funny...

I was reading my blog today just to see what I have actually put and what i should have added...etc. Reading it makes it seem like we have not been gone for so long. Sometimes I think 4 months seems so long but it's really not. Reading it makes realize this. Just wanted to add that :)

hitch-hiking Croatia

04/26/2012 So, we decided to try hitch-hiking! We weren't going to tell my mom at first but then decided that it was probably a good idea just in case something did go wrong. She wasn't very please obviously. She asked "have you lost your fucking minds". (please excuse the language). We explained our plan and also decided if we couldn't find a ride by a certain time, we would take the bus. We started at 830 and were picked up by 910! We were dropped off about 5 miles down the road. We were hungry so pulled out the meat and bread to make sandwiches. As I was making them, so no eating. we were picked up about 20 mins after arriving by 2 electricians going to work. They brought us about 30 mins south to a town called Omis. We stayed in Omis for a little and walked around and took pictures, it was a really cute town! The whole day it was windy and cloudy. I thought it was going to start pouring at any moment. It never did though! That was mother nature giving us a break for the day! While were waiting at the bus stop for a ride a young girl, probably in her teens was watching me stick my thumb out as people drove by. She probably thought we were crazy thinking we wanted to catch a ride. I only think this because of the way she was looking at us. Lol. I think she was in shock when about 30 mins later, a Bosnian man pulled over and said he was going to Mostar! That was about half way to where we needed to go, Dubrovnik! So, we jumped in. He couldn't speak much English and we don't speak Bosnian lol so, it was an interesting car ride to say the least! He put his Adele CD on and we all just listened to that for an hour and a half! It was great! He pulled over twice at sightseeing points so I could take pictures. I thought that was very kind. He dropped us off in front of a cafe/pizzeria in the middle of no where!!! It was close to the Bosnian border and we weren't going to Bosnia, so he kind of had no choice! We walked into the cafe and spoke to the couple in the cafe, asked if we could use the restroom and asked where on earth we were! Lol! We spoke for a little, explained what we were doing. They offered is coffee, very nice gesture since our Damn host had us running out the door and we hadn't even eaten yet! We enjoyed the coffee and decided we walk around the area for a bit, it was beautiful. They told us we were in the middle of the Bacina Lakes. Such a wonderful location to be dropped off!! The couple let us leave our bags and we went around and took pics and enjoyed the surroundings. When we decided to leave, I thought I would try to make the sandwiches again, as I began, the man in the cafe said he was going south and would bring us as far as he could. Lol, so no eating again. He dropped us off literally in the middle of no where. There was just a gas station near by and some cafe (i think). We stood there for a bit until we realized we were at the split for the highway for Bosnia and Croatia. People didn't know where we were trying to go. We had someone ask if we were going to Bosnia. So, to make things easier we just walked about 2 miles down the road and waited. About 15 mins later we had 2 Turkish guys (about our age) say, "hi, Dubrovnik". We asked if they literally meant Dubrovnik or just close to it. They responded with "city center"....and we were all off! They didn't speak English so well but we were all able to communicate. They were on vacation for 10 days and doing a road trip through Croatia. They brought is down and dropped us off in the city center. We exchanged personal info so we could all stay in touch in case we made it to Turkey, we could contact them. Danielle and I walked around, looked for a CS host. My request was set for the following day since I didn't think we would make it in one day let alone, in half the day! We went to a bar and looked for hostels. After a while we decided to take a walk. While walking around, we ran into the Turkish dudes. They asked what we were doing, we told them we weren't sure yet. They said we could sleep in their car with them. So, we did! Lol! Danielle and I sprawled out in their back seat and woke up the next day fully rested and hit the