Split, Croatia

September 29 – October 1

We arrived in Split, Croatia on Friday morning, September 29th, and we immediately went to get breakfast at this cute little diner that had agreed to host breakfast for us all weekend. It was the first time I had been offered eggs for breakfast since I had been in Europe. Normally breakfast consists of pastries, deli meats and lots of bread, which is not necessarily food I want to fill my body with as soon as I wake up so I was happy to see some vegetables and eggs. Afterwards, we all made our way to our apartments. I loved the sleeping arrangements here because there were 3-4 people assigned to each apartment rather than 6 people assigned to one hostel room. It made the experience more homey and the apartments were very close to the downtown area of Split. We only had about an hour at our apartment before we needed to meet up for a city tour so we washed up and rested quickly then made our way downtown to the meeting point. Honestly, the tour was pretty boring and I just kept thinking about laying on the beach the whole time so when it was finally done I couldn’t wait to make our way to the water.

Haley, Steph, Rhonna, Maddie, Rosa and I all ventured out to try to find a beach nearby and when we got there we just relaxed and I even fell asleep in the sun until 4:30pm. As it got closer to 5pm we started to pack up and head back to our room so that we could get ready for the night. Last minute we decided that we were going to the bar crawl that was offered so we got ready, went out to dinner at this very pleasant place where I got a tuna dinner and then we headed out to meet up with the bar crawl group.

The first place they brought us to was kind of an odd bar and you were required to pay a flat entrance fee then you could drink as much as you wanted inside. When we got there 100% sober it was honestly pretty awkward and we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. We decided to just start drinking and trying to be social which resulted in us playing all kinds of drinking games and it was actually a fun time. Around midnight though we decided to head home and not go to another bar because we had to get up early in the morning for a day long booze cruise.

The booze cruise was SO fun!!! We first stopped in the middle of the water where it was super clear blue/green and we all swam in it. It was pretty warm but the saltiest water ever. After our bodies dried from being in the water you could see the salt residue on our skin. In addition to that, we stopped at three small islands throughout the cruise but I am not sure what their names are. At one of the islands we had lunch prepared for us and I happened to order the fish which was served as a whole fish. I had to filet it myself and people had told me not to order it because it’s freaky to see the eyes and mouth but I really didn’t mind. I like to just embrace the culture that I’m in and go with it. The fish was also bomb so I’d make the sacrifice of cutting the eyes out myself again. After lunch everyone was exhausted from the sun and from being in a food coma so we spent an extra hour on this island which had lounge chairs near the water so we could all relax for a bit. Afterwards, we spent about another hour and a half on the water and then stopped at the last island, which was also my favorite of the three. It was the biggest and it had reclining chairs and bars right on the water. Maddie, Christina (a girl we met on the boat), Amber (our tour guide) and I got a table outside of one bar and had a few casual cocktails while we just relaxed and talked to each other. I liked the fact that my tour group was small and it consisted of all girls because I felt like it was more laid back and we could all be ourselves and get to know each other. We did have one tour guide that was a guy (Gavin), but thankfully he was so chill and didn’t mind being the only guy. He had his go pro and Amber had her nice camera so we got a lot of good shots and footage from this trip. After we left this island around 6pm we headed back to the mainland and made our way to our apartments.

All of us showered up and got ready to go out to dinner. Haley, Steph, Maddie, Rhonna and I chose a restaurant right on the boardwalk which was fabulous! I ordered a margarita because I had not had on in a while but it came out not on the rocks and it was in a small martini glass so that was a bummer. My salmon that I ordered on the other had was amazing. I wanted it to last forever and I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant but I can’t. Oh, also I forgot to mention that Croatia does not use euros but they use kunas. One euro is about seven kunas which made everything confusing. The 5 of us together racked up a dinner bill of 803 kunas which we really had no idea what that meant so it took us a few minutes to try to figure out how much we actually spent but it just kept getting more and more confusing so we basically threw our money down and didn’t care at that point. I mean…. we are on vacation, right? We have to go all in. After dinner we were all exhausted from the booze cruise so we just went back to our apartments and went to bed early because we had to wake up early the next morning to go to the Krka waterfalls. I think the best part about the Krka waterfalls was the park itself. You had to walk for awhile through the park to actually get to the waterfalls. I have seen better waterfalls in my life but the park itself was huge and so pretty. You were able to go swimming in the water near the waterfalls but it wasn’t too warm when we got there and the water was very cold so I decided to opt out of that option. Instead, my friends and I just explored the park and relaxed on some benches until it was time to go. We got back on the bus after about two hours and were on our way back to Florence.