Continuing to Croatia

We left our cute riverboat hotel little after 8:00 am after a huge breakfast in the restaurant down below (it was 5 euros per person so we just had to, cheaper than eating lunch). Pulling the bags through the rainy city roads we made it to the train station, sat in a train, switched into a bus and stared at google maps while trying to navigate to our car rental office. You see we were trying to be clever, payed 1,80€ for tickets instead of ordering a taxi from door to door. And it went well - until the bus left us on the side of a highway and we had to walk along the rainy highway with all the luggage. I was wearing flats so my feet got wet in the first paddle. After walking for 15 minutes or so the road ended to a construction site that stood there in between of us and our rental car. And there was this grumpy little Hungarian man telling us not to continue and go aaaaalll the way back to where we came from. After a few Finnish swear words we found this hole in a fence, that took us to a hill that we climbed down carrying one piece of luggage at the time and trying not to fall on our noses due to the wet grass. We managed to make it down and found ourselves standing in the middle of a traffic circle. From there we made our way to the office and finally, finally got our car. Even a little bigger one that we had ordered.

We started our trip by driving an enormous 50 meters to the closest shopping mall. We had bought snacks for the ride from Budapest the day before BUT I thought I had forgotten my sunglasses to the hotel, so we had to go buy new ones (they ended up being in my makeup pack ofc). On the road we had hilarious conversations with the voice register in the car while trying to learn how to use it.

The naked boat rider

I think it took like an hour and a half until my bladder wanted to make a little rest stop. And that rest stop got us do some impulsive water shopping. We bought like 20 liters of water from Aldi and packed them in our car. Of course we had to make one extra pit stop when we realized that we put them all in the trunk and took none for our selves.

See, naked

The weather on the side of Croatia was as Arno put it "a woman on her periods". First all sunny, blue skies, happy happy and rainbows, then the next second it started pouring like when Noah was building arks. It rained for few minutes and in a few second this bipolar weather calmed down again..

We decided to take a little panoramic road by the Adriatic ocean, through little villages because it was sooo pretty and also to avoid having to pay the highway fees. It was narrow and harder to drive since everyone else were speeding. We stopped not just to pee all the time but to take pictures (about naked men in motorboats), ate our snacks along the way and finally like at 6 pm made it to the hotel we had booked the night before. Okay, it was not a hotel. It was an apartment that this old cat lover lady rented for us. Really tidy and nice, balcony with a view to the ocean.

We went shopping for breakfast needs for the next morning and afterwards headed to eat in a local restaurant in this little Croatian town we stayed close to. It was full of people who thought I was crazy going all around with our GoPro. The dinner got a little expensive and the meals were huge so we felt the need to try and eat as much as possible. And afterwards we just rolled back to the car. I personally wanted to go sleep next to my belly but we decided to make a little loop through the beach. We planed to go swimming but didn't see that much of what kind of animals were waiting to drown us or poke our little footsies so we just stayed on the beach side and tried to learn to use the night picture mode in the GoPro. We ended up driving around and taking pretty cool pics of the stars.

The next morning my alarm reminded me about the late night star photo shoot session and waking up was a slow process. On the other hand Arno - the early bird who doesn't even consume coffee in the mornings - jumped into a shower and went to the nearby bakery to get some fresh bread as I took my time setting up the table and trying to wake up from death. My job was also trying to quickly freeze the yogurts and ham we had bought the night before and forgot in the car for the night. Luckily they were still edible and we enjoyed them as we sat down on our balcony, smelling the ocean breaths and scooping Nutella on our bananas.

We checked out and decided to go for that swim we had been dreaming about. So we drove down to the beach and walked into the water that was sooo freezing cold that we couldn't go any further than knee deep. Also the rocky bottom took me with my barefoot back to the beach side pretty quick. I didn't even get my bikini wet, what a bummer.. But we had fun learning to skim with the round rocks. Arno got like 6 or 7 as I made 4 or 5.

We changed and started to head towards Pula - a big city close to us. We parked to a public park and payed almost nothing for it. Made our way to the old city by foot and stopped to a fish market just for a look around. It was nice and colorful, cute little roads but so so many tourists. I - as a person who normally doesn't really eat sugar - bought few pick-and-mix candies from this cute little shop. We headed down towards an old amphitheater and after checking it out just sat ourselves to a cafeteria next to it. I finally got my coffee and Arno just hydrated himself with water while the packs of tourists were buzzing around us taking pics. Luckily it is not the high season yet so they were gone pretty quick and we got to sit down in piece and quiet.

But we were getting pretty hungry so we headed to this little bakery by the ocean side that I had seen when we passed it on our way down to the theater. It was super local and cheap so I payed under 2€ for my fresh tuna salad and a little croissant. Arno got a filled bread thingy and a chocolate croissant. We took our lunch to go and walked to the harbor. Smiling to the guards we walked to the pier that was actually mainly for the sailing club. There we laid ourselves down under the sun, in between all the sailboats and seamen. Swinging our feet over the edge we ate our breakfast and watched as the fishes swam around and boats arrived and departed. It was nice and quiet, away from the noise of the city and all the tourist.

We headed back to the car and started driving towards a little city closer to the boarder. Arno had found it from the map but I was a little skeptical, "yeah maybe we can stop for ice creams or so". But as we had parked our car and bought the most chocolaty croissant I've seen in my whole life (and completely messed up our faces and all camera gear) we walked down to the old city. And I was sold. It was beautiful! Birds, people, ships, boats, a submarine, little alleys, colorful houses, hills up and down, a church on the top and blue ocean views around it. I was going crazy taking like a thousand pics as we walked around. There was this sweet handicapped man that melted Arno's heart with his stunning paintings. We had to buy one about the city for a memory, totally topped any other Croatian souvenir.

So we walked around the city/town. It was so cute and little with barely any tourist, finally the peace we were longing for. And when we had walked for few hours and got hungry we eventually settled for this nice restaurant by the ocean. I ordered a frutti di mare risotto and Arno had a frutti di mare pizza. Both were so delicious. We enjoyed the ocean breeze and googled to find a place to sleep since the clock was already 8 pm. And found one. Beach bungalows close to the boarder of Croatia. So we reserved that and started driving towards. Stopped to a supermarket where we bought some breakfast and my tummy told me that I just enjoyed the last risotto on this trip.. We got rid of the rest of our Croatian money and headed to the hotel, tired but happy.

Croatia is a lovely country in which you will definitely fall in love with. We do recommend you to rather visit the small towns by the coast instead of the bigger touristy ones (eg. Pula & Dubrovnik), since they do have a lot more to offer and will give you more peace of mind with less tourists running around. July and August are absolutely the worst months to go there so try to avoid it.

Hugs,
Linnea