town. We saw a lot of cool things. We went into the first pharmacy in Europe! It was neat! Later that day, the guys asked if we had any plans or if we wanted to join them that night and head back North and go to Plitvice National Park. That is the one place in Croatia we actually wanted to go! It was perfect! So, we went :) The drive that night was great, I slept. Danielle can't sleep in cars with other people driving so she stayed awake the full 7 hours. The guys just switched out when they were tired. We made it by 5ish. And pulled into a rest stop and we all slept some more. In the morning we took off the to park! I have been to some awesome national parks but that park was unbelievable! There was ferry we had to take to cross the river. When we got off on the other side, it was like heaven! There were waterfalls everywhere!! I was picture happy for sure! I am not sure if I will ever see anything like that again! Big waterfalls, small waterfalls, cascades coming from every direction. Danielle trips about 5-10 times a day, no joke. So, of course she was bound to trip while in the park and that she did. Only think is that she fell into a hole full of mud. It was gross ans funny all at the same time! There were tiny bridges that connects people from one side of a waterfall to another. And millions, yes millions of steps made of planks of skinny wood used as stairs. It's like something you see in a movie that you think they added special effects! Just amazing! Remember Everyone: Plitvice National Park! Get there at some point if you can! It's amazing! It eventually started to rain but kept going a bit further and then started making our way out. What a wonderful way to spend a day :) We left after that to head towards Zagreb. Zagreb is the capital city of Croatia. First we needed gas. We barely had enough to make it another 20 miles, if that. The closest gas station or petroleum office as the Turkish guys called it lol...was over the Bosnian border. No problem, just cross, get gas and come back to be on our way. Yes, in a perfect world that would be the way the story would go but not with us. The craziest things go on sometimes and I just wonder if these types of things happen to all people, seriously. Lol. So, let explain the back story so you know what was going on. The guys we were with are from Turkey and had taken a plane into Zagreb about 1 week prior. We are 2 American woman and had taken a ferry from Italy 4 days prior. Somehow though we were all together in a rented car trying to cross the Bosnian border. Ok, so we get to the Croatian booth, they are ok, stamp us and we go to the Bosnian booth. They weren't so ok with it all. They asked us to pull over after siting there for 5 mins. I knew none of us were criminals because we had all had our passports checked already going to Dubrovnik (so I knew they weren't criminals or anything). We pulled over and sat there for 10 more mins. Finally some man came over and started speak Bosnian, asking questions. None of us speak the language. The guys could respond with a few words they did know but it didn't get us very far. We tried to explain that we were almost out of gas and the closest station was over the border. The man told the guys to ask Allah for more gas and that maybe we wouldn't have a problem. Not very nice. The man just laughed and walked away. About 5 mins later another man walked up asked the same questions and finally gave us our passports. We crossed got gas and cane back. Then had the same damn problem coming back in. Like, the dude from earlier couldn't have told his college what was up?! They saw the tank before and now it was full, its a miracle! No, we really got gas! Danielle made a joke. They asked why we were coming into Bosnia together so many times, she said we should tell them take we came to Europe and decided of all places that Bosnia was the place for us! We were laughing hysterically! I think it made the guys nervous that we kept laughing. The whole situation was ridiculous though. Fine, going in question it. But coming back 20 mins later. Check the car or do something then, don't just make us sit there, it made no sense but it was funny. So, we got to Zagreb and we are now at a hostel in the middle of nowhere. Literally in the country side! It's wonderful though!! We took a day to do nothing! Today we did laundry and some more of nothing and tomorrow we will go into the city and see Zagreb! That's about it. Miss you all! Xoxo

