Friday 24th May
We left Trogir this morning headed for Zadar. Our trusty Flixbus doesn't run this route, but don't you worry, "Best Line" has our back, and let me tell you, they live up to their name!
The bus ride was beautiful, we drove all through the country side, which was absolutely stunning! The rugged landscape dotted with old houses with orange roofs and occasionally passing through tiny little one street towns! We even passed a few wind farms!
We arrived into Zadar a few hours later and were met at the station by our lovely host! She was so kind and friendly, giving us so much information and offering to organise anything for us.
The apartment was amazing! It’s gorgeous and spacious, with exposed stone, and a sunny balcony!
We unpacked ourselves, popped some washing on (we were desperate at this point!), and sat down for some lunch. Zadar seems like such a cool place and there is so much to do!
We headed out after lunch to pick up our groceries for the next few days. The closest grocery store was Kaufland, a new grocery store to us, how exciting! WOW! It's hugeeee!! The grocery store became our activity of the day!! We had so much fun! It was absolutely massive and had so many different kinds of food! There were three isles just dedicated to snacks!! I’m not even joking, we were in there for a good couple of hours having a ball!!
Once we'd had a scout and done a lap of the store, we had a brainstorm of what to eat and decided to mix it right on up and make burgers!! On our way to the checkout we were passing the freezer section and you’ll never guess what I found. Frozen rosti!! YASSS! You just know that went straight in the basket!
Ok so real talk, Kaufland is now ranked as our favourite Croatian supermarket, and coming in a close second to Migros, as the all time best supermarket! It has all our favourite snacks that are usually specific to different supermarket brands, and it had rosti!! And it was huge!!! I mean at the deli you could literally by cheese by the slice!
And it didn’t just have food, it had isles of bathroom products, cookware, camping gear, gardening stuff, everything you could imagine! It was like Coles and Big W mashed together! What an exciting shop!
After we’d finished our shopping, we headed back to our apartment and chilled for a bit before getting started on our burgers!
Fresh buns, really good burger patties (although I’m not sure what kind of meat it was, and I honestly don’t want to know!), cheese, lettuce, tomato, pineapple (of course), and we even splashed out and bought some burger sauce for it! We took our gourmet burgers out onto the balcony with our sparkling water from our last place and sat and enjoyed our dinner under the warmth of the sun! YUMMMMM! It was soo good! We haven’t had something like this for so long!
The rest of the evening was spent chilling out and doing a face mask that we got for 80 cents from our supermarket!!
It was such a fun day!
Saturday 25th May
We had a classic holiday day today and just totally relaxed.
We had a chill morning reading and soaking up some sun on our little balcony followed by lunch and a little nap.
We then headed into the town for the afternoon as we wanted to be there for sunset but that isn’t until 8:30 now!
Zadar is a really cool city with its old town situated on the peninsula. What’s really interesting about it is that it is full of Roman and Venetian ruins from its respective periods of rule in history.
We wandered into the city and at first it just seemed like a very normal place with normal housing buildings lining the pedestrian streets, then all of a sudden, taking us by surprise, we walked out upon a whole heap of Roman ruins!
There in front of us is a massive round 9th century pre-Romanesque Church of St. Donatus. It was amazing!
We turned around and behind us was the beautiful benedictine monastery, Church of St. Mary, dating all the way back to 1066!
In front of these two churches were remains of a Roman emporium. There were crumbling walls, sarcophaguses, pillars, and blocks of carved stone. It was fascinating!
We weaved in and out of streets just meandering taking in the city and stumbled upon Zadar Cathedral which was built in the 12th century and is the largest church in the whole of Dalmatia (the Croatian coast).
From here we continued to explore the town!
We ended up walking through some markets before heading down to the water.
It’s gorgeous down by the water and it's so clear! We continued along to the end of the peninsular for the two things that drew us to Zadar in the first place. The sea organ, and the Monument to the Sun.
