Croatia (Zagreb, Plitvice, Zadar, Split, Trogir, Hvar, Korcula and Dubrovnik)

Oooohhh slidy head rests. Reminds me of my first inter railing. Anyway we were in Croatia and excited. It was one of the three countries I expected to be a highlight of the trip. First impression. There was not a massive price difference between Slovenia and Croatia. This could prove problematic as we had a higher budget of 45 euros a day for Slovenia and Italy, but Croatia would have to be attacked with the trip's basic budget of 30 euros a day. We found a hostel (admittedly expensive) with free internet, so we took the opportunity to upload our first round of photos from the holiday. The last bus to Plitvice was at 4pm so we would only have a half day or so in the capital. We headed out for the evening. Zagreb has some funky bars in the downtown and is probably one of the best looking cities I have been to in terms of the women. It didn't please Cannelle much, but she was the first one to mention it after we left the railway station. We got some good food from an organic bar and chilled out under the lights of the city with a hot chocolate. We were officially on gypo travel rations, but it was a cool city. It has a nice vibe and I could live there, even if its a small city. The hostel even had a double bed with the bunk beds so we took that one. Free tea and apparently some fashionistas. I am not sure if that relates to the hostel or the people of Zagreb.





We got up and stored our bags before heading out into the city. Lots of cool graffitti lines the walls on the way to the railway station of Zagreb. Some Belgians in the hostel. They loved Eastern Europe and I got the impression it was for the women. We walked around the city. Grabbed a lunch by the market where it was good value for money. Cool city. Found a sign for a 'Naive' museum which I guessed was a typo, but then again maybe not as we saw some others later on the trip. We skipped the museums and headed to the botanical gardens, where we spooned some melon and danced on a bridge. There is a nice shaded wooden walkway up on the hill. There are not many top grade tourist attractions in Zagreb, but I do really like the city. Cool place to hang around for a few days and I am sure its even better if you are single. apparently we had a moron bus driver. I don't know why, but he dropped us at the campsite. Its very expensive there to camp. More than Slovenia. Personally with hindsight, I think it would be better to stay in one of the homestays lining the road, but we didn't cotton on to this until Bosnia, so it cost us in Croatia. Now we were apparently around 9km from the park and so we got into a debate about bus v walk. I think the bus was 10 euros return maybe. Now I can't remember. In figured we could walk it. Cannelle wasn't interested. In the end and after much debating, we agreed to the bus one way and walk back the other. It was going to be difficult to stay on budget in Croatia. We were eating from supermarkets and still killing the budget. Shitty.





In the morning we took the bus one way to Plitvice. They even put the fucking photo of the park on the side of the bus. Yeah good idea. Dickheads. Its a bus that runs from the autocamping near the park to the park. Who the fuck is going to be in the autocamping? Why are they there? I don't know. Maybe they just like stopping in the middle of fucking nowhere for no reason. I am sure if you are there, you are there for Plitvice. So why the advertising. There is no need. Yet some people might like to be surprised when they go there. Damn Croatia. The tourism is killing it for the tourists. We got to share the bus with 500 French scouts and an Italian family. Well anyway.... How was Plitvice? Fucking awesome. The highlight of the trip and possibly the highlight of Europe. That's how good it is. From the moment you enter and catch the huge waterfall plunging off the cliffs and down into water so blue and clear, Cannelle said it felt like being somewhere tropical. It did. It's difficult to describe and needless to say we broke our rule of only a few photos a day. They have little wooden boarded trails all over the park. You go under waterfalls, past waterfalls, over waterfalls, around pools of water, through the middle of them and everywhere there is water. Beautiful water. Hypnotic water. Its like being in a natural water theme park. Its too cool. These Karst limestone formations are immense and as usual UNESCO didn't disappoint. We had a wonderful day, picnicking, riding boats, hiking and marevlling at the beauty. It keeps evolving as well. So everytime you go there is something new. I would have attacked the long trail round the back of the park as well, but I preferred to spend the time with Cannelle. We saw a snake swimming, lizards and beautiful butterflies. If you only go to one park in Europe, this is your park. So far Croatia was living up to what we expected and then some. After the park we walked back and it turned out to be only 6km, so walk it is my advice. There is a nice swimming pool halfway back along the road as well, but we didn't have our swimming costumes. We went over budget with a nice outdoor barbecued dinner and then watched an Italian couple smash all their crockery outside the toilets before we turfed in for the night.





