Trip to the land of the Croats.

A few weeks ago, the roomies, Mechthild and I hopped on good ole ryanair and headed over to Zadar, Croatia.  So worth it.  Eastern Europe is just so great, I need to spend more time there before they all fall into the euro-zone.


Mechthild flew there with us, but then immediately left to go stay with her niece in Split, which is a few hours away by bus.  Zadar is a town on the coast, with a walled old town that is on this small peninsula.   It really wasn't that big, but it was kind of nice because we could walk around like we knew what we were doing after just a few hours.  It has lots of pretty cool ruins from the romans (I think) everywhere which was cool too.  Apparently some of it got flattened in WWII, and again in the '90's though... Here are some ruins and old buildings:

We got there at night (which I always love, 'cause it is always a nice surprise in the morning), and while we were wandering around trying to find the hostel we had booked, I noticed an old man looking at us strangely.  He then came up to me and said: "you are Americans" I said "yeessss" and he says "ok" and starts walking with us!  In the meantime we're all like "what the hell, get this crazy bum away from us"... So after a while of confused walking, it all came together when he started showing us the hostel.  Still kind of crazy though!  The place was more like a guesthouse thing (pretty nice actually, and cheap!) so it had no marking whatsoever (also it wasn't where he said it was on the map).  Instead of telling us this, he just goes out and finds the Americans in Zadar! I thought it was pretty funny...

So the first day, I had wanted to make a day trip to the Plitvice Lakes, which is this pretty famous national park with lots of cool lakes in the mountains.  David and I got up early, but unfortunately the off-season bus schedule didn't give us enough time.  I was pretty disappointed, but it just gives me another reason to go back!  We decided to hop on a ferry to go check out one of the neighboring islands instead.  It was really nice to be somewhere warmer by the way... with sun and the ocean!  It was a good break from rainy and cold Brussels.  Anyway, when we got to the other island, there weren't really any attractions or anything, so we just said, "hey, want to just see if we can walk to the top of the island? sure." And hike to the top of the island we did.  It was so worth it to just be sitting on top of the ferry, but  being out of the city and hiking around in some nature just felt so good.  Oh, and the views were amazing!  We walked around and explored alllllll daaaaaay.

Ok, so now about the sea organ.  On the waterfront in Zadar they have this thing called the sea organ, that is the first of its kind and was built by an artist-engineer duo.  Basically there are some holes in the steps that the ocean water moves into, pushing air through an organ and out some other holes.  It was really great.  It was so nice to just sit on them and listen while watching the ocean (or even better, sunset!).  Here is a pic and a video:

The second day, Katie wanted to go on the ferry so we did that again and just hung around relaxing.  There was also this sail boat event happening that day, so that was fun to watch.  Also, we got to experience the famous Zadar sunset... Apparently it was Alfred Hitchcock's favorite place in the world...  Turns out he knew what he was talkin about!  It was really amazing.  I definitely need to go back!