, prawns, and calamari, then strawberry ice cream for dessert.
And it was without question the BEST ice cream I have ever had. I don't know what made it so good, but it was pure heaven on a plate, topped with whipped cream and strawberry preserves. We both powered through the ice cream (not quite ice cream and not quite gelato; something completely it's own), then literally licked our plates clean.
When the waiter brought our check, Kate and I were ready to tell him how good the ice cream was, but he was already smirking at us.
"How was the ice cream?" he asked.
"Excellent. Delicious. So good."
"We make the world's best ice cream in our restaurant."
Point taken.
After that tantalizing little taste, we only wanted more ice cream. So we set off through the maze of alleys, shops, and apartments that is Trogir and picked an ice cream shop that looked promising. I ordered a mixed berry ice cream and Kate got strawberry - and they were every bit as good as at the restaurant, except missing the whipped cream and preserves.
We spent the rest of our time wandering around eating ice cream, before heading back to the bus and returning to Split.
Sunday morning we were up early again for breakfast, packing, and loading the bus for our three hour drive to Krka National Park.
If you have never heard of Krka National Park, don't worry. It's just the most beautiful place in the world.
It's acres of woods and waterfalls and I can't even begin to put into words how breathtaking and mind-numbingly perfect this park is. Kate and I wandered around for three hours with our mouths open, taking photo after photo and complaining that there is no possible way you could do justice to the splendor of this place. But here are a few of my best attempts.
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| Feast your eyes on all of this nature for just a little while. |
I'm sad that this was my list trip this semester, but tallying it all up, I've stayed in five countries in four months, and many more cities than that. That's not a bad track record.
Now I'm going to go drink wine and cry for a while because I've got the travel bug and I never want to go home. Don't worry about me.
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