Pictures from:
Split
Dubrovnik
Plitvice National Park

Back to Bordeaux and beyond...

04/06/2012
The week in Bordeaux went well. I didn't write last while in town, just spent my time with my family. It was wonderful to see them. We will be gone for a bit longer this time and I'm glad we had the chance to go back now. Danielle was able to get her contacts (or her eyeballs as I call them. We both switched out our clothes in preparation for spring and summer! We have about 2 weeks left and we will be on 4 months and counting that we have been gone! Time is flying by! Seeing people in Bordeaux that we met the first time we were there was very nice and great to share stories with them. It was especially nice to speak with Charlotte, as I already mentioned in another blog. Just sit there, eat cheese, drink wine, smoke and talk for hours. That was the best time I do have to say. She is an amazing woman and a wonderful mom/wife. Louis is very lucky to have met her! They are lucky to have met eachother! Well, we spent our time in Bordeaux and left to Milan on Wednesday the 4. We are officially illegal lol! Only by a couple of weeks. I figured this would happen (we would stay past our 3 months). We are leaving Italy in 2 weeks and heading for Croatia for this reason. Croatia isn't part of the Shengen agreement, we just realized! So we plan on spending at least 1 month there, since we have to be out for 3 months. The pictures I have seen of the country are just incredible!! The next few months will be very exciting, there are many amazing places we plan on going. The temples built into the rocks and ground in Jordan and the beaches and cascades in Croatia are what I am most looking forward to. Israel will be enjoyable for many reasons. We are planning on taking a ferry over to Croatia unless we can find a cheap flight. At this point taking a flight out of a Shengen country is taking a risk. So, we are going to try not to :) currently, we are on a 5 hour train ride through Italy going from Milan to Florence. It's an amazing trip!! Great views! We are taking the trip during the day this time, so we can see Tuscany and the surrounding regions on our way. We are going back to Giuseppe and Vincenzos home. Jenny will be there too! She moved back to her home town on the island of Alba since she couldn't find a job in Florence. We have created a great friendship with them and I am thankful we met them via CS. We all clicked very well from the beginning and its a wonderful chemistry. Even with the language barrier, it doesn't limit our conversations or ability to share great food and times out together. It's wonderful! It's a type of relationship that I have never had with anyone else before (with the language barrier and all). I'm going back to sleep :) im going to wake up when we hit Tuscany. Miss you all! Xoxo

04/12/2012
We left Florence and spent a few days in a small seaside town called Livorno. Our host here is very cool! He speaks Japanese and Italian fluently and a little English. We all manage to communicate just fine though. He has 2 apartments in town and he lives in his home in the country side outside of Livorno. His homes are beautiful! The apartments are are very well designed inside and he has a stereo system set up so you can hear the music you play in the living room throughout the entire place! It's the coolest set up I have ever seen! His home in the country side is gorgeous! He has it completely renovated to accommodate parties with over 50+ people! It's impressive! His grill is the biggest I have ever seen! Danielle took a picture of it. You can roast about 3-4 full size pigs on the grill, its that big! We had seafood spaghetti last night. It's the first time we have had seafood in Italy and I was very happy with the dinner! Today we are all going to Pisa to see the leaning tower and then to the port. That should take up most of the day :) I think we will BBQ tonight! Second time that we will have had a BBQ since leaving home. Gosh, I'm excited for that! Well I have to finish getting ready for my day out! Miss you all! Xoxo

04/17/2012
We are on the train heading to Alcona, Italy. We will be taking a ferry later today to Croatia. We are going to a city named Split. It's the second biggest city in Croatia. It's located on the coast and from the pictures, it appears to be absolutely breathtaking! They don't use the Euro there instead they use a currency called the Kuna. It's about 75 Kuna for €10. They speak Croatian, which sounds similar to Arabic and their official religion is Roman Catholic. Lol the mix of all of this makes me wonder what type of a feel you get being there. Sitting here writing I just looked out the window and all I see are the green rolling hills of Tuscany. My goodness do I hate the idea of leaving Italy. I absolutely love it here. It really sucks to leave. I have moved a lot in my life and I have lived in many different places but leaving here is not like any other feeling I have ever had, not even leaving home for this trip. I think thats because I assumed I was going home after we were done traveling. I'll stop talking about how much I'm going to miss Italy now lol...it makes me sad to talk about. I love the Latin countries! Ugh! So, I made grilled cheese yesterday for Danielle, Jenny and I. It was delicious! I used Swiss and asiago cheese! Mmmmm...it came out very well! We had spritz and sausages on the side :) We stayed up super late last night because we figured we could sleep on the trains today lolololololol! I should know better by now! When we are traveling all day I get tired anyways so I figured it wouldn't matter how much sleep I got. It does. But its a bit late to go back and change that now.

