Voyage du Rhéto : Croatia !

I began my trip to Croatia already quite tired from the Spain trip.  I had only gotten back from Spain on the afternoon of the 11th, and I left for Croatia less than 24 hours later.  On the bus that night (because it took about 20 hours to get there), I didn't manage to sleep any more than maybe 2 broken and light hours. About the same amount of sleep that I had on the bus ride back from Spain.  So out of three nights, I only had one decent night's sleep.  But I also realised that I was going through 8 countries in 72 hours.  That's just so unreal to me.  It started off April 10th in Spain, and finished the 13th in Croatia.  I was in Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia.  Who says that the Belgian exchange students don't get a real "EuroTour" ? :P 

We stayed in a hotel in Rabac.  It was really nice and in a wonderful location.  We had a five minute walk to the beach and not far from a bunch of touristy shops and cafés.  The hotel had a gym, 2 pools (indoor and outdoor) and everything was clean and tidy.  There were also various sport terrains.  Tennis, soccer, etc.  We were three people to a room.  I shared my room with Pauline and Polina.  They are fantastic roommates.  When we first arrived, we spent the afternoon around the hotel.  Each evening we had a meeting at 20:30 to go over the day, our options for the night, curfews, and the next day's events.  The options for the night ended up always being the same. 1) go to your room or hang out quietly in the common areas they had on each floor (our group was on floors 6 and 7), 2) go downstairs where the hotel had a dance organized.  3) go out to a café or the beach.  But no matter what we did, we had to be back in our rooms by 23:30.  I usually went out to a café because the dance wasn't much fun for me.  Aside from our group, everyone else in the hotel (or at least who were at the dance) were old german people.  So it wasn't really a young ambiance and I knew none of the songs.  

The first full day we had in Croatia (Saturday, April 14th), we went to visit the city of Pula.  Pula has an amphitheatre which is one of the sixth largest surviving Roman amphitheatres in the world.  There are a few other well-preserved ancient Roman structures like the Arch of the Sergii, the Temple of Roma and Augustus, and the Gate of Hercules.  We saw those important sites and then in the afternoon we had a lot of free time.  It was actually more free time than originally planned because I guess we were supposed to have another guided visit of something that ended up getting cancelled.  I went with a small group of girls who were out to do a little shopping.  I didn't end up buying anything until a couple of us split off from the other girls and met up with a group of the guys and I got an ice cream cone.  We just hung out with ice cream in a square for a while, but then we decided to walk down another street to see what they had there, and we met up with some other people and stopped at a café where free wi-fi was advertised.  The wi-fi ended up not working, but we spent some time just chatting together and it was nice.  Eventually we slowly worked our way back to the bus to go back to Rabac.  On the way we stopped and had caricatures done.  I had mine done with Autumn and Polina.  For the most part, they weren't actually that well done.  There were some people you could tell the guy tried to draw, but for the most part it wasn't extremely accurate.  By the time everyone was finished with their caricatures, we were all basically together in the same place and we walked back to the bus together.  But in a small park near the bus we came across a large picture frame with a bench in the middle, so of course we stopped to take tons of pictures in it.  

The amphitheatre known as the "Arena"

Arch of the Sergii

The Temple of Roma and Augustus

Unfortunately, not all of us are in this picture, but I think it's a good one anyway :) <3

On Sunday we went to the city of Poreč.  The rain we had to endure all day cancelled the plans we had to do a little tour on bike, so we did everything on foot instead.  Once again, the afternoon was free time, and a big group of 13 or so of us went out to have lunch together.  Most people got a pizza or pasta, and I had four cheese gnocchi.  It was very good, but it made me miss my Nonna's gnocchi, which is so much better.  After lunch, we walked around a little more and ended up finding a café where they claimed to have Belgian beer.  We got all psyched and went in, only to find out that they were out of stock.  We settled for Croatian beer and milkshakes.  

On Monday, our last full day, we were lucky enough to have very nice weather.  We visited the islands of Cres and Krk.  We had to go by ferry.  It's always a bit more windy on the water, so we were all thankful for the sun.  That day we had and organized lunch all together at a restaurant.  The appetizer was tuna, the main plate was squid and spinach with potatoes, and the dessert was tiramisu.  

Voila the squid. It was actually surprisingly good for how it looks! 

The ferry 

That evening we got back to the hotel and ate dinner.  After dinner we had a little bit of time before the 20:30 meeting.  Some people stayed at the hotel and chilled out for a bit, while others, like myself, went out to play some soccer.  I ended up playing a great game of frisbee.  There was a group of 10 of us and it was awesome.  We just played for fun, but we played hard.  When we went back for the meeting we were all sweaty and out of breath.
That night, our curfew was extended from 23:30 until 02:00! It was a great night.  There was a lot of laughing and fun and games down at the café.  In fact, I learned a new game called ding-ding, bottle.  It's a counting game.  Naturally, the game starts with 1, and you go around in a circle counting, everyone saying one number at a time.  But in the place of 5 and every multiple of 5, you have to say ding-ding.  If you say 5, 10 or what have you, you lose and then you have to start all over again from the beginning.  And in place of every 7, multiple of 7, or number ending in 7, you have to say bottle.  And every time bottle is said, a change of direction takes place.  So if you were originally playing in a clockwise order, you then switch and it goes counter-clockwise.  So if you say the number or fail to change direction, you have to start over again at 1.  When playing with more than 3 people it's actually so hard to get to 20.  I managed to get up to 40 with two other people.  But for the longest time when we were playing just three of us, we were always saying the same numbers because it was the same guy messing up every time at 27!  But it was great fun.

The next day we had to be out of the rooms by 10am, and we had free time in Rabac until we left at 3pm.  I spent most of my time on the beach.  On the bus on the way back I actually managed to sleep at night!  But the only way that was even possible was because I slept on the floor.  I shared a pillow with a friend and I stretched out on the floor and actually got some sleep.

I had an amazing time, and I'm quite sad that this is the last and only trip I am taking with this group of awesome people <3