the world as i know it.

Croatia is by the far my favorite place I have ever been in my entire life. Like even better than Disneyland…and anyone that knows me knows how I feel about the happiest place on Earth. Disney may want to rethink their slogan because I think Dubrovnik may take the cake. It’s so weird that this is my favorite part so far (and I think will be of the entire trip because it’s going to be awfully hard to top) because going into this whole thing I did not know one single thing about Croatia…I had hardly even heard of it. It has the perfect balance of beauty and history all in one. Everything was amazing…the buildings, the nightlife, the food, the beaches, the stray alien cats, the iced coffee in juice boxes…everything. First of all, it’s a walled city. I had never heard of such a thing in my life. The entire city is surrounded by these huge walls (that you can walk on) that used to be used as a fortress. Inside is the old city and right outside are all the beaches and clubs. And the inside and outside are connected by drawbridges, which are SO COOL. (or maybe I’m just weird). The town was just so little and old and had such a safe feeling and so many different restaurants and things to do and I’m definitely buying a summer home there at some point in life. The people there speak Croatian (and really good English, too), which is the gnarliest language I have ever heard/seen. I’m not sure why/how to pronounce the sound “Sv” or “Hv” or “Bv” but they really like putting V’s after consonants making it totally impossible for foreigners to attempt any of their words. The Croats are pretty intense too…we learned this reaaal quick as soon as we had to ride the public bus. What…an experience.

The first day we got there we rented a really cute villa (because that’s the thing to do there..apparently hotels are not that cool) in the center of the old city right where all the action is. It was right above one of the main Italian restaurants so it always smelled amazing too. Croatia doesn’t really have it’s own kind of food or culture really so they just rip off Italy and Mexico mostly. All the restaurants are Italian…and the pizza was better than any of the pizza I had in Italy which is kind of a slap in the face for them…and an odd version of Mexican food, but I’ve been so deprived of my mexi culture that I didn’t really care what it was that I was eating as long as a tortilla was involved. We spent pretty much all day everyday at EastWest beach club just laying out, snorkeling, kayaking, etc. It was a pebble beach, which is still new to me and pretty much killed my feet the whole time but I toughed it out. We found this really cool café called Buza, which is literally a hole in the wall. There’s no signs for it..you just walk along the inside of the walls until you see a hole and then you go through it and it’s this amaaaazing cliffside bar/café that all the locals congregate at and cliffjump. We took it back to high school and had some Breezers and then cliffjumped of course. 40 feet is way higher than it looks. That is all I have to say. The only bummer is we didn’t get any of it on camera :( I guess we’ll just have to do it again in Greece. I think part of the reason I liked Croatia so much is because it was actually like a relaxing vacation. In Italy and Spain we just spent all day running around and seeing museums and landmarks and stuff that we were just exhausted all the time so Croatia was a good recovery time. That night we went to Latino Club Fuego, which was interesting to say the least. We randomly met a group of Irish schoolteachers there on “holiday” and they wanted to adopt me into their family I think.

Every day sounds pretty much exactly like the first one except we ate Cantina Mexicana one night for dinner…and then had ANOTHER dinner at Taj Mahal, this really neat restaurant that served Serbian food (the only thing we ate that wasn’t Mexican or Italian) because we just really love food..lots of meat to say the least. Ehhh. It was really fun to just walk around the town and explore all the little hidden gems among the alleys. It’s so safe that I spent a lot of time just walking around by myself. It was great.

The next day we went boating! Or I guess you could call it a booze cruise, but it was much classier than that. It took us to three islands, Cavtat, Lokrum, and one other that I don’t think I ever heard the name of. The first two we stayed at for just like 45 minutes and then they served us a meal that was delishhh. I don’t know what the deal is with Europe and serving seafood that is still fully intact, eyes and all. It really scares me when my food is staring back at me. Not a fan..so I got chicken. They also forced us all to try their brandy that they’re famous for. I have no idea why they are famous for this because it was the most terrible tasting thing I’ve ever had in my entire life. I gag at the thought of it. I think it was called rakija or something? It had herbs in it and it was just awful. Thennn we jumped off the top of the boat. The third island was my favorite. It was the liveliest. We went to a little shack that was a beach bar for a little while and the bartenders were 16 years old and had braces. That is still so weird to me and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept that, BUT most importantly..they made the BEST mojito I have ever had in my entire life. It was just so perfect and fresh and I would take them home with me just so they could make me mojitos forever. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have a mojito again because nothing will ever be as good as that. When we got back to Dubrovnik that night it was the kickoff of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, which is Croatia’s biggest event of the year. It’s just a 2 week long music festival that everyone in the entire city goes to every night and it was actually really, really awesome. They started it with a fireworks show…which was kind of nice because we didn’t get to see any on 4th of July, but it wasn’t really anything compared to Disneyland fireworks haha. And then we heard some music and ate spaghetti (the place said it was the best..it wasn’t) and went back to EastWest because it’s a beach club by day and a nightclub/lounge by night but we didn’t last very long because we were super tired.

The last day (saddest day of my life), Lo and I got up early and walked the walls. It was such a workout! Sooooo many stairs. But so worth it. You could see panoramic views of the whole city and ocean and it just made me fall in love with the city all over again. Then we walked down Stradun (the main street of the town) and got some cute little touristy stuff before going back to the ship and crying all the way there. Just kidding. I decided I’m collecting jewelry from every port so I got a really cool black leather and Swarovski crystal bracelet and turquoise earrings. They’re prettttyy.

Right now we’re en route to Greece! I’m sure it will be amazing, but it will be veryyy difficult to top Croatia. We will seeee. I’m drinking my last iced coffee in a juice box from Dubrovnik…I’m going to miss those so much. So good.

xox