Croatia Continued....

Once we left Dubrovnik we had two more stops in Croatia; the seaside city of Zadar and the Plitvice Lakes National Parks.

Zadar was a place I'd never even heard of, so once again like so many of the other stops, I had no idea what to expect, and like always I was pleasantly surprised.

As always I slept for most of the drive- at that stage of the trip (22 days in) everyone had a bad cough, and bus days meant that we could catch up on much needed sleep. We arrived in Zadar for lunch, and like always we had a walking tour of the centre of the town. We walked along the sea front and past the sea organ, which was amazing! It was a man-made sea wall, and in the side were holes that as the waves crashed against them it pushed the air up through the holes and made a really soft music note. I know that's not an amazing explanation, but I'm sure if you google it you'll get a proper idea of what i'm on about...

We then walked into the town and past some Roman ruins which I got very excited about, and when some other tourists asked what the ruins were I went into full classics geek mode, excitedly reciting what Kiki had just told us (a 1^st century BC Roman temple to Jupiter by Augustus). By the way the others all laughed at me when I told the people this, I realised that I was probably the only one that had actually paid attention to what Kiki had said... 

After the walking tour we were free to wander the town, so me and Phoebe found some air conditioning and wifi, and then wondered around the little streets, and somehow managed to find an amazing sweet shop which we obviously had to go into and buy some stuff. We then had a mission to find Phoebe some new jandals as she had worn through her ones and they had holes in the soles... Apparently none of the non-kiwi people had ever heard of this happening. They obviously didn't realise that jandals are our national footwear...

Our stop in Zadar was a short one, and we were soon back on the road to the National parks. 

We arrived at our campsite and set up as usual, and then had a free evening as we wouldn't be heading into the Lakes until the next day. A few of us helped Matty with dinner – cooking prawn crackers and trying to convince him to make a cookbook so when we went home we could pretend we know how to cook... That night was another one where we all sat and chatted until we finally went to bed, which was steadily becoming a lot earlier the further into the trip we got..

The next morning we got onto the bus and were driven to the National Parks! Kiki pulled some strings and managed to get us to skip the huge line to get in which was amazing! So then we started walking around the park, which was huge. Now you probably know that I hate bush walks and hiking and all that stuff, so I wasn't to sure how much i'd like it, but it was absolutely stunning! It probably helped that everyone I was were hilarious so it kept my mind off the fact that I was on a probable four hour bush-walk...

Now there's not a lot I can write about walking around this place, so as usual I'll just show you a load of pictures of it!!

Matty knew how to keep us happy - french toast for breakfast!

Literally the first grey sky in the whole trip, we didn't know what to do!

I was pretending to be happy about walking a lot. I think I pulled it off!

That night, once we were back at camp we were all knackered, so it was another relaxed night, just this time with a few drinking games added. I joined in, but instead of actual alcoholic drinks, I had iced tea... And I'm so happy that I did because it was actually hilarious!

Sorry about the bad quality, but I just liked the memory :)

And that was our last day in Croatia! It was such an incredible country and I want to go back so badly! But there were still so many stops on our tour!

Next up: Budapest!!