The last 10 days in Croatia

OK, so we're really behind on these posts. We're leaving Croatia for Slovenia tomorrow and are only now updating you... we've been busy, you know, seeing stuff...

We first arrived in Dubrovnik, which is a coastal city in the far south of Croatia. It's famous for its old town, which sits on the water and all of the rooftops are covered with red-stone tiles. We were hoping that it wouldn't be a let down, just because of all the other old towns that we have visited by this point, but it was not. We spent about 4 or 5 hours walking around the old town, and had our daily ice cream of course. There was a nice church to check out there, and while we were sitting inside an old woman approached us to beg for change. As she was walking away from us, she farted. It was a beautiful moment.

We rented a car there and drove up the coast, first to have some seafood for lunch in a town called Mali Ston (the area is known for its oysters and mussels, we had both). From there we drove out onto the Peljesac Peninsula and found a place to camp almost at the end of it, at an abandoned church. Sorry if that offends anyone, but it really was a great place to camp. Churches always get the best viewpoints, and there wasn't much flat ground around there, so God left us no choice. Besides it was probably one of the best sunsets I've ever seen. It was so pink/orange and we could see it sink into the sea in between the peninsula and an island right across from us. It was beautiful. After that we continued driving up the coast to an area called the Makarska Riviera, for some more beach time. We stayed in the main town called Makarska, and our balcony had a nice view of the beach and the sunset. We spent one day lying around the beach in Makarska and the next day in the town north of there called Brela. Most of the beaches here are pebble and not sand, which didn't sound great at first, but it has its benefits. Like there's no sand to stick to everything. I can't think of another one, but that's a big one for me. The water here is also really clear, we're constantly stopping to looking into the sea in amazement of it.

Once beach time was over, we drove to Split, but only spent a few hours there. There wasn't much to see, just Diocletian's palace. We drove out of town and camped in a quiet bay on the water. it was of course, a really cool place to be camping.

Our next day was spent at Krka National Park, which despite its name wasn't as much like a national park as we had hoped. The main thing to see there are these really beautiful waterfalls, which are formed by plants growing on top of other plants that have grown out of the limestone base. This set of falls comes down in 17 steps. However, we didn't realize but the day we were there was labour day in Croatia, so the park was rammed! Besides the fact that you could drive your car or scooter almost all the way up to the falls, there were people everywhere. It ruined it for us. We left the park in the late afternoon and drove further north to Pag Island (there was a bridge).

You aren't going to like the sound of this, but we felt we needed another day of some lying around in the sun. The island has a pretty limited amount of vegetation and is mostly rocky. For this reason, a kind of sheep's cheese is very famous from here. The only food for the sheep is salty weeds, which gives the cheese a pretty distinct flavour. We bought a little piece from a house off the main road. It was pretty good.. I don't know though. I like cheese, but I'm no Dutchman.

After Pag we drove over the coastal mountains to the east. We actually camped out that night at a site in the mountains, so it was a little colder. The next day we went to Plitvice National Park. It's basically a lakes park, but because it's in the mountains, there are many waterfalls. Furthermore because the same thing happens as does in Krka, the entire park is covered with waterfalls of all shapes and sizes. You walk around on these wood bridges while the water rushes down underneath and all around you into small lakes and ponds. The water is also really clear and blue, with an abundance of fish, since its illegal to fish. I know I've said this a few times before, but this probably was the most beautiful place I've ever been. We were taking pictures almost the whole time, because everything just gave you that feeling where you had to have a picture.

Last night we arrived in the capital, Zagreb, which is nice. The architecture is very similar to the other major cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so its nothing new, and we will get a much better version of it while we're in Budapest. It's also raining a lot right now, which is kind of annoying (and making us think of going to the beach again!)