Day 20 - 18/08/14 - Rijeka!

So me and Archie woke up early to get an even longer bus journey to the island the girl recommended which was 'Krk'. 

It seemed to take ages but we got there and disappointingly, couldn't find any space to lay our towels! We were baffled with how little 'beach' there was to offer, just rocks and slabs of concrete that lead to an almighty abrupt entrance to the sea. After a few minutes or so of walking about hopelessly we decided to ask at an information spot where the guy promised us 'long beaches', 'longest in Krk', 'long' being the key word here guys haha. And as we passed stretch after stretch of sea, with no beach that we understood to be, we carried on walking in hope we would find this 'long beach'. We went too far at one point and hurriedly turned around as we bumped into old naked couples (not our type of beach). This is what we settled for in the end:

                       

Lovely you might say, ungrateful you might think, BUT WHERE'S THE SANDY WHITE LONGGG BEACH?! To be honest, our spot was really decent and cool, looking back, just, not what we imagined. 

I can remember tucking into our tuna baguettes and massive share bag of salted crisps, with, not to mention, the packet of ritz crackers we'd also decided to purchase the previous day. OH and the pepsi! The now-warm-hint-of-lemon-peps! That I'd stupidly attempted to cool down in a rock-pool of sea water haha! It didn't work :( 

We must have spent hours lying here in the sun that never seemed to move. Jumping off the side of the rocks into a clear, blue, fresh, wavy (and extremely more salty than usual) sea. We took it in turns to use my goggles I had packed for our trip and watched all the little fishy swim beneath us. 

Once we felt we'd had our fair share of sun, we ever so carefully changed from our wet bikini/trunks and delicately placed our dry clothes on our salt-crystalized-skin. The weirdest feeling I've felt all over my body by the way. It hurt to brush any part of your skin against any part of material - be it a cotton wool tempur mattress baby bum - my goosebumps flinched at the thought. 

Walking back along the coastline we spotted a mediocre looking place to eat and sat down for some garlic spaghetti and muscles. The waiter was so kind and gave us two free postcards which I later sent one to my Nan and Archie to his Mom.

If I'm completely honest, I can't 100% remember what we got up to for the rest of the afternoon, but it most likely consisted of getting the bus back to our ranch, chilling out, falling asleep watching Rules of Engagement and continually turning the air con on and off throughout the night -
Night! x

Day 19 - 17/08/14 - Rijeka!

  

Can't actually believe it's almost been a year since we left for this trip and I've still not written every day up yet! Oops.. Just shows my commitment and dedication to doing this! Hehe... I am determined to finish it though as it will be a lovely memory for myself and Archie, one day haha.

So we woke up in the little town of Rijeka. We showered and headed towards the bus station to get our bus to the nearest beach called 'Kostrena'. We grabbed a bit of something for lunch from a Croatian equivalent of 'Greggs' and packed it away in our beach bags (equipped with towels and suncream!) 

First of all we weren't 100% sure which bus to get or even how to buy 1 admission on a bus here, it all seemed pretty confusing and the instructions that we were given by the locals wasn't too clear either... Eventually we managed to get off the bus at exactly the right stop and ended up at this marvellous place:

 

We pitched our towels up first of all in this little cove where we got chatting with a really friendly group of Croatians. This girl told us of how hard it was to get a job there and that she had qualified from university yet had been unemployed for 4 years. She sold postcards to get by and it was quite saddening to listen to what she had to say. On a lighter note though, she recommended for us to visit an island of Croatia called 'Krk' so we planned to go the following day and had a lovely time thanks to her :)

All sunned out after hours of sunbathing until too hot and having to dive into the sea to feel refreshed we decided to call it a day and head back to our apartment to chillax ... That was when we realised... We didn't know how to get the bus back!

I can remember sitting on the curb of the road where we got off the bus praying for a return one to pass by. We daren't move incase we missed it, but had no clue if waiting there would even result in a bus! Finally we made the clever decision to walk further up the road and find a bus shelter that just HAD to have a bus go by.

We had the loveliest lounge-about in the squigdiest of beds and watched a few episodes of 'Rules of Engagement' (which neither of us had ever seen before but loved - probably because it was a channel in English hehe).

We were also recommended to eat at a restaurant along the harbour called 'La Marina' by the kind woman earlier, so we gave it a go and were SO impressed - omg it was like the best food we'd had so far. Such fresh fish and delicate flavours!!! So we also got pudding (hehe)

Walking back 'home' we spotted the one thing Rijeka was famous for - a clock tower. Night xx

Day 18 - 16/08/14 - Rijeka!