04/19/2012
Well, my o my have we had a few very interesting days!... I have never dreamed it. Have you ever dreamed a night like this...its the chorus to the song I'm listening to right now. A song from Caro Emerald. I love the song, nice beat! So, let's get back to the story of the last few days! Lol! We arrived and realized we didn't have enough money on us to purchase our tickets, the research I did was only for tickets purchased online. Now, we didn't know this at first so we had my mom put enough money in our account and money to last a few days for food, etc (for once we got to Croatia). At this point we figured we could still leave that night to Croatia. We got the money and went to the port. Getting there was fun! We got lost on the buses in one of the smallest cities we have visited yet! For some reason they have double lines for each individual line itself, both going to different parts of the city. Let me explain, the sign to the center was bus 1/4 (who uses numbers like this for bus numbers first of all). The sign explained which stops like a normal sign does. So, we got on. Then we made it all the way to the end of the bus line and realized everything was getting off, so we did too. We asked where the bus that was going to the center was located and the driver pointed at another 1/4 bus, so we got on it and thought for a brief moment that maybe there was some switch or something, just to get to the center. The bus took off and we noticed fairly quickly that it was going right back to the train station. At this point it was around 4pm. We had only a couple more hours before the ferry left. So, we made it back to the station. Tried taking the same bus again, thinking we just missed the center and didn't notice it. Lol...we were wrong. We finally decided to get off at a stop half way from the station and just figure it out from there since it seemed like a big bus stop area. When we did that, Danielle was bombarded by elderly people and couldn't get off the bus in time so she kept going. Hahaha this is now the 3 time we have been separated due to public transportation. I knew what to do this time and I stayed put. She eventually made her way back to me! So, we finally figured out with help from an old Italian woman which bus we needed to take and we were off. Once we arrived in the center, we realized that it wasn't going to be so easy to find WiFi to contact my mom to say we needed more money. But we tried. To make this story shorter, 3 out of the 4 bars that are "free WiFi", didn't have access for one reason or another. By the time we found WiFi, we had missed the ferry. So, we decided to hang at a cafe and have a coffee. We didn't want to waste $ on a hotel for 1 night, since the cheapest hostel was 18€!! That's pretty expensive for those of you who don't know. We decided to hang at the train station for the night, get up in the morning, see some more of the city and just leave. That was the plan until I went online and realized the next ferry going out at the price we wanted wasn't for 2 more days. At that point, we just decided to take that price in 2 days and we figured we would just rent a hotel room or hostel. Wouldn't be a problem...that's what we thought...in our minds, which forget about reality at times. We bought the tickets, which are non-refundable due to the low price they are purchased at. Then we went to look for a room for the next 2 nights and I put up requests on Couchsurfing. We discovered immediately that ALL the hotels and the only hostel in Ancona were completely booked for the next 3 days because of some big military event occurring in the next day or two. So, we went to the station that night. We ended up meeting some really cool guys who worked at the train station and we all had conversations about all sorts of things. We all really clicked! They invited us to Porto Nuovo the following day and said they would bring us around and show us the coast. We had a blast the next day! It was one of the most beauty coast lines I've ever seen! I took so many pictures! That night we went to see if any hotels "maybe" had an extra room since we didn't want to sleep at the station again! Nope they didn't BUT, one hotel, Hotel Fortuna allowed us to sleep in their back lounge since they knew our situation and didn't want us going back to the station. The station was fine, at least it was warm. Just a lot of homeless people and kind of sketchy. We even offered to pay just to sleep in the lounge. They just let us rest on the couch. In the morning, we met the guys one more time for lunch on the coast in another city near by and we went to several other cafés and pastry shops along the way. It was a great ending to our time in Ancona. Even with the circumstances of our sleeping arrangements, Danielle and I had an amazing time in Ancona because of these men! They brought us to so many neat places and great restaurants! So, we were on the ferry that night off to Ancona. Getting through customs was insane! I'm not sure if describing what happened can be incriminating to