Today while many of our friends were writing an exam, we took off with our friend Mary (who's husband was writing the exam back at the house), and headed to Bosnia for the day. We left midway through the morning and thought that the drive would be two hours, but we drove along the Croatian coastal route and it took closer to four and a half (also we were behind a slow caravan part of the way). But the drive was absolutely beautiful, driving along the water and through the little towns. It was mostly a sunny day so that added to the beauty. The drive back was under 3 hours, but we took the inland route through the mountains, which was also beautiful. The border didn't give us too much trouble either, they kind of ... read more

Today was a slow start to the morning for most of the group. Eventually we organized ourselves and 3 of our 4 rental cars went out to visit the city of Split. The problem with travelling with such a large group is that immediately everyone went their separate ways without thinking about where the drivers were. Fortunately neither of us need to worry about that because Mike's a driver and Elysia is never forgotten! Fortunately we found two others from the group, Sezen (from Germany) and Drew (from the US) so they didn't have to worry about rides either! We just spent time exploring the old city centre. Split is the second biggest city in Croatia. We didn't really know all that much about the city when we got there, and were so surprised to see ... read more

This morning Mike decided to do some work so Elysia went off with some of the Americans (6 in total) for a hike around the town and into the surrounding mountains. We wanted to get up to the top where there's a church and the old town of Podstrana, but we didn't know the way. So we just started walking up. We tried to find any little trail that we could that looked like it was heading up the mountain. At times, we were wrestling with the bush because there wasn't really a path there. There was definitely no straight line to the top. We often had to find something that looked like a path, but would end up being a dead end so we had to retrace our steps. A few times we reached some ... read more

This morning, we woke up early to beautiful sunny skies, and took some peanut butter and jam sandwiches with us on the hiking path (it was too cold to sit still and eat!). We decided that since we had scaled the mountains on the south side of the valley the day before, that we would spend today hiking the mountains on the north side. As per usual, the hike started by going through a series of sheep fields. It was lambing season, so there were hundreds of baby lambs around. We saw one that was so young it still had its umbilical cord and could barely walk! While hiking along the famous Pennine Way (a major hiking route through the region), we met another little lamb. "3-1-7", as he became known, was either a little confused ... read more

Today we took the train to Portsmouth and then hopped on the catamaran ferry to the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. The journey was very nice, but basically the same trip that we took to St Malo, France, because the ferry leaves from the same place and goes right past the Isle of Wight. When we got to the island, we had hoped to rent bicycles for half of the day but by the time we got to the bike shop, they were completely sold out of bikes! So, instead of biking, it was the heel-toe-express all day. Because we couldn't cover as much ground and see as much of the island as we would have liked to on foot, we decided that it would be best to walk along the beach from ... read more