Croatia

Croatia was absolutely incredible. I had no idea what to expect before visiting the country, and it absolutely blew me away. The city was really cool because it was guarded by huge, “castle-like” walls. The view from the walls was astonishing. The water was crystal clear with beautiful greens and blues. I spent the majority of the first day running around with my trusty travel buddies, Sarah and Audrey, as well as another Sarah, Tim, and Dan. We ate delicious, Croatia pizza (they are known for their pizza), had some amazing gelato, and walked the city walls with fresh squeezed orange juice. After walking the walls, we decided to wander the backside of the city and found a small restaurant on the side of a cliff that had a stairway down to the ocean. This was were a bunch of locals were hanging out and cliff diving (basically a sport in Croatia). After seeing the water was safe to jump into, the cliff jumping commenced. That night we followed dinner on the ship with going out to a club called East West. It was fun. The end.

The next day, Sarah and I decided we wanted to go to Bosnia. We walked around for a good hour trying to find a bus to Bosnia and after many failed attempts, we decided to give up and find an island. We looked at a map, pointed to an island, and went. The island was insane! It is called Locrum and is the national park of Croatia. As we walked on the unpaved path past wild peacocks, we found a beach… a nude beach. Since we are both always up for new experiences, we decided to go. The beach proved to be, well, lets say, interesting. It was mostly men which made us a little uncomfortable, but we got use to it. We climbed the rocky beach over to peak of the island and found a mostly, private area to lay out in. The view was nothing short of perfect and the waves crashing on the rocky shore was all you could hear.  In a moment of stupidity, I decided I wanted to climb down and get in the ocean. In my defense, there was a ladder used to get into the water, however, the ocean was really rough, so the waves were about my height, or higher once I got down to the bottom. A man from above shouted, “You shouldn’t go there” right as I was being thrashed by a tsunami like wave. At this point, I had pretty much figured that out, turned around, stuck up my thumb and said “thanks!” Sarah could not help but laugh at me… for the next 20 minutes… Both “you shouldn’t go there” and “thanks (with a thumbs up)” is part of our daily conversation now.

So, after my near death experience, we headed back towards the main beach to go swimming. The water was perfect. A few minutes later, three extremely attractive men anchored their boat right in front of us. As Sarah and I had gotten out to dry off, we immediately decided we should get back in. We swam up to the guys playing water polo and asked them to teach us how to play. I was actually really good at it! After playing water polo and talking with them for about half an hour, we missed our ferry so the guys offered to give us a ride back to the old city in their boat. As I have a wonderful judge of character, I had no reservations about these guys, they were really trustworthy (trust me and don’t tell me to be careful on this one…). We got out, dried off, got in the boat and headed toward the mainland. On the way, we found out that one was a doctor and one was an entrepreneur who had a laundry service that served the entire island. They then dropped us off and asked us to meet them later that night at a local bar. We quickly ran back to the ship to tell Audrey our story and to get ready to go out. It was exciting to know where the locals go because we were really tired of going to clubs that were run over by SAS kids, otherwise known as SASholes (just kidding). I have found that talking to locals is one of my favorite things to do in these countries as they give the best insight into the culture of the society, plus, it is really interesting to find commonalities between myself and someone who lives on the other side of the world from me. When we went out after dinner, we ran into the guys and had a great night.

The next morning I got up to go on a kayaking trip for my oceanography class and was excited to find out that both Audrey and Tara were in my same group! I decided to go with the advanced group in the sit in kayaks and we kayaked over to Locrum Island. ☺ After swimming and snorkeling for a while, we kayaked back to the beach we left from. The total kayaking experience was about 4 miles or so. After the upper body workout, we got in a lower body workout when we had to hike back up to the bus from the beach. We went up about 300 steps to get to a hill to hike up another hill. Exhausted, Audrey and I decided we would have a chill night and go to use computers in a nearby internet café. After skyping for an hour, we both got hungry and asked some locals where the best pizza in town was. We went to the suggested Mia Culpa and had the best tuna pizza in the world! It was so incredibly good!

The next morning I got up to go kayaking, again! Audrey had planned an independent trip and a few people dropped out so, luckily, I got a spot even though there was a long list of people that wanted on the trip. Ends up, the trip was booked with the same company we went with the day before and I had the same group leader. He was awesome though, so I was fine with it. The trip was much longer and much better. This time, we got to kayak all the way around Locrum Island with a break in between. During the break, the group went to a restaurant where I had the best salad I have ever tasted. It was fresh corn, beans, lettuce, prosciutto, cheese, oil and vinegar. I can’t even describe the freshness that was the corn. IT WAS SOOOOO GOOD.  After our second kayak trip, Audrey and I only thought it right to go back to Mia Culpa for dinner. I was then on a corn kick, so we split a margarita pizza (cheese pizza) topped with corn. Delicious! I then rapidly ran back to the ship in order to finish postcards and get them in the box before 6 p.m. Even though I was able to finish them, most read “I miss you, love, Kelly.” As this was true for everyone I was sending them to, I wish I would have had time to expand more.

One day of classes and the SEA OLYMPICS until we are in GREECE!