Smooth Sailing - Crossing the Adriatic Sea

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Rindarama in da house! It's my turn to contribute to the blog. Sort of kid friendly. Just a few fucks sprinkled in.

Croatia

After spending too much time and money in Rome, we were more than ready to set sail to Croatia. We realized as we went over our expenses that we were going over budget ($50/day/each), mostly out of necessity but partly out of laziness. Time to tighten the belt. Croatia was the perfect place to regroup and slow down. We started to look into AirBnBs. Up until now, we had been using booking.com and hostelworld.com apps exclusively. We used booking.com so much that our account had been upgraded to Genius level meaning 10%!o(MISSING)ff all bookings and free early/late checkin/out. Beautiful! Most rentals in this country are studio or one bedroom apartments, pretty cheap too, less than 30 euros a night. Perfect! We can buy groceries and save money on food.

Our ferry got into Split at 7am and the person we rented a room from picked us up. Score! But then he tried to put us in a shitty room with two twin beds and no kitchenette. But I got a little Boston on his ass and we got the room I booked.

Split is a small city on the coast. Beautiful! Apparently it is hopping in the summer, with an abundant nightlife and restaurant scene. But it was barely spring at this point. Dead as fuck. That's cool. We needed to catch up on our zzz's.

The second day we caught back up with Chance (pilot dude from Utah we met in Italy). We went to the 1700 year old Diocletian's Palace and saw were GoT was filmed (if you don't what that stands for, remind me to slap you next time I see you). Pretty cool. It was where the dragons were kept and Daenary's throne room. After, we discovered at the grocery store that you could purchase a two-liter of beer for $2.50. Also we discovered that it is perfectly legal to walk the streets of Croatia while enjoying alcoholic beverages. Yipee! The three of us used this opportunity to save cash and sat on the sea wall, drinking cheap ass beer, watching the sunset, planning our next couple days together.

Then, Jordan rented us another super-affordable car. It ended up being only $220/6 days. We spent two days hiking around the two main National Parks; Krka River and Plitvice Lakes. Magical! Check out the pictures. I can't put into words how gorgeous they were.

Then off to Dubrovnik. It's weird but you have to go through Bosnia in order to get to Dubrovnik. You get your passport stamped and everything. So we decided that we had to pull over and have lunch in Bosnia so we can add it to our "countries visited" list. Cold pizza, warm beer in a place that makes all their money off of travelers like us. Oh well. The view was amazing. We were glad we stopped.

Dubrovnik. A walled city. More importantly, another place in which GoT has been filmed. King's landing. We found the staircase in old town that was used in many episodes. The most memorable was in season five, episode ten. "Shame, Shame, shame..(bell rings)...shame, shame, shame". Chance and Jordan geeked out for a good amount of time, looking online for pictures of the stairs. I must admit, it was super cool. After we walked around old town, we purchased over-sized cans of Pan beer and headed to a hill overlooking the fortress. We pointed out a few other spots that were used in GoT. It inspired Jordan and I to re-watch season five immediately.

We dropped Chance at the bus station that night. He was heading to Budapest. A Chance encounter on a train to Pisa. We are gonna miss traveling with him. Good times! See you again soon, my friend.

Montenegro

Jordan and I traveled the next day to Montenegro, just an hour south of Dubrovnik. We booked a studio apartment for three nights (the longest we had stayed in one place yet) with a balcony overlooking the sea. It was pretty cheap since it was slow season, $26/night. We drove to Kotor one day, another walled city, but for the most part just hung out, slept, did laundry in the sink and slept some more. It was nice to just be able to relax for a few days.

We then returned the car in Croatia, then took a ferry from Split to Hvar town. Hvar is popular island, well, popular in the summer, not in April. Lots of restaurant and shops were closed. We rented us first AirBnB. and it was perfect. From our place, it was a short walk to town, near a grocery store, and had a balcony overlooking the sea. We could get used to this. The studio was only $26/night. Sweet, let's stay for 4. The few restaurants that were open were mega expensive, so we cooked most meals. We spent our days strolling around the harbor, enjoying the 70 degree weather, watching everyone preparing their businesses for the crazy tourist season about to start and our nights catching up on reading and internet stuff, oh and doing laundry. Always doing fucking laundry.

Feeling rested, we headed north to Croatia's capital city, Zagreb. We spent one night there walking around-that's all you really need, then in the morning we jumped on a train. Budapest, here we come!

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