Day 8
Returned to Split. Once i was unpacked and sorted out, we headed down into Split and i got the guided tour off Dajna and her brother Demo (cant remember how 2 spell it, sorry mate!). He is a Klappa singer (local folk music...kinda like A'Cappella) so is a bit of a local celebrity, which meant to the tour took us practically all day because he seemed to know everyone so was stopped to shake hands and chat with what seemed like every person! Anyway the city of split is absolutely gorgeous and somewhere where everyone should visit, english is virtually spoken fluently by everyone so lack of language cant be an excuse for not coming along! I have plenty of pics of Split which will hopefully show the beauty of it but i will be uploading them later in the week. At night Demo took me along to watch Hadjuk Split V West Brom (friendly match) which was fun even though it ended up 0--0.
Days 5 - 7
All of the past few days have been spent on Brac. I have to admit i really love it here, the town we are staying in is called Supetar and is one of the most beatiful little towns i have ever seen. The locals are stupidly friendly, even when they are being over-run by tourists. We have spent most of the time sunbathing, swimming and generally relaxing as it now around 35-37c everyday so a bit too hot 2 do anything more gruelling. Unfortunatly though i forgot my camera so dont have any pictures of Brac!! Oh yeah, Mum, you are gonna be shocked by this, i have been eating lots of the local cuisine, which means lots of salad, lots of pastry things and lots of.....fish!!
Day 4
Woke up bright and early.....well 9:30! Packed a small getaway bag (supplied by Dajna's dad, thanks for that!) and headed for a long weekend on the Dalmation Island of Brac (pronounced Brach, apparently if u say Brac it means to get married so i steered well clear of that!). Dajna has a small house here so again no rent to pay! Unfortunatly this means though that i have 2 buy everything when we go out, whether it is food, a scooter (which we rented!) or the ferry tickets but i cant really complain as i do have free accomodation. Anyway today it started to get really hot, apparently it was about 31c today (not sure how much that is in fahrenhiet...i get confused on working it out) which is considered something near a tropical heatwave in UK. We headed down to the beach, which was stone but a kinda comfortable stone. The beach seemed quite busy but once the locals saw my pasty white body heading towards them they panicked a little bit and many people deserted the beach with 15mins (or it might have been because it was dinnertime and sensible people were heading for a bit of shade). The water was strangely warm and was amazingly clear! Spent most of the day at the beach, though we briefly chopped it up by returning to the house and cooling down for a while. At night we watched Shaun of the dead....and i attempted to drown myself in a pool of aftersun.
Day 3
Dajna had her last uni exam today at 8am (a sickening time to be awake never mind in a oral exam!), so i stayed in bed till she got back. She passed, so well done Dajna! Shortly afterwards we were packing up all our stuff and getting ready to move onto Split, which much to my surprise was a 5 hour coach ride away (and 7 hours by train!!). Knowing im not the best with coach travel i put on the travel sickness bands mum gave me (thanks mum!) and gritted my teeth and tried not 2 cry for the entire journey (i was brave and never shed a tear!). Anyway while staring at the countryside and passing small towns i realised some very interesting things about Croatia, firstly the north is hugely green with plenty of small towns out in the isolated wilderness while the south and Dalmation coast is more barren with hardly any greenery and all the towns hugging the coastline. There is actually one point where a strange transformation happens, you see miles and miles of forest all around you, you enter a tunnel that runs under a mountain, pop out the other side to see nothing but burnt grass, dry soil and the sea. Personally i liked the countryside of the north better because of the forestry but i quickly adapted to the dryness of the dalmation coast. Upon reaching Split i met Dajna's family and went back to their house. That night i had a quick look round the city at night with Dajna but she spent most of the time moaning about a new walkway which has been put in on the promenade which i thought looked good but she disagreed!
Day 2
After 10 hours sleep i was much refreshed and we went sight-seeing round Zagreb for the day. We took in countless Museums, art galleries and cafes (including the resturant owned and run by Zvonimor Boban!) during the day before going to a cafe at night. I think Zagreb is probably not an ideal tourist destination. The centre of the city is beautiful but this only really lasts for about a few miles square and the rest of the town is just a industrial city with plenty of stereotypical communist apartment bloc's. However i did find the people really really friendly, especially in Dajna's neighbourhood where everyone already knew who i was before i even arrived, apparently Dajna's flatmate had been gossiping about me to everyone.....disturbing! Anyway something i was really impressed with in Zagreb was the amount of VW Beetle's on the road, theres is hundreds of them all milling about in perfect condition! Dad if u have figured out how 2 use the internet and are reading this, if u fancy another Beetle Zagreb is the place to get one!
Day 1
I set off from home at around 5:30am feeling immensly grumpy and already suffering under the strain of my far far too heavy bag! Getting a lift to the train station i was to be honest, completely shitting myself! Anyway i saw off mum and dad and all the hugs and kisses and everything and got on. The train ride down to London was fairly quiet and i arrived at 9:15.....yes thats right rush hour!! In London i learnt the first lesson of my trip, do not EVER lean backwards when wearing a very heavy bag on a esculator! I navigated the London underground and the regional trains alright and ended up at the shining metropolis that is Luton and its really crap airport (its kinda like Liverpool airport but with 100 times less to do). Checked in with Wizz Air (who i thought were excellent by the way, a lot better than EasyJet or any of the other discount groups) and had a lovely plane ride (i was asleep for 4/5 of it) and landed into the bright sunshine of Zagreb. After recovering my bags and getting the airport - zagreb bus i met Dajna and collapsed into her apartment knackered. Luckily at this point, the british weather seemed to follow me and it clouded over. Went out for some Tea (or dinner, whatever u call it) and then went to the apartment for some lovely well deserved sleep.
41 °C
I also took a daytrip with Dajna to the town of Mostar in Bosnia (famous for a bridge linking up the muslim and christian side of the town, which was destroyed in the civil war but has been rebuilt) which was great. I have been cycling for a day also, which was good fun but i lost about 1/4 of my body weight in sweat!