!Yo Diggity!

(I am having a bit of trouble uploading some of our pictures… so if it seems like I’ve made a comment where a picture should be… it is… I’ll get it there… just hold on.)

I know the word ‘Croatia’ may stir a lot of emotion in many of your hearts…. wait… no…. you probably don’t even know where it is. Well I didn’t either as of a week ago. Some people we know here were talking about vacationing in Croatia and that it’s not too far from Budapest. So we went. Greg got to do a little research on the place, bought a road map, some bananas and we were on our way. I got a real good weekend deal on a rental car (a sweet Opel Astroria hatchback – never heard of it) and we took off Friday after I got off work. Well the 6 or 7 hour drive turned into an 8 hour drive which wasn’t so bad until the end of course.. We did get see the countryside of Hungary, which was nice, and drove by the largest lake in Europe – Lake Balaton. I haven’t verified that fact, but that’s what I hear. We were threre about sun set and got a couple good pictures…

Greg needed a break about then…. Isn’t it nice to be a boy? Hahahaha
greg being a boy

So in planning for this trip Greg e-mailed a few hostels on the island of Krk for availability. One response was no availability, and another said, “No, too late to make reservations, but come on down, we’ll have something.” So we headed to the town of Punat. I was quite tired by the time we reached Krk, but after the winding hills and Greg’s driving I was wide awake. We had only te address for the hostel and had a bit of a hard tme finding it. The streets were very narrow… just enough for only one car and we were never really positive that we were going the right direction. We finally parked the car in a hotel parking lot and went to ask the guy smoking outside were this street was. He pointed us in he right direction and we found it. Unfortunately, they close their doors at 11 and it was now about 1:30a.m. Dang it. We ensued to ask the smoker guy, if they had any availability and he said, sure, for 110 Euros. Eeeee… too much. After we turned him down he did say that the hostel would be open at 7a.m. if we wanted to try again. THANKS! Haha At this time we needed to find some ‘facilities’ and luckily there was one place still hoppin’ – a local bar that seemed o be filled with what we might deem as normal Europeans. Young crowd. So the bathroom stop was successful. Because we really had no other options at this point… we parked the car at the hostel and slept there. The plan was to check in at 7, shower, sleep a few hours and hit the beach. Our hopes were crushed when we walked in about quarter after and the man old us there was no room. Ugh. This was quite concerning to us as I would not say that sleeping in the car was the most restful situation. On top of that, I did find out that my cell phone alarm still goes off when it is shut off. Don’t ask me how that works… pretty incredible but it didn’t help us sleep any better, that is for sure.

Our next idea was to head south. Greg read that the best beach on the island is there and so we thought we’d sleep on the beach. We found this cute little town, Baskia, which was full of tourists, tourist shops, restaurants and best of all: beach. We got some local currency (Kuna), and figured out the exchange rate after quite bit of debate and several purchases. We were very excited when we found two beach chairs and a hut umbrella for $14 for the whole day! The day turned out to have some really fantastic weather. Perfectly sunny, 75 degrees, perfect!

Now the coast of Croatia is on the Adriatic sea and like I said, I’ve not heard much about the place but I can tell you that the water was crystal clear, a bit cold and the landscape itself was quite incredible – hilly and rocky. No one else around us seemed to mind the cold water. The place did seem to be booming with quite a bit of tourists, but we did not hear much English he whole time we were there. The Americans must not have discovered this place yet.

I really don’t know what the true Croatian delicacies are but there seemed to be a ton of pizza. Just about every restaurant had it – at least 10 different kinds of pizza. So that’s what we had for lunch. Was very good I must say.

Now it was time to try and find a place to sleep again. There really were not a lot of hotels around – not like we have in the states. The villages on the island were very small and old-timey. So we went to SEVERAL tourist centers and asked for accommodations. No. No. No. They almost seemed to laugh at us when we aksed. We even went to the very nice looking hotels – no availability. Yikes. At this time we were making plans to use the showers on the beach (literally) and lookinig forward to another night in the car. We had heard that there were some hiking trails so we were headed to the car to change our shoes and stopped at one more information center to ask about accommodations. “Yes! We have one place. It’s two villages down and there will be a women outside selling tomatoes. She always is after 5. Show her this map and she’ll know I sent you.” We were soooooo excited! A shower and a real bed sounded so very nice. We headed there right away and sure enough, there was the women sitting outside with the tomatoes. She did not speak a lick of English but was very nice and seemed happy to see us. After negotiating a very nice price (under $40) with hand signals, smiles and a pen, we had a place to stay!! Dark was closing in and we wanted to get a little bit of a hike in so we took off. Back to the beach area to start. The village had really livened up – the streets were crowed with visitors. The streets were actually very cool – all cobblestone walkways only as wide as two people in some places. Lined with shops of he usual tourist treasures. We walked along the coast up into the hills. Found a couple of lookout points that would have been even cooler in the daytime.

We went over the hill to discover a little beach oasis – a restaurant/bar with a campground behind it. Nice! As it was very dark by this time we headed back and decided to stop at one of the restaurants before retiring to our new found accommodation. We had dinner at one of the places near the harbor… the waiter was nice but didn’t speak any English so it is still a mystery to us why he sat two shots down in front of us when we asked for the bill. We felt it would be rude to refuse or not partake of the gift, however I really wish I would have got a picture of Greg’s face even five minutes after he took it. Although it was sweet… it had quite a nasty bite.

Day two was much less eventful as we slept through the majoritiy of it. I guess we were tired! We didn’t want to get back too late so we decided to head up toward the town of Krk which Greg read was he oldest (established in 50 B.C. or close) settlement on the island. It was a really cool little city. Streets again were cobblestone and winding. There was a wall built all along the outside of the city – supposedly by the Romans at some point.

Again, lots of pizza joints. We decided to grab a kebob at a little shop opporated by one sweaty man. He made each sandwich himself, from cutting the veggies and toasting the bread for each one. He even took the orders and ran the register… only stopping to wipe sweat from his brow. But boy was the wait worth it…

On the way back to the car to head out… we saw a little honey stand – or so we thought. I mean, the jars did have pictures of bees and I’m pretty sure we actually saw the word honey somewhere on the jar or the stand, thus justifying our thought. We saw a similar stand last night in Baskia but didn’t get any so I wanted to check it out. Seems like it might be some kind of local specialty. While considering the purchase the merchant offered a sample. So I took a swig of the ‘honey’ and found it to be the same mysterious alcohol we’d been given the night before! Needless to say, we did not buy the honey.

That concludes our trip. A few points to note from the trip
• Thank you, Greg, for drivng. Crazy European drivers, rain, lots of hills, curves, narrow, narrow streets – overall, you did an excellent job driving the manul! Someday I’ll have to learn… there’s just so little time.
• Cities with total disregard to city planning create quite picturesque communities
• A sweaty man does not necessarily make a bad kebob.
• Gas (petrol) stations in Croatia are quite extravagant – people just love to hang out there… who knows where they are coming from and why they are hangin’ out at the gas station.
• Reservations still do serve a purpose.
• A free shot is not necessarily a good shot.