Summer in Europe Part I: Croatia

it has been a while since I've posted last, but I feel I have a somewhat acceptable excuse; being an Aussie in Europe, when the summer comes it's all about finding as many beaches as possible and travelling as much as I can! Since moving to England the summer has been the time to get out of my home and see somewhere new. Or a lot of different new places. And this summer was no different - after visiting 13 cities over the three months and four countries in total, playing with four different currencies and trying to work my way through a jungle of languages, it's definitely been one of the busiest ones to date.

A lot of people assume that being Australian and in a land-locked city, we must miss being close to the beach. I do, but to be honest I never really went to the beach that much while I had it on my doorstep; I guess it's that age old thing of not realising how good something is until you lose it. The boy asked me on our trip to Croatia why I get so excited about seeing beaches in Europe when I have much better ones at home. It took me a while to answer the question, but I suppose the main thing is the difference in cultures. You can go Australia-wide and the food will be the same, as well as the accents and the colour of the sand. Here, we go from one country to another by train and with the crossing of the border comes a whole new way of life. And that's pretty exciting in it's own right.

So, while I have already written about my experience at Glastonbury and in London as well as my trips around Germany, I'll begin with Croatia.

I'd been to Croatia once before this trip on a long weekend with my sister and some friends. Thanks to Ryanair it's very cheap to get from London to Zadar and we went for around 80 euros return to the coastal town. It was amazing, and left a fantastic impression of a European city full of amazing food, atmosphere, beach trips and friendly people. The cocktails being at happy hour prices permanently helped it's cause too. So when looking at the possibility of going to Turkey (which was going to set us back 300 euros each for flights alone), and finding out some really good friends of mine were travelling through Croatia at the end of July, it didn't take much to convince me to change our plans.

Starting in Hvar, it was not exactly what I expected but beautiful nonetheless. I've heard Hvar is a great party town, but apart from some nightclubs on the docks which to be honest, Frankfurt clubs look better than, there wasn't that much in the way of nightlife. The beaches, however, definitely did not disappoint.

Our closest beach

One of the things the boy was desperate to do on this holiday was go diving - and in Hvar we found somewhere that took us out to sea for half a day. It took me a while to get the hang of breathing with the scuba pack, and when we swan into a cave I had to find the surface to calm down. But when I relaxed and took it all in, it felt like I was in another world. Swimming along the edge of the reef was stunning and it's definitely motivated me to get my diving licence when we travel to Australia next.

Heading down under

Underwater view

The diving was relatively cheap, around 30 euros, with Nautica diving school. And our friends were able to come with us and snorkel as well as relaxing on the boat. This day was definitely the highlight of my time in Hvar, and finishing it off with seafood for dinner made it perfect. Which brings me to the food - amazing! I don't think I ate anything besides fish, calamari, prawns and mussels the whole time at Hvar.

Seafood platter - luckily the boy can peel prawns for me :)

Our next stop was Zagreb which was inland and by the time we got there we were desperate for a steak. Unfortunately, when we got to the restaurant and ordered the steak it was actually a chicken schnitzel with cheese in it. But no matter, because one of my favourite things about Zagreb was how cheap everything was! I'm all understanding of how touristy places are expensive, but for the capital of Croatia to have food available at less than half the price of Hvar was crazy. I was glad Hvar was at the beginning of the trip rather than at the point where we were running out of money.

One of the things I really wanted to do in Zagreb was to see the Plitvice National Park, and my god it was beautiful. The most amazing thing about it was that they have been looking after it in terms of the environment since the early 20th century - despite there being so many tourists it's heavily enforced that you can't swim in the crystal clear blue water. Thankfully our tour guide knew somewhere we could swim as by the end of the day, looking at that water and sweating in the sun had left me so desperate for a swim the cold water didn't even bother me.

The water... perfection

No swimming allowed!

The next day we had planned to go kayaking but that got cancelled (would avoid booking this in Zagreb as the company aren't very easy to deal with and cancelled at the last minute), so we were at a loss to find something 'adventury' to do. The hostel found a lake nearby the city with wakeboarding and the boy was happy with this. For me, relaxing in the sun with my book was equally great :)

This was his second go. It's so annoying how good he is at sports!!

Our trip to the train station on the last day was filled with anxiety as we sought to purchase a ticket to Hungary - websites aren't great for telling you how much they will cost and with travelling from one country to another I was sure it would be quite high. But 30 euros each for the ticket left us both with a lot of leftover Croatian money and we decided that the best way to rid ourselves of this was to go on the Chillout Hostel Pub Crawl. At the end of the night, as we stumbled home together, I didn't want to leave this beautiful country.