The sea organ was so cool! It is a set of large sandstone steps on the edge of the sea which plays music by using sea waves and tubes located under the steps. It’s essentially a giant musical instrument! The sound was so strange, it was calming, but sort of eery at the same time!
Then the main attraction came into view right at the tip of the peninsula, the Monument to the Sun! It is a large circle covered in glass solar cells and lighting elements that make for great reflections during sunset and is in the perfect position to praise the sun. The circle is surrounded by a chrome ring on which are inscribed the names of all the saints that the churches of the Zadar peninsula have been named after. The coolest part though is that when the sun goes down for the night, it puts on a light show and becomes a disco pad!!
We spent a fair bit of time playing around with photography here, it was so cool! While we were here we also saw a guy flying his drone and a one of the massive seagulls was chasing after it!
It wasn’t quite sunset yet so we followed the path along the sea, past a beautiful little harbour and around what remains of the walls of the Old Town to the old city gate. It was so beautiful round here.
We then found 5 Wells Square, where as I’m sure you can guess there are five wells all in a row. It was cool to see, but what's more interesting is the story behind it. During the 16th century, while under sieges from the Turkish, the Venetians helped the city by building a large cistern and these five wellheads, providing the city with clean water and therefore helped the city survive the attacks.
From here we found ourselves in a park on top of the city’s old fortification, which was beautiful.
The sun was getting close to setting so we made our way back through the town and to the Monument to the Sun, and sat on the edge of the peninsula watching one of the most spectacular sunsets. It was so incredibly beautiful.
Once we had said goodbye to the sun for the day, the disco began!!!
After we’d had a little boogie we headed back to our apartment to make burgers again for dinner (yummm)!!!!!!
Sunday 26th May
The clouds and rain were back again today so we had a cozy day, chilling out and catching up on a few bits and pieces.
We did of course head out for a trip to Kaufland when there was a break in the rain. Kaufland is our new fave supermarket and it doesn't abide by the laws of Eastern European supermarkets, things we'd bought before were available for purchase again!!!!!
We picked up a couple of bits and I found some ice coffee sachets to give a go! They've got such fun stuff in here! The bakery section is amazing as well! I popped a little glove on and picked out a raspberry and custard lattice pastry to try and Sam went for a savoury sausage in pastry.
We brought our goodies back to have a lovely little afternoon tea. We had a knock at the door and our lovely lovely host had made jam filled doughnuts and brought us some!! How sweet is that!
So we made up our coffee and the most delicious afternoon tea! It was so lovely. The doughnut was so scrumptious! It was so tasty and light, and filled with apricot jam, and it wasn't oily!
We chilled out for the rest of the afternoon and then cooked up burgers for dinner again!
Monday 27th May
It was another rainy day today so we spent the day having fun playing Mario Party mini games on the switch!
And what would a day in Zadar be without a trip to our favourite place, Kaufland! It is honestly such a fun place (is that what it’s like to be an adult?). While in Kaufland we decided to purchase an umbrella for tomorrow so we could stay dry and enjoy the day! Mind you, now that we've bought one it probably wont rain!
After an hour’s excursion to the supermarket we enjoyed our iced coffee and pastry for afternoon tea and chilled out.
We had applied for a house sit in Brighton a couple of weeks ago and didn’t end up hearing anything back so let it go, and then today we applied for another one and we got it immediately!! Woohoo! Right after we had accepted it, you'll never guess what happened. The other house sit came back to us and offered it to us! We’ve been offered two sits in one day! But as they are for the same dates, we stuck with the one that accepted us first.
The weather forecast for the rest of the week is rain, but we really want to get out to Plitvice Lakes National Park, so we decided to just brave the weather and go tomorrow.
We went on to buy tickets, but it’s too late to get them online, bugger. We are able to get them on the day at the park though, but because it is so popular, entrance is in sessions and can be sold out. The way it works is that there are a certain number of tickets for a time slot and you can only buy the tickets for that time up to half an hour beforehand, and you must enter within the hour. It’s pricy to get out to the park so we didn’t want to pay to get out there and then not get in. There is however a live daily counter online to see what tickets are available. So we had a fun evening and stayed up until midnight to see how many tickets were left for the day when it clocked over to midnight. There are a few tickets left for a couple of different sessions so we bought our bus tickets, and headed to bed.
