Jun 07

We encountered only a small snafu on our trek from Italy to Croatia: we got on the wrong bus (3 times) between the Ancona train station and the ferry terminal (stazione marittima as we learned after a few failed attempts at direction). The ominously black sky opened up on us as we disembarked the second wrong bus....and the torrent was pretty bad. We were soaked through to the bone, and still had to find our way to the ferry. A kind Italian man who spoke not a word of english - which nicely complemented our lack of Italian - asked us why we were standing at that particualr bus stop, it was nowhere near the terminal. Then he helped us find the right bus and we managed to forge our way through the downpour to the terminal (Sarah had to go barefoot because flipflops and rain don´t really work).

The ferry was way more ghetto than our first experience in Tunis, but it got us to Split, Croatia the next morning, a little worse for the wear and very tired, where we promptly sought our hostel and had quite the surprise upon being led up a staircase to a very drunk woman´s private guesthouse (note: this is 7:30 am) before we realized that we were on the wrong side of the courtyard. The hostel was next door! We took a nice nap before we hit the town.

Split is a lovely town paved in white marble (which I quickly learned is the case for much of Croatia´s old towns) which can be quite blinding in the sunlight. The town was built within the walls of the former seaside palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the Middle Ages. Way cool.

The next morning we took a hydrofoil to Hvar Island where Sarah & I met up with 3 girls from San Luis Obispo that we went to Jr High & High School with...we arrived early and ran into them in the town square just as they were renting a little motorized skiff to tootle around the islands. We spent the afternoon attempting to navigate via the postcard of the harbor that the boat guy had given us. Thank God Sarah knew how to deal with a boat, or else we would have crashed into some of the swanky yachts docked in the classy resort town harbor. Our only incidents here were that we dropped the little anchor a little too far off the coast of the island we hoped to sunbathe on, and found it stuck under a rock.....The next 30 minutes passed with numerous attepmts swimming down to try and release it, but found it was far deeper down than we had thought. After all rubbing our patron saint of travels: Sarah´s Nefertti pin, Michelle dove from the boat down at least 30 meters and released the anchor!!! Glorious day! Topped it off with an evening a cappella concert of Croat men singing in the Franciscan Monastery.

We found Hvar a really nice town - really really swanky with lots of civil servants vaccuuming the streets for trash which was depositied in trash cans that lowered beneath the sidewalk...woah. But this was also early in the season and we saw everyone fixing up their beach bars etc. for the crowds to roll in in the next few weeks. We found a nice quiet beach with empty reclining chairs and took a dip or two in the ocean. The construction is crazy, and we were both glad to have seen Hvar before it became the craze of the Adriatic and completely unaffordable/devoid of local flavor. We also had a run-in with a Borat impersonator...AWESOME!

An early morning ferry took us to Dubrovnik (it ended up being an 8 hour ferry - OI VEH!) where we have been for the past 2 nights. It is an amazing town with an unbelievable history as a powerful merchant town rivaling Venice in the middle ages (then known as Ragusa). Unfortunately, in 1991-2 the Stari Grad (old town - which is so beautifully situated on the water with an entire city wall intact which we walked around at sunset...breathtaking!) was bombed to shreds when the Serbian-Montenegro remains of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) attacked the city. Now it has mostly been repaired and returned as the tourism capital of Croatia, teeming with cruise-shippers, although we did find a nice local swimming hole on a rather tranquil bit of ocean cove where all the locals sit drinking beer and playing cards in their speedos between dips in the salty ocean.

Today we are off to Montenegro - the world´s newest country - which is just down the coast. Pretty sweet!