KALEIGH TAKEOVER: CROATIA
Kaleigh, Nancy’s daughter, TAKES US TO CROATIA
Heading into our last three countries of the trip, Becca and I were super excited to meet up with some of our other friends and explore the gorgeous country of Croatia. Our plan was to start in the city of Split, and then make our way to Dubrovnik to meet up with our friend, Manraj.
Upon our arrival late at night, and our confusion on where to find our Airbnb, we heard voices coming from above shouting:
“Rebecca… Rebecca… is that you?”
We looked up and saw a sweet old lady calling to us from the window. She had apparently seen us wandering around struggling, and was kind enough to show us the way to the apartment.
We settled in and prepared for the next few days. On the first full day in Split, we were already in awe with how beautiful and quaint the area was. We were right on the water, there were pop-up Christmas booths, and the mountains surrounding the city were truly a sight to see. It was amazing to be in 60-degree weather after adventuring in the blizzards of Switzerland.
At sunset, the mountains glowed in a blanket of pink, as the sun slowly sank and lit up the sky with a multitude of colors before disappearing below the horizon.
For all those Game of Thrones (GOT) fans out there, of course we stopped in to some GOT stores and checked out the GOT museum. All the merch made me even more excited to see where some of the filming was shot, which we planned for later in the week when we visited Dubrovnik. My imagination kicked in and I almost expected a dragon to fly over the city.
Becca and I puttered around a market we had stumbled upon, which led us right to the Palace of Diocletian. This was a massive castle-like structure that had many cool areas. The pavilion had a fabulous view of the bell tower, and the underground portion had yet another small market. The architecture was interesting throughout the palace and I loved that we were able to find palaces and markets everywhere we went. Walking around Massachusetts, especially in the suburbs, there aren’t many jaw-dropping, historic structures, which is another reason why I had just fallen in love with Europe thus far.
Only a two-minute walk from our Airbnb, there was a cute little Christmas market with an ice rink where we went to enjoy the fun vibes. Right around this area there is a massive statue of Gregory of Nin. His big toe had been rubbed off due to the tradition of rubbing it for good luck. We also stopped by the Split Museum of Fine Arts on one of the rainy days, which had way more art than we had expected.
Now, for the best trip in Split: we took a day trip to Krka National Park, which was such a fabulous, yet exhausting, excursion. To start, the bus we had booked never showed up; we were ready bright and early. That was a bummer, but not the end of the world. We caught another bus and once the hour-and-a-half ride was over, we were ready to explore and capture some breathtaking images.
and we’re off!
We saw so many waterfalls and even more cats! Also, the water was such a beautiful teal color I almost jumped right in a couple of times. I knew that we would be walking a little, since we were visiting a National Park, but let’s just say, I didn’t fully grasp that we were about to embark on a half-marathon-length hike, where I foolishly wore tights and a dress. Thank God I decided to wear my shoes rather than my boots!
We traversed all around the park, stopping many times to take photos of some bubbling brooks and roaring falls. It wasn’t until we reached the middle of the trail, with a place to eat and a souvenir shop, when we realized that we had already hiked six miles into the park. At this point the realization hit that we had to now hike back those six miles, and quickly, since we only had an hour left until the park closed.
when you realize you’re only halfway through the hike and you’re already six miles in
We started zooming back through the trails, still stopping occasionally to say hi to the cats, or snap a quick pic of nature. After finally making it back to the bus, we checked our watches and saw that we had beaten our Versailles record for number of steps back in France. We had trekked even more miles here in Skradin. As we watched the park and small town disappear behind us on our way back to Split, I wondered to myself if I would ever make it back to Krka and Skradin…
Here’s when sh*t hit the fan. We started our journey to meet our friend in Dubrovnik and had decided the four-hour bus was the most efficient and cost-effective way to get there. Looking back at it, we should’ve known busses weren’t on our side from earlier that week.
We got to our bus 45 minutes early to make sure that we could figure out the terminal and get a good seat. But then our bus ended up being a half-hour late and we thought we had missed it. That was only the start of the chaos that was to come.
right before we realized we were on the wrong bus…
We showed the bus driver our ticket and he told us to get on the bus, but we quickly realized that the bus had way too many people on it. We didn’t think much of it because we had been told to get on, so we put our music on and tried to nap for the four-hour journey. We were rudely awoken when the bus made its first stop in where else, but SKRADIN.
