Making our way to Dubrovnik

Sunday, we headed towards Dubrovnik, but not after our final two-tiered breakfast. 

We decided to take the coastal highway to Dubrovnik, instead of rushing on the motorway because the views would be more enjoyable and then we would be able to stop at a couple of beaches along the way. 

We first stopped quickly in Omis because for the past two days I had been wanting this picture on the most gorgeous bridge, where the Cetina River flows into the Adriatic with the Omiska Dinara mountain in the background. 

It looks a lot more gorgeous in real life, the water is actually an aqua blue but it was hard to capture as the traffic crosses the bridge and we were parked illegally so I had to rush.

We then stopped at a beach we saw off the highway, somewhere in between Omis and Brela. I can't remember the town name, or maybe I wasn't able to see it because my eyes were closed as we zoomed aggressively around corners passing people in the oncoming traffic lane. 

We walked just around the corner from where everyone was sitting and had this entire private beach to ourselves.

We relaxed and swam here for a bit and then we were off again. Dad wanted to stop in Brela again for the amazing cherries and his favourite beach. 

The day's before when we swam at Brela they had paid parking right near the beach or you could park on the side of the road and just had to trek down to the beach. When we arrived this time, they had no parking signs ropped up everywhere all the way up the hill. 

We laughed as we watched one lady get out of the passenger seat and hold up the rope so her husband could park on the other side of the no parking rope. Some people had just driven over the ropes and had them stuck under their wheels. 

Dad was mad and said it was a scam so we didn't pay for parking and parked all the way up the hill where there were no signs.

This is what that one couple did to park.

This was our trek down to the beach.

The best part at the beach was this little girl who was probably 2 or 3 entertaining us. This dad brought his 4 little girls to the beach, all between around 2-8 years old. The two bigger girls ran straight into the water. The one girl who was about 4 came up on her scooter with a huge pool noodle in hand and life jacket and parked it by a tree, then looked over the 4 edge off the sidewalk to the beach, threw her noodle down and then just jumped right after it. We couldn't believe how far she had jumped down so we started to watch what other funny things they would do. The dad quickly followed the older girls into the water because it was quite wavy. The girl with the noodle stripped down and starting putting her suit on. This little one pulled off her clothes and then held her bathing suit up to her dad in water and kind of faked cried at him. He just looked at her and stayed in the water. The whining quickly stopped and she started to put the bathing suit on. She ended up putting it on backwards so the scoop neck in the front being way lower than it should've been, almost to her belly button. It was so funny because I noticed right away and she even noticed but didn't know what was wrong. For the next 5 minutes she kept trying to pull the front up higher to where it should have been and then picking it down in the back because it was giving her a wedgie. The dad had no clue and just came out of the water and set her up in her tube to swim. During this time, his other daughter had hit a huge wave without him noticing and her legs flew straight up in the air, face first into the rocks. Another fire he had to go put out. It was just cute for us to watch how independent these little European girls were, espeically since there were 4 of them and no way for the Dad to be babying all of them. When the baby in the backwards bathing suit came out of the water she spent about 5 minutes trying to lay out her towel to sun bathe naked on, but the wind kept blowing it into her. Dad and I laughed and laughed at how adorable she was and how hard she was trying to do it on her own, while the whole rest of her family was in the water. No North American family would ever let the 2 year old be so alone and far away from them for so long. 

After our entertainment stopped it was back to the road again.

Before we started this road trip Dad had said, "sweetie, just let me know when you want to stop to take a picture there is no rush." Well you should have seen how stressful the rest of the car ride was, there was definitely no allowed pictures. There were a lot of bad drivers and Dad just wanted to pass them the entire time, so there were many times I had to hang on tight and close my eyes, or I tried to feed Dad cherries to calm him. We laughed because this one driver was annoying dad so much and I had my arms out the window taking a picture with my iPhone (since there were no allowed camera stops :P) when he swerved extremely aggressively to pass them and I flew back into the car, luckily my hands were holding my phone tightly. Besides the ten Ativan Dad and I probably should have had after the ride, the views were astonishing. We passed a little farming town that had all these rivers from the ocean going through it and the coast just got more and more beautiful. 

At the Bosnian border we had our passports all ready and she didn't even look at them, she literally looked at us for 5 seconds then said drive through. 

This is the best I could get on the fly. 

We finally made it to Dubrovnik!

The view of the Old Town from our gorgeous hotel, Hotel Excelsior.

Had to check out the hotel ocean pool, stat. It's filled from the waves of the ocean.

I love that the hotel has a ledge like Zadar to jump right into the ocean. The best is just resting on it and watcing the waves wash up over it. 

Naughty statue

We looked for a restaurant we read about in Lonely Planet called Lucin Kantun. It is a tapas place up one of the narrow paths, off the main road through the Old town. We ordered a bunch of things and shared them.

Mozzarella with cheese on some kind of crunchy thing we couldn't figure out if it was bread or a cripsy cheese.

