Europe: Split

Welcome to Split, Croatia!

I had no idea what to expect when we hopped on the plane to Split. Chantelle did all the planning for the destinations, and spent days on Pinterest looking at interesting cities in Europe. I pretty much heard the summary of each day of research from her, but did not see the images or read the articles that she was seeing. When I thought of Croatia, I pictured an Eastern-European country that was like Russia, but smaller. Cold, flat, and people who all had crazy dash-cam videos. I was SO far off. 

We arrived at the Split airport in the afternoon, and it was blistering hot outside. After clearing customs, we hopped onto a charter bus that apparently took us into town with a bunch of other confused looking tourists. As soon as we started driving from the airport to the city, my perspective drastically changed. We were driving through a rural part of town, with every house having red-clay roofs, and little farms. With a mountain on our left, looking out the right window, past all of the farm-style homes we could see a beautiful city surrounded by water on all sides. It made me think of Vancouver because it was a city next to water, with a large forested park at the very end, just like Stanley Park. 

Arriving, we were instantly taken back by how vibrant this city was and how clear the water was. We walked along the main promenade to the sound of music and conversation from all the people eating at the restaurants right beside the bay. Our airbnb host was super helpful when we arrived, and gave us maps, and tips and tricks to seeing everything. We were a short walk from the Tower Square, so we started to walk!

Split's old town is beautiful. It first started off as the resting place for an emperor of Rome way back in the day and the city wall still stands surrounding everything. The cobblestone streets were filled with restaurants, farm markets, and everything else you could think of. There were a couple Game of Thrones shops, because I think that some of the show is filmed here? Our first full day we spent walking around this awesome town, and explored every small alleyway and shop. We finished our day by having dinner at the little restaurant fixed in this small square surrounded by stone walls and apartments. We decided to walk to a nearby beach to end the day, and spent some time falling asleep to the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks at our feet. 

Second day we made the trek to Krka National Park which has these beautiful waterfalls that you can enjoy. After taking forever to get there, we realized that this might be the busiest day in Krka history. It was so busy that we had to find a spot about 100ft from the water, and I didn't even end up swimming because it was chaos!! Besides the crowd, the place was definitely magical, and you could not deny that it was beautiful. An hour and a half both ways for travel had me a bit irritated, but whatever! We ended the day on a high note (literally) by climbing up the tower at the Cathedral of St. Domnius. The views of the city on the bay was beautiful! Wont lie, I was super sketched out being that high in a super old tower built of stone. The only thing that kept me calm was the amazing views and the camera that I used to hide my face as the wind picked up! The town at night is a pretty vibrant place and next to the Cathedral is this large square made of marble with steps that people sit on. At night this square is packed with people sipping on their drinks while this amazing performer sings songs that everyone gets into! The vibe was really amazing with hundreds of young families and people everywhere with gelato, food, and in good spirits. We stuck around and enjoyed the crowds for a bit, and then explored the town square with some more gelato before heading back for the night. 

Our third day in Split we decided to travel to one of the small islands you can get to by ferry called Brac. This ferry we took was the slowest boat in the history of all boats. We could see our destination the entire trip, and crawled there in 50 minutes, which should have been 20 mins at most. We learned to laugh at these kind of things, because if you have ever been to Split, you realize that public transportation is a very special entity in its own. After arriving to Brac Island, we took a charter bus up and over the small mountains, and arrived on the other side to this really cool beach that they call Zlatni Rat, or Rat Tail. It is this large beach out of smooth round river rocks that shoots out of the island, just like a rat tail! It was nice to get off our feet for a while and soak in our last day of swimming on the trip; Bittersweet. On the way back we caught a really nice sunset as the ferry was pulling into the small bay which was amazzzingg. 

Up next we are in the fairy-tale castle city of Prague. 

Europe: Santorini

This is going to be a LONG post, so I hope you are ready! 

We arrived in Santorini around 10:30pm on July 14th and were picked up by a taxi (proud to say, this was the only taxi we took our entire trip) to be driven to our hotel (also the only hotel we stayed in the entire trip). We LOVED our hotel! It was located about a 15 minute walk from Oia and had a delicious restaurant and an amazing swimming pool. The following day we walked into Oia and all my dreams came true! Greece has been the number one place in the world I have wanted to visit for a very long time, specifically Santorini. We were finally there and it was even better than I had imagined it would be.

The entire town was filled with white buildings, blue roofs, chapels, donkeys and much more all hanging off the side of a cliff with the Aegean Sea below. We spent the day walking through Oia, the tiny walkways nestled between chapels and authentic Greek homes were like nothing we have ever seen before. We stopped for lunch with a view and it was of course delicious. We continued to explore for the rest of the day and ended it with dinner perched up on a hill with an unbeatable view of the sunset. We heard that sunsets are a big deal in Santorini and it proved true when people flocked to the cliff side in this one part of Oia to watch it. A sunset we will never forget that's for sure.

The next day we hung out at the hotel for a bit by the pool and then caught a bus to Fira, a town about a 10 minute drive away. Fira was much like Oia BUT we both agreed we liked Oia much more. The one thing that we did love about Fira was that you could ride donkeys there! This is something I wanted to do from the start and was excited when I saw that you could ride a donkey down the cliff side then back up again. I felt a bit bad because it was excruciatingly hot outside but I was assured that this is what these donkeys do, they are used to transporting things and people. I couldn't stop laughing the entire time, just the thought that we were riding donkeys in Greece made me so happy (a little weird, I know). After the donkey ride we continued to wander Fira then decided to do the 3 hour hike along the Caldera from Fira to Oia. We started out around 6pm in hopes to catch the sunset along the way. The hike was incredible, we were alone most of the time and were able to soak in all the beauty to ourselves. Near sunset we realized that we were behind a mountain and needed to get to the other side if we wanted to see the sunset. We hiked HARD up that mountain, basically running uphill and made it just in time to watch the sunset from a tiny chapel perched atop. Again, a sunset we will never forget. We arrived at our hotel in Oia just as darkness fell around 9pm. We ate dinner at our hotel which far exceeded our expectations. 

