Goodbye Croatia

Ok, so my last blog ended by arriving in Dubrovnik. Well, because I was a little over excited about Dubrovnik, I began my Europe blogging with Dubrovnik. Soooo…scroll way down to the bottom of my blog to see how great Dubrovnik really was. My Dubrovnik blog ended with “We clubbed it up, Croatian-style in Dubrovnik and capped off, what was my favorite stop on our trip.” So let’s pick up there…

2:31am – Cotter and Yours Truly on the dance floor with by Ash and Ola – our two Polish friends we had met earlier – ok, rewind about 2 1/2 hours.

12:13am – “Do you have a light?”

The three of us looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, “sorry”, we said. As Ola leaned over to light Ash’s cigarette, Benny piped up, “Hey, they had a light, why did they ask us?” Cotter, myself, Ola and Ash all fixed our eyes on Benny. Nobody said a word. Cotter and I made eye contact, we gave each other that half-head-turn-eyes raised-partial smirk “idiot” look. Despite Benny’s calling them out on trying to flirt with us, they were cool about it. Definitely one of the classic moments on our trip.

Ok, so 2:31 – back to the dance floor. “Cotter!” I yelled over the thumping remixes of 90’s rock. “Dude, we gotta roll” We did the old back-away, point to the watch, give the painful “we gotta go” look to the girls…they kissed us on the cheek. “Dude!” I yelled again. “Where’s Benny?”

We combed the club in search of our Benny. Fortunately we happened to run into him near the door. The boys didn’t want to leave…but I knew that we needed to have the car back to Split by noon the next day, and I knew I’d be driving and we figured we could seep until about 5:45…you don’t have to be a mathematician to realize that the next day was going to be brutal.

5:45am – back to the same old drill. Cotter and Benny take turns being passed out in the back and keeping me from being passed out in the front. We retraced our path back up the coastline – absolutely gorgeous coastline. It was Saturday so the beaches were packed. We gawked at the glorious islands in the distance and whipped around mountain switchbacks. For me in the Peugeot, the mountain driving was bliss. For Benny the equation was as follows: too much Ozujsko (Aaaz-Jew-Sko) + 3 hours of sleep + back seat of car + morning sun + mountain switchbacks + my driving = Puke.

Not a great day for Benny.

After about 5 hours in the car, we rolled up to the airport in Split. We returned our car to Eurocar and hopped on a bus headed for the port of Split. Getting off the bus, we were greeted by mobs of people hoping to rent us a Sobe for the night. We turned down about 15 people and headed over to get our ferry tickets.

For 54 Euros, we got our tickets the Italy. We would board the ferry at 8pm, it would push off at 9pm and it would arrive in Italy the next morning at 7am. Perfect. We covered our lodging for the night and our transportation back to Italy.

Having secured our tickets, we headed out to explore Split. My two Croatian advisors (Danny & Amy) had told me “Split is a hole” and “Split from Split”, respectively. However, as the largest coastal city and port in Croatia, we had to go to Split to 1) drop off the car, and 2) catch the ferry.

Being pretty tore up from the drive and from the night before, we wandered through the street vendors in the oppressive Split head looking for, well, I’m not sure what we were looking for. Cotter was looking for a Croatia soccer jersey which he ultimately decided that he would never actually wear…so he didn’t buy it. I was hot, sweating, tired and looking for nothing and Benny, well, he felt like crap.

We finally decided that we’d go find a place to get out of the sun, sip some espresso and just chill. We sat, read, sweated, read, sweated some more, talked about how hot it was, discussed finding a beach, sweated some more, realized there was no beach, talked about jumping in the water where the ships came in, actually went and looked at the water where the ships came, thought better about jumping in the water where the ships came in, continued to sweat.

At five o’clock, we were hungry again. We decided that we would try to spend all of our Kuna before we left Croatia, so we wandered down an alleyway, looked a few menus, and finally decided on a place. It was early, so we were the first at dinner. We looked at the menu and ordered the beef. Not really knowing what it was and, after the waiter walked away, I realized that he never asked me how I wanted it cooked. To my delight the “beef” turned out to be a filet and it was cooked, well, like a filet should be cooked – just enough not to keep you up at night (medium-rare with the emphasis on the “rare”).

The bill came and we added up all of our Kuna. Just short. We topped our bill off with a few Euros and a couple George Washingtons and we were on our way.

Traveling through security, we had our passports stamped and we boarded the ship. In contrast to our earlier speedier boat, this was a massive ship with lots of people. We pushed off at 9pm…played some cards, talked to our British friends for a while, had some wine that we picked up before boarding, and staked out our deck space where we’d sleep for the night.

Being exhausted from our ridiculous day, we put our ear plugs in and put our bags on the deck. If you’re looking for the antithesis of light pollution, the middle of the Adriatic Sea is it. We saw billions of stars. It was a scene, for me at least, rivaled only by laying in the meadow in the Yosemite Valley in the middle of the night. Truly inspiring. To top it off, the sweltering heat we’d endured that day subsided out at sea and we were treated with a cool night’s breeze. Sleeping, on the deck, at sea, with a cool breeze, under a sky full of stars, it was a blissful way to end our in the land of the Croats. Goodbye Croatia.