In the morning we took the cartel bus down to Zadar. We passed the national park en route and there were some useless English people on the way. Lonely Planet said the campsite was 4oom from the centre of the town. I think they missed a 0 somewhere in there as it was a bitching nearly 2 hour walk with full rucksack. We also kind of went the long way round. Its disheartening when you don't know how long you have to walk for. Eventually we got to the campsite and had the privilege of paying another fortune to stay there. How wonderfully uncheap these places were. Never mind. We had one night to enjoy the city, but due to transport fuck ups we would have to go early to Split in the morning. Really early. Like 5am early. No trains. They stopped them. Too cheap I guess. I love the bus rules in Croatia. The price can be literally doubled depending on what time of day you leave. Zadar doesn't have much to do. Its got a nice pretty downtown, but not much else. That could be the review for the remainder of Croatia. My God their coastal towns all look the same. We were bummed by random taxes for all sorts of shit at the campsite. There were more skanky English in the towns. Should have been a warning sign. Cheese bureks full of too much cheese and we were off to the sea organ. Sounded cool in the book. In reality it was ok. We went swimming past it and they have put some organ pipes in the water so when you swim past it, it plays music. We couldn't see the light show as we had to get back and sleep. We had a picnic with no spoon after finding nothing of interest at the cinema. Cinema = shit town with nothing to do. Then we headed to a bar called 'The Garden'. What a cool little bar. Shame we couldn't stay and enjoy it more. Some skanky English came in at one point but before that it was cool. Raised up with a view over the water and boats, beanbags scattered on the top deck to lie down and enjoy the cocktails or in my case a hot chocolate. Super chilled out and vibey. Would have liked to spend more time there. It was top class. Realxing in a cool bar, lying down with my future wife watching the waves roll by. We had sunset on a beach back at the campsite, I had my first French lesson and I had to insist on paying the stupid campsite out of hours as our bus left in the morning before the opened. Damn inconveniences. Onwards to Split.





Chicken sausages. We were being stalked by chicken sausages. Huge billboards. As if we didn't see them enough on our cheap picnics lol. Now trucks were coming with the stuff as well. I don't have any idea if Poli really is the best chicken sausage, but I haven't had any others and it was ok for me. We had our first rude bitch experience in Zadar bus station when Cannelle was bitched at by some woman. We had hostel problems again in Split. Everything was expensive. So we went over budget for 2 nights and opted against going to Krka National Park for budget reasons. If we had known the other countries were so much cheaper we could have gone, but at this point we were worried about the viability of the trip. The hostel was shit and their cooker was broken. There was an old one in our room and I reconnected it to the mains so we could cook spaghetti that night. Confused the owner, but that doesn't take much. It has a really high rating on hostelworld as it was run by Aussies. Now its run by locals and they are effectively asset stripping the hostel. We hunted down a McDonalds for cheap, filling food and found that the majority of locals were unfriendly here. Very different from Slovenia. Cannelle ended up ordering a pork burger that she hated and was pissed because she finally splashed out and got something she didn't like. We hadn't combined our money yet. I think we did that in Jajce and beforehand we were operating on two budgets. We went to Dicoletians Palace. It was nice, but a bit of a disappointment. We went up the tower with the metal stairs designed to scare anyone with vertigo. We went for an early evening walk up the hill to find the zoo. It wasn't a real zoo. Then we saw Super 8 at the cinema. It was a good film. We touched the lucky big toe of the statue in the centre of town and to be fair we had a lot of good luck after we touched that toe. We are exceptionally lucky anyway :-) It started that evening when we had the room to ourselves and decided to have sex in the hostel. Just after we finished and Argentinean couple came in. Like literally after we finished. Very lucky indeed.





In the morning we got breakfast on the waterfront at a French bakery while all our clothes were in the laundry. I think it was the only successful laundry we did on the trip. We took a bus to Trogir as there was nothing to do in Split and it looks exactly the same. They all look exactly the same. All these UNESCO Croatian towns. The same only a little different. Each slightly prettier than the last one. Just go to Dubrovnik and maybe Hvar and skip the others. We didn't need to pay for the bus to Trogir as noone checks, so we didn't bother for the return journey. The argentines had started cooking now as well, so the hostel owners were pissed. Trogir is an overpriced, small, walled port town. Nothing much else to say. We went down to the waterfront for an evening concert, which was nice and enabled Cannelle and I to piss around with sweets :-) We couldn't buy the ferry tickets so we would have to wait until the morning.

