Road Trip, Part 5

Our time in Zagreb was unfortunately very short, as Gio had to leave early the next morning to get back to class. That afternoon we drove to the city centre and wandered around for a couple of hours, had some coffee, and headed back to Miho's apartment to pack, etc. 

As you can see, most of the snow had melted by that point. I like the architecture of the buildings. It reminds me of Austria, which makes sense because Croatia was part of the Austria-Hungary empire for quite some time. Also, I noticed the accent was so different than down in south part of Croatia. It sounds softer almost in the Č, Š, and Ž sounds. I guess southern accents are noticeable in every language... 

 

The next pictures are from outside and inside of the Zagreb Cathedral. I was tormented by a gypsy while I was taking pictures outside of the cathedral. Gio saw her approaching me and ran away to leave me listening to her story about selling beads, blah blah. I think I've been to Europe enough times to have a gypsy defense mechanism or I just have a black heart. 

 

So the following day, I dropped Gio off at the airport and I spent the day with my cousin Miho and his girlfriend, Ana. We went shopping at a "shopping city" in Zagreb, which was fun because the shopping scene isn't so great in Dubrovnik, which is probably a good thing for my financial situation. We also went to go see a movie. I kept hearing "Dobrodošli na Otok Shutter" on the radio and I understand enough Croatian to know that means "welcome to Shutter Island," a fact I am very proud of. I was so excited to learn it was playing in Croatia because I was dying to see it! Also, cool thing about the movie theaters is there is assigned seating. You pick your seats on a seating chart when you buy your tickets. I gotta say, I like this system because you have a guaranteed seat next to the others in your party. 

The next day, I flew back to Dubrovnik and took a cab straight to Hotel Croatia. The taxi driver tried to give me his card "in case I needed a ride while I was in town." I told him that I lived here, but thanks. I really liked that feeling, especially since I know he overcharged me for the cab ride - and he promptly took 30kn off the final price. 

Final thought of the road trip is that even after seeing so many other parts of Croatia, Dubrovnik is still my favorite city. It is so unique and believe it or not, really small. The people of Dalmatia are so friendly and I still think it's the most beautiful. Although I could be biased since it really is like home now. 

My Afternoon

Just a little note for the day. Excelsa Hotels hosted a party at our Villa Sheherezade this afternoon to spend time with our travel partners in Dubrovnik. I love my internship. :)

Oh and in case you didn't know, this is Villa Sheherezade...

So, yeah, today was pretty fabulous.

Road Trip, Part 4

One of the most spectacular places we went was the Plitvice Jezera National Park. The park is huge, however, we were limited to our access due to the heavy snow, BUT we did get to see the waterfalls, including the "big" waterfall. There is a wooden boardwalk that crosses over the water to get a closer-up view of the waterfalls. It feels like you're just walking on water. 

First, we had to walk down this narrow switchback path and if there is one thing I learned about Croatia - they have a laissez faire policy on guard rails. Gio and I were betting on who was going to bust it first. We both bet me, but surprisingly, neither of us fell. Gio did develop a pretty innovative way to walk on this path...

And here is our lovely and very safe boardwalk across the water, and yes those are stairs traveling down you see there:

This was Gio's technique for un-chapping his lips... Again, how innovative. What an engineer.

Big clumps of snow were sitting on those plants in the water so it looked like it was just sitting on the water. I think it was such a good thing it snowed for us because I think it made the view that much more breathtaking. And once again, it was around 55 degrees outside, so Gio isn't totally crazy just wearing that fleece.

 

 

I took a video of the waterfall. I took more that were a lot closer but the video is so shaky because I'm concentrating on not falling into the freezing water and not looking at the video. Just re-watching it was making me ill, so I won't put any of you through that. We did leave our mark so everyone does know the Gator Nation is literally everywhere...

artist: Giovanni Garcia

The lakes look absolutely delicious for swimming so I'm just going to add to my travel list to go back there in the summer sometime and venture off the boardwalk...but not down the waterfall. They are completely see through and green. 

The night before we came to the park we stayed at a little bed & breakfast outside of the park. It was adorable and naturally we took a picture of the Punto in front of it...

The next and final stop on our road trip is Croatia's capital, Zagreb. 

Road Trip, Part 3

After we left Split, we headed over to Smiljan, a village outside of Gospic, to check out the Nikola Tesla birth house and memorial center. Nikola Tesla is an electrical engineering genius and is considered the father of radio and is single handedly responsible for our AC/DC system of electricity... and he was born in Croatia. If you want to know more, check out his wikipedia page (http://bit.ly/9NXtR).

The day before the northern part of Croatia had a huge blizzard and got an obscene amount of snow in one night. It was bizarre to see such a change in climate and really just in the land from where we came from. We went from the sunny (kind of) beach to a winter wonderland in the mountains in a period of about 2 hours. The great thing is that by the time we got there, the temperature had risen up to around 50 degrees during the day, but the sheer volume of the snow kept everything so pretty for the whole time we were up north. Great for us Floridians...snow without the freezing. I like.

This is exactly how it happened:

Driving and we see the tunnel

We go through the tunnel

And then, boom, whiteness...

... and yes that is just a giant wall of snow.

Unfortunately, when we got to Tesla's, either they closed early or they don't stay open past 3:30 or the snow factored in somehow, but we didn't get to go in anywhere. It was fine, we observed from the outside and had the whole place to ourselves. 

That's his little house in the background.

His "yard," I guess. On the left his his father's Orthodox church.

Gio with his new love.

After this little visit to Smiljan, we headed to our B&B outside of Plitvice Jezera National Park, which just so happens to be the next leg of the journey. Off into the sunset...

Road Trip, Part 2

We left Dubrovnik on Thursday around 2pm after we went to the Dubrovnik Airport and picked up our rental car... a modest Fiat Punto. Just as an observation, I think the standard European rental car is some sort of Fiat. Every time I've been to Europe with my parents, we've hit the road in a little Fiat. So here is ours, this picture was taken on an overlook on the way to Split:

View from the overlook, not of the Fiat:

With our trusty Garmin GPS, we arrived in Split that very rainy night. We had a little problem in that the hotel wasn't actually located on a road, so we ended up circling around a taxi stand a few times before we realized what was happening. Once we found the hotel, after a lot of searching, we unloaded the Punto and got something to eat. The next day we wandered around Split. 

The seafront of Split's Town Centre/Old Town:

Diocletian's Palace:

 

 

(This was some sort of art installation in the Palace, which haunts my dreams):

These are some from the Town Centre:

 

And so after our sightseeing, we had some coffee and burek on the waterfront and hit the road to Nikola Tesla's house...