Croatia Sailing - Eat, Sleep, Swim.

It is about time that I tackled my European adventure posts.  I am still pouring over the 2000+ photos that I took on my two months abroad in Portugal, Spain, Croatia, France and the UK and I am still not done.  (Sigh, life is hard.)

With this daunting task ahead of me, I thought I should at least attempt a blog about one of the countries I've visited.  Croatia wins as it is where I took the least amount of photos.  There are two reasons why I only took about 200 photos on this leg of my journey.  First, I was paranoid about getting my camera submerged in water, and well, when you're on a boat, that fear is constant and real.  And second, I was asleep on the deck of my sailship for most of my time in Croatia getting an awesome tan.

I was literally glowing from the amount of sun in the Adriatic.

Croatia didn't start off all that well.  My flight into Zagreb from Barcelona was delayed and by the time I got into the alphabetically last of the world capitals, it was 10pm and the sketchy bus from the airport took me to an equally sketchy bus terminal in central Zagreb.  I'll be honest, daytime Zagreb is just as meh as nighttime Zagreb.  I was warned about this from several friends who've been to this Balkan country that the capital is nothing to really write home about.  What I did appreciate was the Viennese architecture that was prominent throughout the city.  When the Balkans were absorbed by the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Archdukes used their influence from Vienna to try to mold Zagreb in the same fashion.  Having lived in Vienna in 2005, it brought back some nice memories of my strolls down Mariahilfestrasse - it was the only way to brighten up my opinion of the Croatian capital.

Really cool clock at the Zagreb Cathedral.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, there are some highlights like St. Mark's Church and the town centre, and the best museum I've seen in a while called the Museum of Broken Relationships.  My official travel opinion is that Zagreb is good for a pitstop, one day is good, two max.  Anymore than that and all you'll find yourself doing is drinking.

It was tough to get through the huge tourist crowd at St. Mark's Cathedral.

An exhibit at the Museum of Broken Relationships.  I want this clock.

The real reason I decided on Croatia as a destination on my European adventures was that I booked a sailing trip along the Dalmatian coast on the advice of my friend Sandy.  She has always wanted to do a cruise in Croatia and suggested the Busabout tour to me.  After a lengthy train ride, which included a four hour delay due to a fire on the track (which we then went through after the fire was put out and got me to thinking how safe the track was after it had been on fire for four hours...anyway) and an amazing conversation with Pavel, a seminary student, 34 years of age, (we talked about politics, the church, and reality TV for eight hours nonstop), I got into Split.  Pavel was kind enough to show me where my hotel was in the city and without his help, I would have been seriously fucked because this place was so well hidden that I needed to solve the Da Vinci Code to figure out where to go.

My cruise took me on the following itinerary:

Split -> Hvar -> Mljet -> Dubrovnik -> Korcula -> Macarska -> Omis -> Split

Finding the boat on the first day was quite the task - there's a billion fucking ships in this harbour.  Being the competitive person that I am, I turned this into a mini-The Amazing Race challenge and ran around with my luggage trying to find my elusive boat.  I finally stumbled across the Busabout boats out of sheer luck and was covered in a layer of sweat from the 15lb backpack I'd been lugging around. Resting in the air conditioned cabin, I had a chance to meet some of the other people on my boat including Jacinta, who happened to be the person I ran into on the dock and gave instructions to on how to find the boat.  (She later explained that she was a bit freaked out over the fact some random Asian man was directing her to her boat just on first impressions.)

The beautiful Split Harbour. 

The underground market in Split.

Our first stop was Hvar, known as a party destination for all Busabout cruises.  Having docked in the early evening, we didn't get a chance to wander around much.  That evening, we all went out to drink at a bar where they specialized in lemon vodka shots that were prepared by the patron putting on a helmet (worn by countless thousands of others and had never been washed) and the bartender slamming the shot glass on the stupid patron's helmet causing mild concussion.  I had two and I wasn't sure whether or not I was drunk or suffering from double vision.

Hvar Harbour at Sunset. 

Hvar at night.

