It’s Sunday 3rd August
2014 when we left the spa Šmarejške Toplice, Slovenia, in order to head to Croatia.
Since we left Italy, on 29th July, we had driven for almost 800 kilometres. Because
we had had the brilliant and perhaps crazy idea of travelling by car without
booking almost anything.
Want you discover something
more about our adventures/misadventures? Then continue reading…
It’s 12.45 am when we
crossed the Croatian border: Welcome to Hrvatska! The kilometres are 841 now,
but we want to get to Dubrovnik, in the south of Croatia.
At about 3.30 pm we passed
through Sveti Rok: a tunnel 5681 km-long!
We exchanged some euros at
the motorway’s exit (it is the fastest and cheapest way of getting some kunas,
the Croatian coin) and we headed to Murter island. Of course we found the
draw-bridge up, but with a little patience we waited for a moment and then left
again.
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| Our tent from the inside |
We found a camping in Tisno:
the Dalmacija Camping. We rent a pitch. And now let’s assemble this tent…it was
the first time for us as campers! But we got quite easily to our goal, also
thanks to a family from Toscolano Maderno who lent us an hand-pump to blow up
our Decathlon’s mattress.
In the evening we came back
to Murter again, that’s a lovely island and we decided to stay there for
dinner: we ate some fish and ćevapčići, typical Croatian meatball… a bit spicy,
but very good!
We came back to the camping
and we had a good sleep in our tent, but on 4th August we had to
leave again, in fact we wanted to get to
the south of Croatia and, in particular, to visit Dubrovnik.
The kilometres were 1400
when we reached the Bosnian border, but only 9 kilometres after we were at the
Croatian border again!
We arrived in Mlini, a
little village near to Dubrovnick and advised by our guide as a seaside resort.
But we really didn’t appreciate it: it was full of people (we know, it was
August and we should have foreseen it…), it is placed on a sort of little hill,
so not very close to the sea, and there’s almost no parking to leave our car
in.
Hopeless, after 2 hours and
an half we arrived by chance in Slano where we met another Italian couple. With
their help we found a room with a kitchen in common for the next few days at
“Tia Maria”.
A man named Baldo welcomed
us: he didn’t speak a word neither of Italian or English.
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| Room with a view in Slano |
On Tuesday 5th we spent the
entire day visiting the town’s beaches, whereas in the evening we decided to
visit Dubrovnik. We discovered that the only car park available costs 5 Euros
an hour and yes, you have to pay it at any hour, round the clock.
That evening we also found
the walls closed: the last visitors can enter at 19 or 19.30 according to the
season. We came back to our car a bit sad, but at least we had paid the park
for only an hour. But we hadn’t given up!
The following day we spent
our morning at the seaside, but at 3.30 pm we decided to take a bus to
Dubrovnik. We arrived at the walls at 4.15 where we paid the 10 kunas ticket
(they refused to give us the students discount even though we had our
university card with us). It was very hot that afternoon.
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| The view from Dubrovink walls |
The walk is sometimes hard,
but the walls with the red-roofed houses and the sea in the distance offer a
view of a particular charm. We bought some souvenirs, and came back to the bus
station on foot: it took almost an hour!
We were dead tired when we
arrived in Slano and we ate an ice-cream for dinner.
On Thursday 7th we decided
to leave again in order to find a better place to stay in: our idea, at the
beginning, was to find an apartment where we could cook by ourselves, but we
hadn’t expect to have to deal with so many Italian, German, French tourists
(and a number of other nationalities tourists) who pack the entire Croatia in
August.
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| Primosten |
We had driven for 1805
kilometres when we decided to stop in Omis to take a quick bath and then we started again to look for an apartment.
It’s 8 pm when we finally
found a room with kitchen in common in Primosten, but unfortunately we could stop there only
for a night since the room was booked for the following days. Everybody is kind
so, if you’re planning to visit Primosten look for Villa Rudi!
For dinner, we cooked a
carbonara we had dreamt of for days, we went to bed and the following mornig we
left again.
On Friday we were desperate
like never before! But at 3 pm we finally found an apartment (for 4 people) in
Tribunj for 50 € a night (it was the lowest price found till that moment), the
place looked pretty, so we decides to stay there. We immediately went to the
jetty to take a bath, that’s full of teenagers diving!
On Saturday we visited the
beach in a Murter, but it was so packed with people that we had to sit on the
rocks, but it didn’t matter, we had bought the right footwear at a Decathlon
shop before leaving. The sea here is amazing!
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| Murter's sea |
In the evening we went to
Zadar where we saw its little church, the seafront and, above all, the sea
organ!
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| Zadar by night |
On Sunday we turned up at
Srima’s beach: even here the car park has a fee! Well, we paid almost every car
park near the beaches in our holiday…
It’s 10th August, the night
of fallen stars known as San Lorenzo, but there’s the “supermoon” in the sky
that is so bright we couldn’t see any star.
The following day we got up
early and we had a sort of brunch with a typical Croatian cake, full of cream
and who knows what else…very tasty! Then we had a swim in a near beach, named
Souja, this is the last bath of our journey…
In the evening we packed our
bags because the following day, Wednesday 12th, we planned to leave early in the
morning to visit the Plitvice Lakes National Park.
It’s 6.30 am and the
kilometers are 2335 when we left. We arrived at 8.40 am and we finished our
tour at 4 pm! Quite a long tour…When we started the weather was unstable, but
after a while a shining sun appeared.
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| A view of Plitvice |
We rent a rowboat to explore
one of the lakes on our own and we restarted walking we met a lovely Australian
couple who told us about the long series of journeys they had taken, we’d like
to follow their example one day…
The lakes are the best
“surprise” of our journey to Croatia. With our students discount we paid 220
kunas, i.e. about 28 € for two people: the ticket lets you take a tour on foot
of the entire park and even to take the bus and the ferryboat, but in August
you’ll find endless rows.
The lakes and the
surrounding nature is flawless and breathtaking, that’s only a pity that you
can’t take a bath in that fantastic and transparent water. The park is enormous
and you can choose among different itineraries, from the hardest to the
easiest, but if you’d like to visit all the lakes like we did take into account
that it would take almost half a day.
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| Walk, walk, walk! |
Once we had finished our
tour we head to the room we had booked from Booking.con the previous day: the
boarding house is named Rooms Marija, it is set in Korenica and its owners
(Brajko and his with) are the kindest and nicest people we’d met during our
holiday in Croatia. Following their advice we had dinner in a near restaurant
were the typical “porchetta” (spit-roasted pork) was served. We ate porchetta
and fries, we drank water and beer and finally we took the dessert: marmalade
and chocolate crêpes (similar to Giuseppina’s palacinke). We spent 146 kunas,
less than 20 euros.
On Wednesday morning we
talked for a moment with the Croatian family using Google Translate to
communicate because they don’t speak neither Italian or English.
The last stop of the journey
is Rastoke, a small watermill village sprinkled with a number of waterfalls,
extactely like Plitvice.
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| Rastoke |
It’s 3.20 pm when we arrived
at the Slovenian border, we had driven for 2711 kilometres. We had planned to
visit Bled then, but if you should know it you’ve read our post about Slovenia.
We only tell you that, once
back home, we discovered that we had driven for 3386 kilometres in the whole
journey….Yeeeeeey!
And these are our favorite
places of the journey:
Have you ever visited them?
Do you agree with us? Let us know!
Ale and Jessy
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