Day 16: Split to Dubrovnik

Ok- I kind of wanted to save this until the end, but here is a little rant about the place we were staying in Split. Despite what we'd heard about how easy it is to find private accommodation, we decided to book a hostel instead, just until we figured stuff out.

We ended up at "Al's Place"- a hostel run by a CRAZY ass British dude, who works about 2 hours a day running the hostel, but is totally stressed out by it. At first, it was kind of hilarious. By the last day of our trip, having been yelled at about not turning off lights when we were still standing in the doorway, and getting ranted about for wanting to use the computer, we were over it.

So, we were kind of happy to get out of the hostel in the morning and head to Dubrovnik, a coastal town at the very very bottom of Croatia, near the border of Montenegro.

The bus was kind of crazy- thankfully I slept through it, but it was 4.5 hours of winding roads around the coast. Nice views, but definitely extremely windy. If you plan on doing this trip, definitely make sure you bring Dramamine, or maybe consider the 12-hour boat trip instead.

We arrived in Dubrovnik and decided to go for some adventure and pick up accommodation when we arrived at the bus terminal. It was insane. There were like, 200 people there trying to hawk their rooms and apartments. We settled on one girl, although were followed by 2-3 others trying to give us our sales pitch. Seriously, it was kind of crazy.

We followed this girl down the road, once we'd agreed on a price (which PS, was a lot cheaper than Al's Place hostel, AND we had our own apartment, with a kitchen and bathroom, and separate places to sleep). We were basically hoping we wouldn't get ripped off, since we were just following this girl to a random place we hoped wasn't a shady apartment.

It turned out to be SUPER cute! It was actually the apartment next door to the girl's grandmother, who is adorable, and is in the process of refurbishing the place. Everything is brand new, super clean, and we have it all to ourselves. A great choice, kind of wish we'd considered it in Split, but at least now we have a lot of funny Crazy Al stories.

We were kind of tired last night, so after moving in, went grocery shopping and then walked down to old town- which was very cool. Dubrovnik is a really old walled city that was thankfully not destroyed too much during the Balkan war in the 1990s. Apparently the Serbs wanted to "take it whole" so they did their best to avoid bombing the impressive old walls and churches.

After walking around for a bit, we headed home to cook dinner and enjoy the soccer game in the comfort of our very own living room, with a bottle of cheap wine. Couldn't have been more perfect, although Croatia lost a really really difficult game to Turkey, and you could practically hear the neighbors crying (Croatia scored with 1 minute left in the second half of overtime, and 55seconds later, Turkey scored and the game went to penalty kicks. Turkey killed it.)

Yay Croatia- and yay cute old ladies with cute apartments for cheap.