Mljet was a nice break in between Hvar and Dubronik.  Everyone was nursing a bad hangover except for us old farts (we called ourselves The Breakfast Club because we were the only ones who showed up for breakfast everyday.)  One thing I would never want to experience on a boat is a massive hangover as the only recovery would be to hang your head over the railing and puke the entire day.  Mljet had an amazing national park which surrounded a large green salt lake but getting to it was about a 25 minute hike.  Naturally, we were all gross and sweaty from the hike and as a result, jumped into the water as soon as we were done with our photo shoots.

Turquoise waters.  I wanted to stay here forever.

Dubrovnik is really a must see city.  Walking along the old fortress walls provides the best view of the coastline and the entire Venetian inspired city.  The terracotta tiled roofs provided a cool colour contrast between the blue waters of the Adriatic.  We happened to be here at the opening of the summer festival in the city and as some of our boatmates found out the unfortunate way, they stumbled right into the middle of a school performance as the stage was just the village square they just so happened to walk across.  The were booed.  The rest of us found this hilarious as we were all hammered from the 3 litres of house wine at dinner which cost less than the bottled water.

I'm not sure where I am...

A coastal city in Italy?  No, it's Dubrovnik.

We were then off to Korkula which I'll be honest, I was glad we were only there for one night.  There really wasn't much to see and the only interesting part was that we were taken to an old castle turret that was turned into a bar.  Now the climb up to the top was interesting as it was up a narrow ladder that girls, if you decided not to wear underwear that night, you'd be giving everyone behind you quite the show.  If you didn't get a view climbing up the ladder, the view from the top was fantastic - as you can see from the sunset photo below.

The Croatian sunset - this was about 10pm. 

The Castle Bar.

Markarska left quite the impression because I had the best lasagna of my life here.  Down the main strip near the beach, there is a restaurant called Orca - it was well worth the 20 minute walk to get there, I really should have ordered another slice.  After our meal, we descended into the Rave in the Cave - a club called DEEP.  The inside of a cave was turned into a bar and filled with all sorts of neon lights.  It was a cool experience, but because of the intense heat, you were literally dripping in sweat after five minutes on the dancefloor.

Ravers in the Cave.

Omis was our last port of call before heading back to Split.  To be quite honest, at this point of my trip, I was starting to look forward to Paris.  I was tired of the boat and needed to be on land 24/7.  And I was running out of laundry.  In Omis, we woke up early (cough, 7am early) to climb to the fortress.  40 minutes of climbing resulted in several people puking along the way (they raved too hard in the cave the night before).  This was perhaps the only day I saw more than 7 people at breakfast - when we returned we were all starving for food.

The view from the top. 

Yes, I conquered this hill.  Still super dark.

Our last night in Split was pretty tame.  The group of us that hung out together were not in the mood to get wasted and all decided to have a good meal, walk around the city and bring some drinks back to the boat and have a good chat before we all went our separate ways.  I contemplated staying up all night as we finished our talks at 1am and I had to be up at 430am to get to the bus station to catch the early morning shuttle to the airport.  I implore you - if you ever have an option of taking an early morning flight out of Split, DON'T DO IT.  The bus station was super sketchy as drunk people filtered out of one of Croatia's largest clubs - Imperium.  And if it wasn't the drunks, it was the homeless people.  Thankfully, I made friends with a couple of Americans who were of the same mindset to gang together in order to make it to our bus stop that was down an alleyway with no lampposts.

Regardless of how it ended, I had a blast in Croatia.  While I wouldn't recommend a tour like this to people of my age, I would certainly say that if you have a wealthy friend with a yacht who invited you on a cruise along the coast of Croatia, that you should take them up on the offer.

As a follow up to this story - it was only a few weeks ago that Anderson Cooper was vacationing with his boyfriend along the coast with their friends Kelly Ripa and Andy Cohen when news broke that Anderson's BF was photographed kissing another man in Central Park.  That must have made for a very awkward boat ride.

Croatia from the port hole in my room.

One thing I do miss is the Croatian sunset.