What a day, we got a house sit, had to turn one down, and now we’re going to Plitvice tomorrow!
Tuesday 28th May
We woke up early and excited for our day at the lakes!
We packed up our bags and a picnic and made the long walk across town and down to the bus station.
The biggest bus in the world arrived to pick us up and we were on our way!
We headed out of Zadar and passed some beautiful countryside. It then started to absolutely pour with rain!! All we could see was white all around us, the rain was ridiculous! I don’t know how much our little umbrella will do against that!
It was getting really stuffy on the bus and we realised the aircon wasn’t working and it was actually just hot air coming out and there were no windows except for the little one by the driver which he had open! It was so stuffy and hot that we both started to feel really sick, so I just closed my eyes and slept most of the way there.
I woke up not far out from the lakes, and I could actually see outside now, so that was good, no more sheeting rain!
One good thing about all the rain we’ve had while we’ve been in Croatia is that we’ve been told that the water is flowing beautifully in Plitivice at the moment! Apparently it can normally be quite dry at this time of year. In fact, they have had so much rain that it was flooding in Plitvice last week!
We arrived into the entrance of the park and zipped off the bus as quick as could be, making a beeline for the ticket booth. We lined up with the rest of the bus behind us. The session before ours was sold out, but we got our tickets, yay! Now we just had to wait the half hour to enter. I decided to duck into the bathroom before we lined up. There was no queue for once! Score! Well, I think that had to have been the most well timed pee ever, because when I came out, a tour bus had arrived and the queue was out the door, round the building and halfwayy to the carpark!
We lined up and as we entered the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and the skies cleared!!! Oh my goodness! We were instantly blown away! It is incredibly beautiful! How does nature do it? It’s incredible! What a way to start the day!
From this magnificent view point we followed the path down from where we were, shimmying past slow walking tour groups, and down to the lower lakes! It was so stunning! The water was an unreal blue and it was crystal clear! It was so pretty, and we were right amongst it all, walking on gorgeous wooden boardwalks across the lakes and past the waterfalls!
We followed the boardwalk round to Veliki Slap, which literally translates to “big waterfall”! It was beautiful, and as the name suggests, is THE big waterfall, infact it is the biggest waterfall in Croatia! While all the other waterfalls in the park are formed by the upper lakes spilling over into the lower lakes, this one is fed directly from the Plitvica Potok river.
We followed a little (but very steep) detour just off to the side of the waterfall up the cliff and ended up going on a little hike through some gorgeous forest and having a beautiful top down view over the lake we just walked across!
It led onto a road which we followed for a little bit before ending up back in the forest and on top of the Veliki Slap!
We continued around the corner for a little bit and ended up at a point with the most amazing views looking back down at the lakes and the waterfalls! We made this our lunch spot, because where else will you get a lunch view like that?!
We made our way back the way we had come and back to the main boardwalk around the lakes, the clouds had come back over making it much cooler now. It is absolutely stunning here, the boardwalks around the lakes are unimaginably beautiful!
We came to one section of the lower lakes, to a small gushing waterfall, and realised that it was actually flooding here! They had put a temporary boardwalk over the top of the old one in one section and closed off another because there was so much water!
I can’t get over how gorgeous it is here! The colour of the water against the white rock and the forest is just breathtaking! And the boardwalks are done so well!
A few hours later and we had made our way all around the lower lakes and to the boat that would take us to the upper lakes!
We had a lovely little boat ride across one of the lakes, and there was a small tour group on the boat with us and one of the ladies was an opera singer and wanted to sing for us, so we had a little private opera show while on our boat ride!