At this point, we were confused and anxious, since Skradin was two hours in the wrong direction from where we were trying to go. Frantically, we got off the bus and fought for our luggage, since the men were trying to tell us that they couldn’t get our luggage out and that we would have to leave it behind. Becca straight up crawled into the luggage compartment and grabbed our bags, as I started to walk away and wonder how this had happened.
As the bus drove away, we realized that it had been over capacity due to us! We were the ones on the wrong bus! So, now we had wasted three hours and our destination was over six hours away from us. We checked out Uber, but for a 6 hour drive it was going to be over $300… no thanks!
Being offseason, barely anywhere was open, besides the trails to the national park that we had gone to a couple days before. We ended up booking another bus, but it wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another four hours. UGH!
At this point, we were just mad at our situation, since the bus driver had misguided us. We sat at the Skradin bus stop bench, as the afternoon turned to night and it began to get chilly. We had our lunch and dinner from the local gas station. While we waited, we tried to nap, surrounded by all of our luggage.
As if our situation couldn’t get any worse, our bus was delayed by over an hour!
As time slowly passed, we started talking with another girl who joined us at the bus stop. We found out that she was a solo traveler that was our age. She was from the U.S. and was doing a similar trip to us, but in the reverse order. She was also talking about the work she had done on her travels and how she planned to stay even longer. This was a nice chat to make time pass faster, and it was interesting to hear from a like-minded traveler.
Finally, the bus arrived around 6pm and we had our six- to seven-hour journey ahead of us. The first four hours were uneventful, up until we hit the Bosnia border. At this point, it was almost 11pm and we were asked to show our passports to the border agents.
Obviously, at this point we were exhausted from all the travel, but Becca and I were chosen out of everyone on the bus to get taken off, searched, and questioned. The border agents went through every inch of our luggage and asked us many questions about our travel. Of course, we were both scared that they would hold us there, or say something we had was illegal, but we just continued answering her questions, hoping that we would make it back to Croatia real soon.
Like we weren’t already having a horrible day, this was simply the cherry on top of this traumatic day. By the time we got back on the bus and moving again, it was almost midnight. We ended up passing back through to Croatia and arriving in Dubrovnik around 1am, where we got an Uber and made it to our Airbnb, where our friend was waiting for us.
So basically, a four-hour travel day turned into a fifteen-hour travel day, where we took the wrong bus, got stranded for a while, retraced our steps back, got stopped, searched, and questioned at the Bosnia border, and then finally arrived safe and sound to our new place around 1:30am.
Now, of course, things can happen while traveling, but this was a whole different story. We thought traveling during Covid would be the biggest challenge, but nope. That search was the all-time worst moment of the trip.
Luckily, we passed out right after arriving and the next day we were ready to adventure around the tremendous city of Dubrovnik with Manraj! Nothing could stop us from exploring all the beautiful cities we were visiting.
The next morning was bright and shiny, and we headed off to Old Town Dubrovnik, which had the iconic stone wall surrounding the city center. I was hyped to see all the old castle features, winding roads, and get the vibe that I was straight out of GOT at “Kings Landing.”
We even had some good views of Fort Lovrijenac, where the epic Battle of Blackwater was filmed. There were pop-up Christmas markets all around and joyous music blaring through the narrow streets. I had the best Mai Tai of my life at one of the restaurants here, and I also sat at the most magnificent ocean bar, overlooking the waves below the sunset.
We also went up Srd mountain on the cable car and were able to look at the entire city from above. It was a beautiful sight. This is where the three of us got to bask in the sun and soak up some vitamin D. It was the nicest weather so far; usually at this time of year we are all in New England in the freezing cold blizzard weather, so it was a nice change.
The next day was a horrible storm with torrential downpours, so we took our first full day off of the whole trip. We didn’t leave the Airbnb and we just watched movies, chatted, and cheffed it up in the kitchen all day long. It was a long-needed break and left us all feeling recharged and ready for the next day.
We went back into the city to walk the city wall where we saw even more of Dubrovnik and all the beautiful angles. It took us hours to get around the whole circle due to the cute art shop, perfect photo opps, funeral boat procession, crooked basketball court, cats etc.
We took it all in and enjoyed our last day in Croatia, before heading over to Greece to meet Lori, our other friend from home.
Aw, this reminds me of Grammy Peggy, who used to collect heart rocks.