me, but I want to share our experience! So, we were 3 weeks past our date of having to leave Shengen countries. Ok, so because we "were" 3 weeks past our date of having to be out of Shengen countries Danielle and I were a little scared to go through customs just incase they did check. Although anyone you ask will tell you, they don't check Americans. But that's the right attitude to have, so we were scared. We walk up to the customs booth and see 3 men inside. Now we are freaking...one of them may check. We turn the corner and the entire is lined with customs officers!! I almost had a heart attack! We haute sat and smiled and didn't say a word. They took the passports, stamped them and let us on our way. They didn't even look to see when we came in! People are right I guess :\ its still not a good feeling. All it takes is one person who wants to actually do their job and we would have been a bit screwed! Anyways, we ande it to Ancona the next morning. I remember riding the overnight train from Granada, Spain to Barcelona, Spain and waking up in the morning on the rain, riding the coast on the edge of the cliffs. Watching the waves hit the sides of the cliffs and seeing the sun rise was one the best mornings of my life. It was wonderful. Well, this ferry ride tops that. Only a little :) I woke up to the sun rising on the hundreds of islands off the main land in Croatia. It was one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. Really. I took soooo many pictures! I know I can't capture what I saw with pictures alone but it helps! So, we arrived in Ancona and started our mission to find WiFi and a cheap hot cup of coffee. We found both pretty quickly! It took us about an hour to find a place but we did! I think being in Italy so long made us forget the rest of the world does use and offer WiFi in public places! That's one downfall about Italy, technology sucks there. Not sure why. I figure since they get so many tourists they would shapen up. So, we put out some Couchsurfing requests or look for hostels and let my mom know we were still alive and kicking! I wonder what she will think if she ever reads this blog! There is so much we don't tell her because we don't want her to worry...lol...hopefully she will read this in years to come and not now! One of our requests was answered 30 mins after I sent it! We made the plans to meet that evening and Danielle and I were off to see the city for the day! We eventually found a hostel that allowed us to drop off our backpacks for a few hours (free of charge). I will not pay to have someone watch my bag of clothes!!! It's clothes!! Not some valuable shit! We always make a joke that if they loose our stuff it will be ok...lol! I just think its dumb, just let us put our bags down, if somethings happens it happens. If not, then we still have our stuff. I have learned very slowly that my personal belongings have no value. My passport and camera maybe haha but everything else can go, if it had to. After having to toss pajama pants (at the airport in Barcelona) that I paid $50 for and other items, I have realized that clothes and other things CAN be replaced even if you don't think so at that moment. Ok, so we dropped off our bags at this cool hostel and went walking down the boardwalk in Split. It's a wonderful place, reminded me a lot of south beach. The set up was very similar. We kept walking towards this really big hill and walked up it until we realized it turned into a small mountain pretty much. Lol. At that point we were so far up we just decided to keep going. We had some amazing views of the city! We met a woman who was on vacation with her parents, they were from Colorado. Very nice lady. We spoke for a while and laughed a lot. It was nice to speak to an American for a while :) Our CS host was a bit off. We didn't care for him. He kept making comments about us being American and every time we did something he would say "ugh Americans". We didn't feel so comfortable so we planned to leave earlier than we had said. He was nice just very short with us. I don't understand why you would have someone come to your home if you don't like the nationality they are. He could clearly see we were American on my profile. O well. He gave us a warm place to sleep. It disappoints me to meet people like that though. He really shouldn't do CS for this reason. You have to be really open to all cultures, religions, races, etc if you do CS. It's just part of the gig. The last day we were there he said we should be up by 730-8 so we could get ready, eat and leave. He said not worry about setting our alarms that he would wake us up. He woke us up at 8 and then said we had 5 mins to get ready before his friends were there to leave. I was pissed. That wasn't cool and he definitely did it on purpose to us. I was annoyed we listened to him. We should have set our own alarm. We had time to throw on our clothes and run out the door. It was ok though, we were away from him! Even though we stayed with an idiot our time in split was great!

Pictures from:
Milan
Porto Novo