Cruising and Road Tripping Croatia

We finally made it to our long awaited cruise of the Croatian Islands. Over 7 days we voyaged from Split to Dubrovnik and back, making stops along the way at various ports and swimming places. The four of us were super excited, and then we found out that crazy kid Tony would be joining us too. Wow. So our posse, including new friend Peter Johnson, partied our way through Korcula, Hvar, Mljet national park and others.

The highlights:

-The organiser at the port asking Nick if he was Tony Beecroft... busted tobes!
-Playing Twister and limbo on the roof of the boat
-Jumping off the boat, especially at midnight

-Floating on our beloved lilos, especially the HMAS Ladyboy (don't ask how much Tony paid for his...) and traipsing them through the old town of Dubrovnik to our favourite outside the wall bar (where we were met with rough seas unlike our last placid visit..)

-Ice cream in Dubrovnik - especially kates free birthday icecream - 20 scoops!?
-Fresh Bar Dubrovnik and their cocktail towers
-Eating mexican at Chiuauas in Dub for kates bday - excellent sangria! pipe down chachi!
-Jane and I talking our way onto a luxury cruiser in Hvar
-Making enemies with the rival busabout boat - Lab-ra-DOR!
-Hvar in general!

view from Hvar castle

-The long straws at a Mikaska nightclub
-The party shirt
-Scotty's ˝silverback˝ dance
-So much seafood!!
-After breakfast naps, followed by pre lunch naps, then after lunch naps, and pre dinner naps...
-Captains dinner dressed in our (tony's) best shirts and ties, only to be greeted by a captain who wasn't planning to attend, in a dirty polo shirt. Later followed by a round of coin up the kyber and dancing in the dark!
-Norwegians (ask the girls)
-Getting awesome mediterranian tans...

Captains Dinner dressed in our finest, with Nick in the party shirt. Nice krevat Tony.

The Lowlights:

- Black risotto. Completely overrated.
- Eating too much food on the cruise - but it sure was delicious!
- Diesel fumes in our cabins
- Seasickness and even worse, seasickness tablets that make you drowsy
- Unfortunate wet and windy weather for 2 days straight and getting stuck in Dubrovnik

On our return to Split we watched the Eurovision contest (sadly from our beds - so exhausted!). Azerbijian you rock! Wow some acts are amazingly bad aren't they?!

We bussed it north to Zadar with the girls, where we discovered the apparently world famous one and only water organ on the shores (eh).

From Zadar we hired a car and made our way up toward Rijecjka (where we would train it to Slovenia) over a few days, stopping in many cute seaside old towns.

Senj harbour at sunset

The highlight of Northern Croatia was without a doubt their national park - Plitvici Lakes. The water here was an amazing aqua colour, we did a beautiful hike/train ride/boat ride that took us from the top of the lakes down about 7 levels of waterfalls. Highly recommend a visit here!

Our last night in Croatia was spent in Opatija which turned out to be very snazzy, with lots of hotels along the waterfront. Nick claims to have eaten the best pizza of his life here.

Now we are in Slovenia - will write about our time here at a later date - but i have to say, it's competing for the best country in the world title as we speak. Ljubljiana was awesome, Lake Bled is stunning and we went canyoning today, going rafting tomorrow... you get the gist!!