I remember waking up dead early in the morning to the train guy ripping open the door to inform us we were 20 mins away. It was so hot and bright! I lent up on my elbow in my tiny space (you literally have like coffin-size amount of space on the night trains), wriggled on my jeans under the sheet and blanket that you're given as a quilt and queued for the water from the sink in the loos to brush my teeth. 

We had absolutely no clue where to walk from the station and also no idea where-abouts the town, our apartment, the beach ... ANYTHING was in this place. But we were here! In Croatia! For a sort of real relaxing, sun gorging, top up tanning beach holiday! We eventually (after like an hour's trek in the sun) found ourselves outside what we thought our apartment was. But - It wasn't, and neither was the next place - haha. And when we did actually get there, we must have waited an hour on top of that for the guy to turn up! What a bloody polava! 

To be honest though, the guy running this apartment was so sweet and funny it kinda made up for him being late. He tickled Archie's belly when he met him! 

Our room was pretty cool, we had a lovely double bed, wardrobe to actually HANG our clothes up, a TV, radio, (: AIRCON :) settee, desk, sweeties and a shared bathroom (only annoying thing really). 

The guy offered us more than enough towels to shower every day and go to the beach with, which was a lovely luxury as we'd been previously renting towels and putting own deposits for them too!

5 Lovely days of pure bliss! The weather forecast did show storms on our last 2 days, but even if it did tip it down it would just be nice to lounge about in this room!

So for our first day we set out for some brunch and a quick look around the place. We must have searched every single food place on the front and nowhere had even heard of this thing called 'breakfast'. In fact, the more we looked around the place, it seemed no Croatians ever ate out (other than McDonalds) They just drank out! 

When we had fueled up Archie really wanted to hunt for the beach and paddle in the sea, but we walked for ages right through the town and couldn't find anything :( Rijeka is just a harbour, not really any coastline in the town, you have to catch a bus to get to any beaches.

We finished our day with some dinner at a nice looking restaurant for some well earned grub - yumm! We hit the hay ready for a whole day at a nearby beach tmoz.

Day 17 - 15/08/14 - Salzburg!

So, day 17 of our Europe trip...

We woke up slightly hungover (some more than others), quickly got washed and dressed to set off to Graz in Austria. This was our original plan as Archie absolutely loves Arnold Schwarzenegger and Graz is where he comes from. There's a cool little museum where he used to live with loads of merchandise and memorabilia. HOWEVER - we missed a few trains that we were supposed to get in order to get to this place as Archie was far to poorly (severely hungover) to even step foot on solid ground, never mind a metro or high speed train haha! So unfortunately (luckily for me!) we missed out on seeing all Arnie's amazing shiz and had to change plans, fast, as we had no where to stay in Vienna and we'd already booked our apartment in Rijeka, Croatia for the following day.

I tried to use a bit of my German asking for train times etc to Graz and to book a night train to get to Croatia. The guy was a bit of a dick, admittedly, my German was terrible, but it looked like our only option was heading for Salzburg which was where the nighttrain left from at like 1am. It seemed like a good plan after we got over the disappointment of not seeing Arnie. I mean, it was famous for The Sound of Music, Mozart's birthplace, the Alps, traditional Austrian people and clothing - hopefully it would be better than what we thought of Vienna! After drowning our sorrows in a McDonalds cake and coffee, we hoped on a train for Salzburg!

Arriving into Salzburg, we passed gorgeous views of all the mountains. I'd never seen them before and was in awe! Archie's been skiing a fair few times so it wasn't as much of a shock to him, but they were green and grassy which I guess he's never seen before.

There was no real aim for the day, just to enjoy the sights and the feel of this country as we didn't really get to in Vienna - far too many tourists!! Damn them! Hehe... So we left our backpacks in a safe hold at the train station and set out for some lunch. We found a little band playing in a park and ate our food that we bought from a local shop.

After that we walked into the main town where we saw the prettiest clothe shops, buildings and scenery. It was the most picturesque place I've ever seen. We saw Mozart's birth house, got a selfie in a park from a scene in The Sound of Music, took the mick out of a horse fountain (also in Sound of Music) and tried a Mozart Chocolate - Yum!

A funny story that I'll always remember was when we went for some dinner at a little burger bar. I was so scared I was gonna get food poisoning - it was by far the most awful place I've ever eaten! And when I tried to complain they were unexpectedly rude! We walked away and I got a crepe instead from a hidden little shack :) Which was good timing too, because it started to tip it down - so we found shelter with my pancake hehe.













Me and Archie finished our day in Salzburg by checking out a few of their theatres, a really cool chair memorial by the main bridge and clocking on to an amazing idea for travelling - pennyboards! So next time, if there is, WE'RE GETTING SOME! Whilst waiting for our train we got talking to some English guys from Essex, and hours later it finally arrived.

Check out our cool night train! This time with a free box with toothpaste, soap and a toilet cover!