Hummus

Stuffed squid with ham, mushroom, cheese and garlic butter sauce

Black risotto with cuttlefish

Turkey Rafaello-a turkey dish in coconut milk.

It was all so good but we both agreed that the turkey was our favourite. 

And then I ended up with a bird on my head. The video is quite hilarious. I was just looking at them and next thing I knew this lady was sticking one on my arm. Dad was off looking at some church and we were separated by a huge Asian tour group, so I shouted "DAD" hoping it wouldn't scare the bird and have it sink it's nails into me. He heard and came over and started taking a video, when it decided to start performing for the camera and climb up my arm until it was on top of my head playing with my hair. 

We of course had to have our ice cream. They are so much bigger here in Dubrovnik and also taste amazing! The best one that had the most real looking lime was right outside Pile Gate

These were some great views at and below the Buza bar. We didn't like the drink choices so we didn't sit down but if you walk all the way down you can get some great views by the ocean without having to be at the bar. 

I'll have to look into the significance of this...it smelled like bay leaves surrounding the door.

That's all for yesterday.

-A

Trogir

Yesterday, we went to our favourite breakfast place, but instead of ordering our regular two-tiered breakfast we decided to switch it up. I ordered the smoked salmon omelette with sundried tomatoes.

It was so delicious, but I did miss having an omelette followed by french toast...let's just say the euro belly is progressing quickly. 

We didn't really have a plan for the day so we decided to just drive to Trogir. We didn't really think it would be super exciting because there didn't seem to be much to do there. We were surprised at how much we liked it, it is far more gorgeous that Split. There might not be a lot to do but there is a lot to see, the appeal is exactly as described in the tour books, the amazing preservation of the town center. It is an UNESCO Heritage site and it is actually the most beautifully preserved historic centers on the Adriatic. There are tons of narrow, winding streets to explore, with all of the paths and walls made from the same smooth, tan coloured tiles. 

After we decided to walk towards this beach, but Dad decided he didn't like it so we headed to our new favourite in Brela.

After, once we returned to Split, we headed out to dinner to our favourite location, Figa.

We both ordered the Figa salad with figs wrapped in proscuitto and goat cheese. Dad had the black risotto and I had one of the best homemade tortellini's (obviously it couldn't be better than the ones the grandma made me last year in Italy, but they were up there) that were filled with grana padano and topped with proscuitto. I forced dad to try once since he doesn't like pasta and he even thought it was delicious. 

That was our last night in Split. Today, we headed to Dubrovnik along the coast.

-A

Coastal Driving

Yesterday, we decided to drive south along the coast and stop at a few of the little towns and enjoy the beaches. If you rent a car here I would definetely recommend it as the views were astonishing. It reminded dad of Kelowna with the big pine trees and cliffs along one side of the road and then the ocean along the other side.

We of course had to start the day with our two-tiered breakfast to energize us for the day.

Our first stop was Brela. We didn't look around the town at all, just stopped at this gorgeous rocky beach right off the highway.

We bought cherries, figs and nectarines from the fruit stand lady.  When we went back to finish off the bag of cherries they had cooked on the rocks, which I thought was going to taste gross but they were so good, it was like eating cherry pie.

We then drove on to Makarska, which seemed to be more popular as it was quite busy. 

This was the first thing we saw when we entered the town... a donkey getting loaded onto the ferry, you can kind of see his ears in this picture.

We didn't explore the town here either and headed to the beaches. We first started walking the path to this nude beach (because apparently we are nudists now), which had gorgeous views and took about 30 minutes.

We came across these goats on our walk to the beach.

Dad in his constant zen state. I keep a soothing, rubbing rock from the beach for him when traffic gets too stressful but I am the one that just ends up using it, when we pass on the one lane, winding roads. 

The view of the beach down below

The beach was gorgeous but the water had some plant material in it so we didn't like it as much as some of the other beaches we had been to. It was all fun and games until the guy beside us kept getting turned on by me and the girl on the other side of us. He kept alternating which way his head was turning and I watched him stare from beneath my sunglasses out of the corner of my eye. He kept having to take his swimsuit off and on about 10 times to try and hide his arousal. It was time to leave haha. Dad and I laughed about it as we walked back on the trail...he should have just kept his swimsuit on if he couldn't control himself. 

We headed back on the trail and climbed down these rocks closer to town to our own private location where we lounged on the rocks and jumped into the ocean off of them. 

After a day of lounging we headed back home to Split, where we had dinner at Villa Spiza again. This restaurant is really good but my one complaint is that I find it too salty. It is worth trying but I prefer Figa.

Tonight we had the risotto with seashells, mussels and lamb. It was all very good, I even enjoyed the shells but my lamb had slightly too many fatty pieces that I had to spit out. 

There is also a Street Art Festival here for the next couple of days and there were tons of people out on the Riva, including dancers and singers. These are the types of things I love! All of the artists are using pastels to draw on the pavement for these elaborate pictures.

-A