We bought the tickets in the morning and killed time while Cannelle taught me French on the hostel veranda. The boat trip was fairly straightforward. I like boat travel. Its my second favourite after train travel and is relaxing and chilled, even on a catamaran. We pulled into another island, en route for Hvar and scared the crap out of a number of people eating in a waterside restaurant. Nothing like having your lovely sea view ruined by a catamaran pulling up alongside and spraying you with water, while simultaneously threatening to plough through your table. We arrived in Hvar. It was a very pretty little town, but boy was it small. We figured we'd lock up the bags, but as they wanted 5 euros for 3 hours, we only put in one and I carried the other around with me. It was hot work. We climbed the hill to the castle and chilled out with a picnic. Its a really beautiful view from up there. It may even be the prettiest of the Croation UNESCO towns. It was however super touristy and very expensive, so I was glad we weren't spending the night there. We wandered around the town, before settling for some super expensive internet while we waited for the boat to Korcula. The boat arrived, after many tourist's day trip boats had swarmed the harbour like ants at a picnic. People had to climb from one boat onto another in a long chain to the harbour. Our boat eventually turned up and we joined the queue for the middle of the boat. After letting lots of people on, he told us his part was full because we had big bags. Arsehole. We just kept meeting the creme de la creme of Croatian tossers on our trip. I can imagine the huge influx of retarded tourists we met can be draining over time, but still...They could at least be civil. We arrived at Korcula with a different crowd of tourist. Gone were the dickhead English and the sun, sand and sex crowd and in their place came the Germans and the Croatians. This looked like an island for the locals. We liked it immediately. It was the first place we had arrived in since Plitvice, to which we took an instant liking. We hiked round the town as the lights were dimming and found a very cheap campsite, where the old proprietor insisted on taking us to our pitch by bicycle. Very old school. It was an old fashioned campsite, but it was tucked away nicely. We went back into town and stopped to watch some water polo. Was free, so why not. We then wandered around the town at night and had dinner in a local place. I think all of the Croatians were surprised at our gyponess in the face of their extortionate prices, but this was the first time when someone actually was surprised by our relationship. An Englishman and a French girl. 'Aren't you supposed to hate each other?' Hmmm, well yes, but its been a good 100 years now. Anyway even during the 1000 years, I figured it was more a love/hate relationship, but came down more on the love side. Besides I think it was a cunning ploy to stop weird children. The children of French/English relations are always somewhat strange. Look at Francois or Canada. Anyway they didn't charge us for all of the food and we felt it would be too rude to correct them and scarpered. We went for a walk around the castle walls and saw some black witches (three identically dressed young girls on the pull) and listened to some cool music for free on the castle walls. We came back, flanked by a French school group and the tent was still buggered apparently. I remember the tent's shitness being discovered here and as I have not mentioned it before, I am surprised it gets a mention now. I think its where we realised one of the tent poles was snapped. It still worked with a bit of binding. Slovenia must have knackered it. What a shitty waste of money. Anyway we persevered with El Crappo because he was still hanging on in there. How long would he last?

In the morning we walked into town to buy tickets for Dubrovnik. The bus station was on a half hour break. Of course. As you do. We got some breakfast and ate it while hiking across the island. We decided to hike to the West end of the island. We had a mini fight under the heat of the day, but it was scorching and we really didn't have enough water. There were lots of Slovenians here, judging by the cars. We passed through fields and vineyards till we found a small beach where Cannelle took a swim. i looked after our stuff. Then we carried on hiking back East along the North coast on one of the cycle tracks. No shade. We passed a god awful rubbish dump full of the most foul odors known to man. They dump all the shit away from the tourist resorts and clearly for a reason. They also seem to have gouged all of the greenery off the hills on the North side, so I imagine they are developing. Not so fun to see the pace of development literally destroying the reason why you go there in the first place. We got lost again and ended up going down a dead end. Then we got lost again. Cannelle was getting pissed at me by this point. Finally we stumbled across the road and headed East again. W e got picked up by some local guys, who drove us down to a private little cove. Beautiful place we had to ourselves, except for the local guys. A few local houses, a private beach and a nice little cove. We had lunch before going for a swim. How could you ruin such a picturesque little cove. Try piloting a fuck off yaucht right into the Bay. Ah the rich and their ability to ruin anything in the pursuit of it. Still they enjoyed their little swim with a couple of locals and a couple of hobos. By this point the heat was kicking in and the water was running low. We hiked round the East until we eventually hit a town and then turned South and West back to the town. A long days hiking in the heat. We hung out on the wall, drinking milk and listening to music again. There was a retarded woman at the burger bar for dinner, who couldn't understand our order or prepare it without taking about half an hour. The French kids were there again and we slipped into El Crappo to get up early for the bus to Dubrovnik.

