Ciao a Tutti,

I am currently back in Roma until my flight to Dublin tomorrow morning. We (Amber, Margie, Em, and I) got into Roma yesterday. Croatia was (is) amazing, but we were all glad to be back here. It feels like home now, which is sad because soon we will all have to leave it.

Anyhoo … about Croatia:
Croatia is a crazy place. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but very different from the other parts in Europe that I’ve been too. Our ferry over was not as bad as I was expecting, the boat turned out to be like a low budget cruise ship. There was a restaurant which served bad food (I ordered “fresh” fruit and got a bowl full of canned, sweet, chunky, mildly fruit flavored thingies), we had a sink in our cabin to wash up in, and a duty free store which sold cigarettes, booze, and chocolate. But we still had a lot of fun running around the decks outside and watching movies on Amber’s laptop.

We got off the first ferry in Split, and then took a second to Havar, one of the cities on one of the larger islands off of Croatia’s craggy coast. We didn’t have a place to stay lined up before hand, but that is because in Croatia the most common and economical form of lodging is through private rentals, not hostels or hotels. Once we stepped off the boat we were completely bombarded by people offering us places to stay; it is overwhelming really, they kind of bum-rush you and you just have to go with who ever you think makes the best offer. We ended up going with Luca who had an apartment over his residence that he rents out. He took us, in his van, from the ferry docks into Havar. The scenery was beautiful (poppy covered mountain sides, small vineyards, and beautiful coastlines), but we were all too scared by Luca’s manic driving to really enjoy it. The apartment turned out to be really nice. There were two bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a kitchen. The rooms were light and airy, both had balconies with a great view of the sea. We were just about a 5 – 10 minute walk from the downtown area. And it was really inexpensive; we paid in Kuna (7 Kuna = 1 euro) so the exchange rate was in our favor for once.

Havar is beautiful; it was my favorite town in Croatia. It was clean and looked like it was fresh out of a fairy tale movie set: beautiful stone work, reddish orange tiled roofs, balconies overflowing with flowers, and intricate churches. The town was built up the mountainside, at the top are the remains of an old castle, and at the bottom is a harbor filled with yachts and all kinds of boats. By the harbor is a small piazza lined with shops and restaurants. The whole island smelled of lavender and sea spray, two smells which remind me of my mom. The first day we just walked around, ate, and tried to soak it in. The next day we packed lunches and rented a little speedboat for the day (actually is was more of a sort-of-quick boat, than a speedy one). The island we were on is just one in a string of smaller ones, the furthest away in this cluster was just 35 minutes or so. We tooled around the islands; sun bathed, dodged the bees, and played in the tide pools all day. It was perfect, one of my favorite things that I’ve done. The water was completely clear, the reefs and the bottom were perfectly visible. All of the islands were really green with rocky shores; it was such a nice day.

The next day we decided to go to Dubrovnik, one of the larger cities. To get there we had to take a Ferry back up to Split, and a four-hour bus ride down to Dubrovnik. It was a long day. At the bus stop was got attacked by people renting rooms again, we ended up going with one lady, Lina, who was renting two rooms for 65 Kuna a person (less than 10 euro). She was nice, but this time the rooms were in her home, right next to the kitchen where the whole family spent a lot of their time. So it felt a little odd. There was Lina, her three children, her husband, and the two grandmas; I don’t think the grandmas liked us very much. But we didn’t spend much time there, so it wasn’t a problem. It was interesting actually to stay with a family and get some first hand experience with how people from other cultures live.

Lina’s house was about a 20 to 30 minute walk from the “old city.” The old city is just that, the oldest part of the city built hundreds of years ago, still enclosed by the old castle/fortress walls. It was incredible actually. The old city started (I think) as a fortress. It was built right on the water, with a huge harbor and a “sandy” (i.e. very rocky and pebbly) beach just outside the walls. The walls are HUGE, stone, heave, and very formidable. Inside the town was built haphazardly (like most medieval cities), with rambling alleyways, tangled streets, buildings crowded right on top of one another, and some open piazzas. It was very cool. It was easy to imagine how it must have once been. It was a romantically beautiful place. The first night we just walked around and checked out the local pubs. The second day we spent at the beach. The Croatian coastline is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Little, green islands dot the horizon, and the sea is a deep turquoise. The coast is actually quite mountainous, so the effect is very visually stimulating, wooded mountains and green hills marching strait into the sea. The third day we walked the walls. In total the walk around is two kilometers, lots of stairs, but the view is amazing. On one side of the city the walls raise directly out of the sea, the mountainside dominates the other side. The city has grown considerably, and so much of the mountain is developed, but the rest of it is covered in pine trees. From the top of the walls you also get a birds eye view of the city inside, a maze of small streets and orange tiled rooftops.

Croatia is an interesting place. There was such beauty, and such rich history, but also evidence of the violent war, which ended less the ten years ago. So only children eight years old and under don’t have some sort of first hand memory of the conflict. Many people are still rebuilding parts of their homes, and everyone can point out where the snipers were located in the hills, scary stuff. But everyone seemed really happy and peacefully now. The Croatians were intense when you talked to them, but happy nonetheless.

It took us two ferries, a bus, a train, and the metro to get back home in Rome. Croatia was wonderful, the kind of peaceful get away we needed after finals. I would love to go back some day, but it still feels really good to be back in Italy.