C-R-O-A-T-I-A : A poetic tribute

In the words of the ancient Greeks, 'poetry is the unwritten language of nature'. Or maybe that was Samuel L Jackson that said that? Regardless of who said what, Croatia is a beautiful place that deserves an even more beautiful poem.  I entitle this one, C-R-O-A-T-I-A

Catastrophically cannonballistic crouton-like food

Really really ridiculously good looking land

Odor

Adriatic Sea

Tourist trap

Insatiable history

All-in-all a Must See!!!!!

K, like all poetry, there is a reason these words were chosen specifically for this exact poem. Please, allow me to expound. Also, I'm going to go out of order here so the poem might end up more like TIAROCA (which they should highly consider adopting as their new country name)

Tourist trap - our very first impression of Croatia was Not a good one. We flew into Dubrovnik (southern Croatia) from Barcelona and took a shuttle from the airport in to Old Town Dubrovnik.  Old Town Dubrovnik is the #1 hit in this area according to scholars but apparently everyone from every country has heard that as well. We stepped off the shuttle bus to be greeted by 5 filled buses unloading tourists from cruise ships and groups of every ethnicity with a tour guide. It was almost impossible to maneuver to the castle wall entrance and once there we gazed upon a sea of tourists. We talked to an info desk who said weekends were the worst (it was a Sunday and 5 cruise ships were docked around this small city) so we decided to call it a day and head to our sobe (contrary to what we know in the states, sobes are rooms Croatians rent out of their houses to tourists). We had a beautiful view of the water from our room. The lady who was hosting us was very energetic and very talkative in her broken English and was a great critic on how Wendy was looking each day. The next morning we woke up and got ready and as we were leaving we saw our host and she said to Wendy, 'Wow! You look gorgeous today! Yesterday you didn't look like this at all!' haha it was still a compliment though, or maybe she was hitting on Wendy? Either way we stayed there for two nights and ended up really liking Dubrovnik. The next day was not Nearly as crowded in the castle walls of Dubrovnik and we were able to explore all the beautiful parts of this city. Most of the houses in Croatia have these cool red tiled roofs (most with newer roofing, more to come on that) and it really makes the cities look that much more unique and pretty (as was the case in dubrovnik). 

As the sun was setting we hiked up to the top of the city walls and watched as the sun cast its gold rays on the city below and slowly the city of Dubrovnik lit up with nightlife and lights within the castle walls.  

It was really awesome to see and we were the only people left up there at the end which made it even more magical!!!

Cool view of the castle

Insatiable history  - Alright I already kind of foreshadowed above that I was going to talk about the newer red roofs so here goes the history lesson.  Croatia was a part of Yugoslavia (Yugoslavia was formed after WWI and consisted of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, and a couple other smaller countries) and in the 1990's some of these areas wanted their independence back.  So a war broke out with many different sides fighting against multiple enemies (however, mostly Serbia due to their support of Yugoslavia vs everyone else).  After a couple years of a bloody war, the outcome resulted in most of these countries regaining their independence.  From this war, Dubrovnik was surprise attacked and shelled with many bombs that blew up a lot of homes within the old town castle walls (hence the newer red roof tops).  But the cool thing about Dubrovnik is that they have had a passion for fighting for independence and to be a republic for the last 600 years!  Also, apparently they were the very first place to recognize the US as a country way back in our independence days! Cool stuff huh! Very insatiable indeed!!

Adriatic Sea - Breath-taking? Majestic? Mythological? Mariah Carey? All of these words or at least some might come to mind when you hear about the Adriatic Sea, but can you blame them once you've already seen this magically splendid display of water? I mean come on, look how blue this water is!!

It's mind blowingly blue to even the smallest admirers of blue water! Also, we are in this picture for dramatic effect! This stretch of water along the coast of Croatia is seriously some of the most beautiful scenery out there. We rented a car to drive from Dubrovnik to Split (and side trip to Bosnia (next post)) and as we drove up the coast on this beautiful coastal highway it felt like we were in another world, like a mix of Hawaii meets Fiji islands meets glacier blue water meets boy meets world. I couldn't take my eyes off the view which led to some dangerous driving:/ But we made it and loved every single bite of the Adriatic Sea!

Really really ridiculously good-looking land! - Croatia definitely has a Lot going for it in terms of natural beauty. Beautiful cities, beautiful islands, and beautiful national parks make this place...very beautiful!! Two special notes in particular- Hvar and my favorite place...Plitvice Lakes.  Quick talk on Hvar. It is an island just south of Split, we took a ferry to it from Split and spent a day there.  The water is literally see through and so pretty! We just hung out on the island on the "beach". The beach there is just island formed rock (no sand:(, but you can lay out on the sun chairs they so conviently provide you with) which is exactly what we did all day:) 

Now on to bigger fish. Plitvice Lakes. Wow. Seriously that's all you can really say after experiencing it. The following pictures will help you to understand. 

Fern Gully?

We heard from a nice kid from Denver at our hostel in split that the weather was gonna get bad soon so we quickly made a run for Plitvice Lakes early the next morning before it got bad. We got there around noon, dropped our bags off and went exploring in this incredible national park on a beautiful sunny afternoon. We were able to get through the upper lakes (hike C and H if you're familiar with it). 

The entire hike had our jaws dropping with amazement at what a wonderland plitvice is. We got so lucky too cause it's fall time and the leaves are just starting to change colors which added that much more unrealness to an already unreal park. 

By the end of the day we made it to the sobe we were staying the night at and although we both were soo stoked with what we had just seen, we didn't see the view that you think is straight out of a fairy-tale book that's advertised on all their magazines and pamphlets. So we knew we had a lot of work to do the next morning. We researched online how to find that view and got up really early to find it. The lower lakes at plitvice were just as amazing (if not even moreso!, they definitely had the best viewpoints).  We hiked on a trail along the upper ridge and near the biggest waterfall we finally found what we had been looking for! It was very tricky to find (and took a little bit of off-trailing) but we found our view and were so stoked about it!! 

So amazing!!!!!

Enjoying the view?

After that, we quickly headed back and made it to our bus to leave just as it started to rain! We even beat the weather, boo yeah!!

Now That's some really really ridiculously good-looking land:)

Odor - If you're still reading at this point you might be asking yourself, what does he mean by odor? If you haven't asked yourself that, then please do right now. Odor. Googles dictionary defines odor as 'a distinctive smell esp an unpleasant one'. Although we only have a few shirts to change in to and a handful of underwear (literally), we were still able to maintain a low profile body odor due to the cooler temperatures when we arrived and we reused many of the same clothes for the majority of our stay (try not to notice that I'm wearing the same thing 3 days in a row, it's all an optical illusion (premium feature on our canon camera!))

Catistrophically cannonballistic crouton-like food - Croatia has many many strengths in it's favor, but good food is not one of them. Bland, even inedible, were the choices for cuisine during our stay. After a few strike outs we stuck strictly to a diet of bread, Nutella, and these peanut chips called flips. And we never looked back.

We literally lived off of grocery store snacks for the full week in Croatia

All-in-all a Must See! - Let's weigh the pros and cons. Cons- bad food and Croatians aren't super friendly. Pros- Sights like you've never seen, Bluest of all blue water, Cities that are unique and uncomparable to anything else and a National park that makes fairly tale lands look like they are real. Furthermore and in conclusion, Croatia is a MUST SEE attraction and you will Not be disappointed if you should ever decide to visit. We loved it!!!!