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!