mEMYries: Croatia - Aug 5th - 16th (and Bosnia for 30 mins)

To my faithful readers I'm very sorry I'm so far behind. I have a lot of excuses but I'll just get on to my travels...

After Cologne and saying goodbye to Alyssa I headed to a friend's place (he's stationed in Germany) to drop off as much as I could so my suitcase would be lighter and we hopped on a plane to Croatia! Now, Croatia is not a country I would have ever thought to visit and if you also have thought the same thing I highly suggest you add that country to your bucket list and preferably somewhere near the top. It has everything! Beautiful beaches, good food, great scenery, old shit, tons to do, and really amazing iced coffee! I hope I've persuaded you to go and if I haven't that's fine cause that's several less tourists to deal with the next time I go to Croatia. Now I must warn you... Croatia is seriously hotttttt, ok you've been warned. We were there for 11 days or so and met up with some of Chris' friends for a few days of it. Since it was a decently long trip and I'm so far behind on this blog I'll just give you the highlights....

We flew into Zadar and went to Split the following day for two nights. If you are using this blog for travel advice, there are better places to go and you can skip these cities. After Split we took a short ferry ride to Hvar where we met up with Chris' coworkers. Hvar is an island just off the coast of the mainland and it's gorgeous! We stayed in a small apartment up on a hill that was not fun to walk to with our luggage but we managed. While on Havar we spent one day at a beautiful beach...

Went to a Croatian winery...

Explored an abandoned village...

Hired a boat for the five of us for a day and toured around the island and saw a few other spots including the blue cave (I did not do a thing to the photos, there is no filter and I did not edit them in anyway), green cave (we jumped off of it), and stopped on another beautiful beach....

Saw some beautiful sunsets....

And I went scuba diving! Chris and another guy we were with is certified but the rest of us had never gone so we did a discovery dive and I loved it! OK, I freaked out a bit at first about the breathing under water thing but the instructor was so amazing and calming and once I was down I was fine. We didn't do or see a whole lot because it was more about the newbies getting the experience and now I think I'm going to have to get certified. There are underwater pictures and I will put them on here when I get some.

View from our room

We left Chris' coworkers in Hvar and took a bus to Dubrovnik. We stayed in a beautiful little place right next to the old town. Dubrovnik has old and modern parts of the city. The old part has a wall around it and is filled with little cobblestone walkways (no driving in there). Dubrovnik was my favorite and I wish we had stayed there longer! There was a lot to do and although it takes commitment to get there (it's about 5 hours from Split) it's definitely worth it.

Highlights from Dubrovnik were simply walking around the beautiful coastline as well as exploring the old city...

Old city in the day

Old city at night

Took a cable car up to the top of the mountain overlooking Dubrovnik...

The old town is in the center with all the red roofs and we
spent another day exploring that island off the coast

We stayed in that little cove, the old city is just to the left

Yours truly

More beautiful sunsets...

Walked along the old city walls....

Chris did a legit dive while I soaked up some Vitamin D. Also, we ferried over to a small island off the coast (in the picture above) and spent the afternoon exploring that. Lastly, Dubrovnik was full of really good restaurants! I was very impressed at most of the places we ate. I had seafood lasagna with just the right amount of seafood, a perfectly cooked risotto, very tender calamari, and mussels in a delicious sauce.

After Dubrovnik we rented a car because we were over super long and uncomfortable bus rides and we got to see a lot more beautiful scenery as well as stop in Bosnia. We stopped for lunch so add that one to the list. You have to drive through it from Dubrovnik back to the rest of Croatia but only for about 15 or 20 minutes. Emily, I didn't see a post office so you won't be getting a postcard from Bosnia, I'm sorry!

I don't know why the random guy on the side of the road
took our photo this way but I kinda like it.

We spent our last night in Zadar and the next morning drove to Plitvice Lakes National Park. We hiked around it all day before getting on a plane back to Germany. If you are in Croatia this is something not to miss, you can just take a look at a few photos and you'll see why...