The following day we rented a car and drove to the various beaches on the island. The only advice we got from the car rental company was "biggest car wins".... we were given the smallest car ever. Santorini isn't really known for it's beaches as the water isn't the warmest and the waves are typically pretty strong but we explored them all anyways. We drove to Perissa Beach, Kamari Beach, and Red Beach. We then drove back to Oia and walked down to Amoudi Bay for dinner. On our walk down we started chatting with another couple who was travelling from Australia. They were so kind and invited us to join them at the restaurant they had reservations at the bottom. We gladly accepted and enjoyed a night with our new friends. We ate and drank and talked and laughed all with the sun setting next to us in the Bay, which for those of you who have seen Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, it was totally where it was filmed. We hung out late into the night with our new friends then finally ventured back to our hotel as it was late and we were heading to Croatia the next day! I am so thankful we visited Santorini and already ache to go back as it was literally a dream come true for me. 

Europe: Italy

We arrived in Meta, Italy on July 9th after being dropped off on the side of the road by the bus. We were lost and confused as to if we were even in Meta to begin with but eventually found our way to our AirBnb. I took a chance and booked an apartment that was a new listing and had no reviews, typically I would not do that but I did and the apartment was the best! It was nestled in the tiny town of Meta (about 2km outside of Sorrento), down an alleyway and was incredibly clean and updated but located in a super old building which gave it a nice vibe. I was looking on TripAdvisor about where to eat and it seemed that there were only a few places to eat in Meta and one of them offered a gluten free menu which is good for Myles. We wandered down the streets then down a cliff side and eventually found Tico Tico, the cutest restaurant carved into a mountain with an incredible view of the ocean. We enjoyed the best dinner with the best view, so good that we even went back two more times! 

The next day we ventured to Positano to meet up with our friend Jordan. Getting there was quite the adventure as it seems like Italians don't really know anything about public transportation which led us to running for two buses that didn't stop for us then eventually getting onto a train before transferring to a bus which took us along the coast to Positano. Positano was AMAZING! I would highly suggest visiting and if you can find a place, staying there as well. A small town perched on the side of a mountain with the best beach and warm clear water. We loved every minute of our beach day in Positano and still can't really believe how beautiful it was, no pictures will do it justice. That night the three of us went for a nice dinner (thank to Mom and Papa Koebel who gifted us a "fancy" dinner on our trip) at the most delicious restaurant. Lets just say, we probably won't be dining like that again anytime soon :)

The next day Jordan came to meet us in Sorrento and our AirBnb hosts organized a boat tour of Capri for us. We hopped on the boat at around 9am and enjoyed a full 8 hours touring the caves, swimming in them,  waterfalls and beauty on the way to the island of Capri. We visited Capri for about three hours and it was amazing, again you can't really put into words how beautiful it was. On the way back we stopped at the Blue Grotto and had the opportunity to jump into a tiny row boat and squeeze through the TINY hole in the mountain to get inside. Not even exaggerating, there were six of us crammed into a tiny row boat and we had to lay down/duck down as much as we could in order to get through this hole in the cave. Once inside the pitch black cave the water was illuminated to a hue of blue I've never seen before. The clearest and most beautiful water shone the brightest and deepest colour of blue! Needless to say after such an exciting first few days in Italy we were exhausted! Sadly we for some reason did not bring the camera with us to Positano or Capri, seriously have no idea why we didn't (we are thinking of doing a post with all our pictures from the GoPro and our phones so we can share our experience). 

I unknowingly hung my bathing suit to dry over a ledge with the Macbook sitting underneath it... We didn't noticed the water dripping onto it for an entire day later. Needless to say when we discovered the soaking wet Macbook (and hard drive eeeek!) there were tears and immediate panic. The salt from the ocean was in piles on top the computer. We thought all was lost when it wouldn't turn on, so after some frantic google searching we opened it upside down and left it for three days hoping for the best. We spent the following day touring around the town of Sorrento, walking through tiny alleyways filled with shops, gelato (seriously I averaged about 2-3 helpings for gelato per day this entire trip), and restaurants. Sorrento was amazing and so peaceful, we even managed to get a load of laundry in at the laundromat (ever try to do a load of laundry in a foreign country? Just press every button until it turns on right?!).

Our final day in Italy we ventured to Pompeii. It was scorching hot and for those of you who are not familiar with the history of Pompeii, it's basically a bunch of ruins located in a desert type area near Mt. Vesuvius which erupted many years ago (79 A.D) completely burying the town and everyone who lived there. It consisted of a lot of rocks and artifacts some of which even claimed to be the real bodies of residents who were trapped when the eruption happened. Although, Myles and I happened to stumble upon an area (not sure if it was restricted or what but I don't think we were supposed to be there) which housed duplicates of the bodies and artifacts partially covered by tarps... so we had a hard time believing things were real the rest of our time in Pompeii. Anyways, it was still cool to experience and crazy to think that archeologists are STILL digging out the city to this day. We ended the day back in Meta where we swam and relaxed on the beach. Italy was amazing and we already would love to return and explore more of the beautiful country that had us swooned the entire time we were there!

Next up Santorini, Greece!