We arrived at the upper lakes and they are gorgeous as well! Much more foresty than the lower lakes, which were more open. The clouds were also well and truly back now and it was actually cool again! It started to sprinkle a little, so we whipped out our brolly, and it stopped! It’s a magic brolly! It started to sprinkle on and off for the next couple of hours, and every time we pulled out the brolly it would stop! Best $5 ever!
It was so beautiful walking around the upper lakes, and much quieter than the lower lakes, I think all the tour buses must have left for the day!
We followed the boardwalk round the gorgeous blue lakes and every now and then we’d come to a waterfall.
This would have to be my favourite waterfall of the upper lakes for sure, it was so beautiful.
There was also a lady visiting with her Samoyed dog which Sam was over the moon about and gave a sneaky little pat!
We continued strolling around the lakes, staying as close to the Samoyed as we could!
The path around the lakes led into the forest and turned into a little hike, it was so stunning!
We then popped back out at the uppermost lake where we walked around until it was time to start heading for the train/bus shuttle thing back to our starting point at the lower lakes.
It was such a scenic ride, and made all the more amazing by the fact that the Samoyed lady sat behind us so Sam got to make friends and pat it the entire way!
From where the shuttle dropped us, we had a lovely walk along the cliffside of the lower lakes giving us another stunning perspective of the lakes!
We finished the day off where we started at the magnificent viewpoint over the lower lakes and waterfalls! We sat and had afternoon tea with the best view ever before heading back to our place in Zadar. What an incredible day!
Wednesday 29th May
We woke up to the biggest storm! The sky was so dark, the rumbling thunder so loud, the rain heavy, and there were flashes of lightening!
It is definitely a cozy indoor kind of day!
I spent a bit of the morning talking to dad which was lovely, before we cooked up our rosti and sausages for brunch.
Ok so rosti verdict: Very good, 8/10, would buy again. It's closest thing we've found to rosti outside of Switzerland!
We spent the rest of the day having a massive, massive planning session and booked to go to Greece!!
Thursday 30th May
Today was one of the funniest days! It was fantastic!
We decided to visit the lovely little town of Nin, at the recommendation of our host. Our lovely host offered to drive us which was amazing, because we couldn’t figure out the bus system here!
We had a great drive over to the town, listening to Croatian music and chatting to our host.
Nin is absolutely gorgeous, I love it! It is a super cute little island town in a lagoon, connected to the mainland by two stone bridges (There was however a flood a few years ago which destroyed the bridges and they are still under construction, so we entered on an alternate bridge they had set up!).
Nin was once a town of incredible importance and is also known as the Town of Kings. It was the first political, religious, and royal centre of Croatia. Between the 7th and 11th century it was the seat of the Croatian dukes, kings, and in the 9th century became the seat of the first Croatian bishop.
We spent the morning wandering around the super cute town, with its' little streets and beautiful architecture.
We even found our guy from Split, with his shiny toe and all!
It is such a pretty little town with so much history! We found a bunch of roman ruins here as well!
We found our way to the ocean and sat and watched some kite surfers over our picnic lunch.
After some lunch, we enjoyed wandering along the waterfront around the town before heading out to find the beach.
So the main reason for wanting to visit Nin, was that we heard they had mud baths here, just around the beach area. Apparently they’re great for any ailment, and just for fun. From what we can gather you’re meant to cover yourself in the mud, then let the sun dry it all on you, and then you wash it off in the warm shallow seas. It sounds like great fun, so of course we wanted to give it a go!
So we left the town and headed out round the coast to find the beach and the mud baths. We ended up trekking around the coast, definitely not a marked path but it was great fun!
We came to the beach and it was absolutely beautiful! A stone beach with natural umbrellas, beautiful blue water, and stunning mountains in the background!
Now we’ve just got to find the mud pools! We know from pictures that we’ve seen that it seems to be at the end of a board walk in an area with long grass around it, so after marvelling at the beach, we follow the boardwalk along the beach and through a marshy/ lagoon looking area.
