The trip there was not the best; we left Thursday night on a train to Luxembourg, waited until 2:30am to catch a bus to Frankfurt Hahn, and waited there for 6 hours until our flight at 10am. It was a lot of waiting, playing cards in an elevator, and sleeping on the floor of the airport. But it was worth it. We flew in to Zadar and rented our car from the airport. I didn't think that having a manual transmission was going to be a problem since two people in our group said they could drive it, but the fact that it took us 15 minutes to get out of the parking spot had me a little worried. We finally figured out the two big problems: 1) to go to reverse on a rental car, you have to lift something up on the stick, so we were actually in first the whole time, and 2) it's a good idea to take off the parking brake. They worked it out and we didn't have any more problems over the weekend. Thank you Kurt for driving :)
First we drove to Krka National Park, about an hour south of Zadar. We spent the afternoon there and it was awesome. We got to eat lunch at a restaurant right by the falls, then we walked all the footpaths through the park. You just walk through and see waterfalls everywhere. One of the lakes you're allowed to swim in, so we got in just because we were able to (well I only waded in a little bit because it was FREEZING). Krka might be the most beautiful place I've ever been.
We left Krka Friday night to drive down to Dubrovnik. It took us a while to find our hostel because the roads are weird; the GPS thought that there were roads places where there were just stairs. But we found the hostel, which was run by a really nice lady who didn't really know any English besides "it's okay!" "sorry" and "super!" But here is the view we woke up to the next morning -
We did go out Friday night, and found the "Old City." It was really weird, we walked down to town and saw a big castle, decided to go in, and it was really just a gateway to the Old City. That's really where we spent most of the next day because it was so neat there. There's a main street with a bunch of little narrow streets off the sides, and right at the intersections each street had a tapestry saying what was down the street (bars, restaurants, etc.), so you don't have to walk down each one to see what's there. We went to a few bars and found one with a live band playing some Croatian music, so we mostly hung out there, and then found a club later.
Saturday morning we got up early and walked back to the Old City. Friday night the streets were pretty empty, but during the day they were packed.
There was a lot going on there - street performers, a live orchestra in one square (I think they were high schoolers), a film festival later that night (we left before it started though). Oh and the pigeons were crazy there!
So we walked around for a while, then went up to the huge wall that surrounds the entire place. It's basically a town within a fort, and you can walk around it and see everything. It was really cool.
It was neat because there was a sign that showed where buildings had been burned down and where places had been hit by bombs during the war in the 90's, and you could still see damage from the bombs. In one of my classes we just had a big discussion about those wars, so reading about it and then seeing it was surreal. And the fact that if actually happened during my lifetime is crazy.
We had dinner in the Old City (I'd been craving lasagna, but everyone else had pizza) and then started the drive to Split. To get to and from Dubrovnik, you either have to drive through Bosnia or take a ferry around it, so we drove through it both ways. On the way to Split we decided to stop in Bosnia for a little bit. We went in a mall-type place there and it was really weird; it's kind of hard to describe. The stores felt kind of like yard sales or something. They just had random stuff, a bunch of appliances, in separate rooms, with one or two ladies looking over all of them. And along the streets there were a bunch of places selling CDs (all copies for really cheap) and porn. We bought a couple of CDs for the car since Croatian radio wasn't quite doing it for us. Bosnia was pretty though. We went through Neum.
Then we drove the rest of the way to Split and found our hostel (maybe my favorite hostel we've stayed at yet). We met a Norwegian guy at the hostel and all of us went out for food and then to a club. There were some fast food places right down the street and I think that's really all we ate while we were in Split. At the club he just kept buying all of us drinks! He said that it was so cheap there compared to Norway that he couldn't not buy them for us. It was really nice. The club started off with some girls in fancy dresses singing some Croatian music, and we all tried to pretend to sing along, failing miserably, but it was hilarious. Then the room changed into more of a club atmosphere, with a DJ, cool lights, and some American music.
The next morning we got up, went for more fast food down the street, and then walked around the town for a while. We were planning on going on a free walking tour, but we couldn't find the place it met at and we weren't even sure it ran on Sundays. There's a place called the Palace, which was kind of similar to Dubrovnik's "Old City" - it was a bunch of really old architecture in the middle of the more modern buildings. There was a little market inside, and some cool columns/arches/etc.
Then we went back to the hostel to meet up with the manager, this cool lady who offered to take us to the beach and teach us the game all the locals play - "picigin." It's a pretty simple game, you just use a tennis ball core and hit it around in the water. Played properly it involves doing a bunch of belly flops. We hit it around some, then I went back to sit on the beach while the guys stayed in the water for a while.
The beach was nice, but a little chilly. There was this cool trampoline thing along the promenade for 10 kuna for 10 minutes (just over 1 euro), and it looked fun so we decided to do it. The lady actually let us stay on for 20 minutes, and it was awesome. It bounced you sooo high. Then we got ice cream. Mmm.
We had to leave that evening for Zadar. We were actually planning on leaving Split earlier in the day, but we ended up loving it so much that we stayed longer and didn't get to Zadar until it was dark out. We didn't see a whole lot of Zadar, but we walked around a little that night and found the Sea Organ. It was really neat; there were a bunch of holes in the ground and it played different sounds and harmonies each time the waves hit the shore. It was so peaceful, so we just sat there for a while. Then we found some place with crazy lights on the ground like a dance floor, and had some fun with that.
We really didn't do anything else that night because everyone was exhausted. The next morning we left reallyyy early for Plitvice Lakes National Park. It was really gorgeous, but I think I liked Krka more, even though Plitvice was kind of our entire reason for visiting Croatia. We had seen pictures of Plitvice online and just had to see it. Plitvice did have a really tall waterfall that was cool though -
Oh and we met some girls in the gift shop who were actually from Atlanta! They were teaching English in Italy or something, and were just visiting Croatia for the week. What a small world.
We drove back to the airport, returned our car, and caught a flight back that afternoon. I think Croatia was one of my favorite trips from the semester. It was just so different from any other place I visited, and the entire country was absolutely gorgeous. Plus we drove through Bosnia; who DOES that?? So I would absolutely recommend visiting Croatia at some point in your lifetime. It was incredible.
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