We took the bus early in the morning and stopped midway for no reason. Then out of a dusty sideroad came a guy on a motorcycle. He approached us and handed a package to the driver. Then he went off again. The dude looked like Bon Jovi and it was a bit random. We arrived and were mobbed by women offering us rooms to stay in. Take them. We didn't as Mostar would be the first time we took this opportunity. It is the most economical and best way to stay anywhere in the Balkans. I was just stupid and we didn't know. We lugged our stuff all the way over to the campsite, where they told us it would be 50 euros to stay there. What the fuck. A campsite. For 50 Euros. Let me think about it lol. While we were weighing it up a guard came to move us. I asked him for one second and he started carrying my bag. I shouted at him to put it the fuck down as its not his stuff. We had a little stand off, while we checked options outside and the guard kept trying to kick us off the property. What an arsehole and once again the wonderful Croatian hospitality. Fuck this city. The arseholes we had met so far didn't deserve our money. We decided to lock up our bags in the bus station for the night and stay up all night. Good idea at the time. We walked down to the famous, old, walled city of Dubrovnik. I thought it was pretty and the prettiest of the idetikit towns we had trawled through. Cannelle wasn't bothered though and was thoroughly bored with Croatia. It had not been what we expected and tomorrow we would head to Bosnia. I went for a walk around the walls, which Cannelle didn't fancy. It was nice up there with some good views. The way the check points are set up you could probably go up there for free for some parts of it. It was scorching, so I was pouring water on my head a few times up there. The walk takes a good hour to circle the whole city. The inside of the walls was covered in stone slabs for walking and was pleasant if touristy. The city was going to charge everyone to enter it until the Dubrovnik residents protested. Seems like the Croatians will do anything to squeeze some more money from the tourists. We went to a cool little artsy cafe with weird colouring like something out of Alice in Wonderland. We got lost in the allweyways trying to find the outdoor cinema, but we ended up in a jewellery shop overlooking it, which judging by the owners response was a common occurence. The only clubs were super expensive, so we would have to stay up in the city. We went to a cool Thai veggie place where everyone thought we were Spanish. The jazz place would only sell cold drinks so we couldn't stay as they were extorntionate. We found a place doing coffees and stayed there for a while. Then we went to the square and watched some Aussies breakdancing and some fire jugglers. It was a nice, romantic outdoor evening of culture. We were killing time and we didn't have much Kuna left. We didn't want to draw more as tomorrow we would be in Mostar. I was a little wary in the streets at night after having my nose broken in Chile and that annoyed me. Also I had Cannelle to look after. Its one thing getting myself broken, but quite another if something happened to her. We ended up sitting on a bench with a sea view, overlooking a club where we could take the piss out of the people there. Two other hobos seemed to join us for a bit. I let Cannelle sleep while I kept watch. We wandered back into the city around 3am and could walk around the deserted streets. It was very pretty and surreal at night. We walked all the way back to the bus station, past some prostitute who was being picked up by some drunk guy and we slept for two hours in front of the bus station with all the other people who must also have found Dubrovnik too expensive. It was a mix of hobos, back packers and hammered party people. Nice company. We paid for the bags when the place opened up, I walked and got us some breakfast. Little croissants filled with sausage that would become staples and we were finally leaving Croatia.

The bus left town, briefly passed through Bosnia's only coastal resort (shithole) and back into Croatia, where we crossed the border without a real stamp. Finally we were done with Croatia and we were happy to be out of there. Lets see how Bosnia is.