We got to the end of the board walk and couldn’t really see anything that looked distinguishably like a mud pool. Maybe we weren’t in the right place?
We backtracked trying to find it, then googled the pictures again, and then walked the final section of the board walk again. Wait a minute, that looks a little like it over there! We ventured off the board walk and through the marshy-lagoon to what we thought should be the mud bath. Well, it’s not quite what we were expecting, a small shallow pool amongst grass, but looking at a picture on google again, it does actually look like it.
We look at the larger pool of water apprehensively which is cut off from the sea and has bugs and all sorts of crap floating on top of it, and think mmm maybe not this one!
We turn to the smaller pool next to it, which does have a small channel connecting fresh water from the ocean into it, and looks a bit better. It just looks so shallow though, I thought we would be almost swimming in it, at least emerged in it like sitting in a spa. Maybe we just scoop it up onto ourselves? Sam was much more apprehensive about it, but we’re here now so I’m game! I take a shoe off to test it and step out into the shallow little pool (or so I thought), and I immediately sunk all the way to my knee!! Okkkkk, so this is definitely it!!! It was so warm and squidgy and the black peloidic mud we were looking for was beneath the surface!
With a bit of help to pull myself out, I unsuccessfully get my shorts off without getting mud all over them!! And then we both stepped into the mud bath! It was hilarious! We stepped in and our legs sunk all the way in! The mud felt nice against my legs, but slightly uncomfortable at my feet, just because I didn’t know how far it went or what was down there! We scooped up the mud and smothered it over the rest our body. It is definitely not a warm day today, and by no means warm enough for the beach, but the mud was actually warm!
Want to know a secret though? IT STANK SO BAD!! Here we are, the only two people in sight, covering ourselves in smelly mud! We couldn’t stop ourselves from laughing the whole thing was so funny! Half way through, someone walked past and I just tried to avoid eye contact!
We did it! We were covered from head to toe in mud! We carefully picked up our things, trying not to get them all muddy as well, and walked back along the board walk to the beach for the second stage of the mud path process: letting it dry in the sun! And yes, we did pass people on the way to the beach, and yes we did get funny looks! We passed a couple of locals though who we had a chat to and they were excited that we’d found the mud and given it a go, so at least we know it is a legit thing!
We stood down on the beach letting the sun do its thing and dry the mud on us!
As it dried, it formed a scaly pattern and looked all gross and funny!
I hadn’t thought to take my necklace off and when I looked down I noticed that the mud had somehow turned it all brown, it had stripped the silver from it and tarnished it! A quick message to Sam’s mum revealed it was all a-ok and could be fixed with a little toothpaste, phew!
A good while later (because the sun kept popping in and out of clouds) and the mud had now dried!
Time for stage three: Washing it off in the warm shallow sea!
We ran into the ocean and my first though was that the sea was definitely not warm! We got used to it fairly quickly, and floated in the water, rubbing the mud off. It was so much fun, the whole process and having a little swim!
It was so funny, it has to have been one of the best days!
We dried ourselves off and realised that the mud had stained my skin in places and that we both smelt from it! Hopefully not for too long!
We made our way back (now quite cold) along the beach and round the coast, back to town where our host was picking us up.
We drove back to Zadar past the world’s smallest church and she stopped to show us an Egyptian Sphinx! Zadar is the only place in Europe with a real Sphinx and they have no idea how it got there! It was fascinating and huge!
She dropped us back to the apartment and where we had a shower and (mostly) got rid of the smell from them mud! We did a bunch of washing because our swimmers and clothes from today stankkkk and we had to wash anyway so they went straight in! And last but not least, we got some toothpaste to my necklace and miraculously it shined it up to look brand new! The more you learn about toothpaste!
We had none other than burgers again for dinner, because they are just so good, and while we can get the ingredients for it we’re making the most of it! We then had an early night, exhausted from our day freckling in the mud!
It was such a fun day! It was just hilarious! The mud was so funny and so much fun, and Nin was a beautiful town and so much fun to explore!
Comments