The church

This is Split from a very high church tower we climbed up. We had to pay twenty Kuna to go up (about five dollars), but it was worth it. We took a narrow stone staircase up to the church roof and then another narrow stone staircase to the base of the tower. At one time there must have been a wooden staircase up to the top of the tower, but it has since been replaced by the metal one we went up. The staircase wound around the inside of the tower up about ten stories and deposited us in a crowd of tourists at the very top.



Schyler makes the best pictures...




Another sideways photo from the top of the tower.




My favorite part about Croatia was the lack of rules about anything.

This last picture is Split harbor from the top of the church.

Our day in Split

Alright... This is a post of sideways pictures because I cannot figure out how to turn them upright on this computer (because it is all in Italian and I cannot read computer lingo in Italian as of yet).



The day was really nice (like every day in Croatia so far), but a bit colder with the chance of rain later on so we headed up to Split for the day. Our plan was to hand out, see the sights, eat the food and do a bit of shopping before the day was through. We spent another hapless half an hour driving up and down streets looking for parking and finally settled on a small lot, tucked away down some side roads. We had to pay, but it was worth it.

Then we started off into split. Practicall all the roads look like the one in the picture above. It was a very picturesque city. There were tourists, but also a lot of locals, and there weren't so many people around that you felt clostrophobic or overly pressed for space. We walked along the docks, found a Bancomat (atm) and then hit the street markets. I bought some presents for the fam and some cheep tourist knock off type stuff (awesome sunglasses and my drug dealer hat). Once I looked like a tourist beach bum we headed deeper into the city. We wandered up and down streets looking at the cool buildings and statues and just exploring in general.

For lunch we found an amazing pizza shop stuck in the wall of a side street. The employees literally handed you your pizza out through a window that looked onto the street. They were very busy and foot traffic had lined both sides of the road waiting to order. Small one man grocery trucks kept having to get through the crowd. I watched them slowly inch through the pizza mob, with people pressing into the wall on either side of the street, clutching their pizza slices and drinks, trying not to spill anything. We ate our pizza around the corner under a statue. A street musician sat across the road from us playing random bits of songs he had not bothered to fully memorize on an accordian.




Another sideways photo. We had lunch just to the left of the tower, down some steps underneath a giant statue of a man who looked like a wizard, but probably wasn't.




Schyler taking a picture of the wizard.

This guy was having a concert in a few days. He looks like a creepier version of Willy Wonka or something. Anyway we saw his posters up all over Split. Late in the afternoon we were tired and we could see a big bank of clouds looming just over the horizon along with a few distant rumblings of thunder. We went to a super market for dinner supplies and ate back at our hostel. After dinner we played poker outside on the tables next to the kitchen until it got dark.

Dinner on the Beach

This is the hotel/restruant where we had dinner the first night. It was kinda expensive, but really good. The meal took a long time to come though... Tallis and I entertained ourselves with Schylers camera while he was on the computer inside.




Tallis was trying some cool shots with the wine glasses and eventually I had to join in.



The womenfolk did not share our enthusiasm...




It was a very good dinner though. I ordered Squid again, and it was deep fried and delicious. We were at the restruant for about two hours, but I didn't mind. After the seaching and the swimming that afternoon, it felt good to just sit in the dark and relax over good food.

In search of hostel life

This is where we wound up. A small gravel parking lot overlooking the sea. We were about a kilometer from a small tunnel and our directions said that we were close. The houses on the hill above us looked promising.





This is the water below the parking lot. It was really really hot out, and we were really really looking forward to swimming in the sea. I'm pretty sure it was being this gorgeous to taunt us...




The beginning of our search. We headed uphill. We asked directions at a local restruant, but nobody spoke English and they were no help at all. We went up hill a bit farther, couldn't see any signs or anything and headed back down to try farther along the road. The girls were tired and went down to the waterfront, leaving the boys to continue searching. Farther down the road, we headed uphill again. Most of the shops were closed. We asked a couple of girls sitting outside the post office if they had heard of our hostel, but they hadn't. We thought this was kind of rediculous, considering the population in this area was probably around two hundred. We seached along the streets higher up the hill and found several hotels, but they all looked expensive. Still no signs for out hostel.








Frustration.





Then we found it. It was up our original hill, one house up from the restruant where they didn't speak English. I had actually been standing in the parking lot at one point. Since there were no signs for an entrance or front door and no sign of anyone official looking I walked in through their kitchen and found a white haired Croatian lady cooking dinner.



"Rooms?"



She excitedly rattled off a string of Croatian. I didn't understand a word of it, but apparently rooms were ready for the taking. In the parking lot she descovered that we were not the Australians arriving today. This threw a wrench into the works. We also managed to get across that we did not have a reseveration. She went back into the house and made a phone call. After a while she came back out and told us to wait for ten minutes. The owner was at the beach and was on her way back. We sat at a picnic bench in the shade of some large pines and hoped that we would be able to get a room without a reservation. Finally the owner arrived. She was a very large Croatian lady in a flowery dress. She spoke good English, but with a thick accent. Yes, there was room. Yes, we could have them, however we had to get three. Only two people per room. We would have liked two rooms, but it helped that the price she gave us was actually lower than what we were originally prepaired to pay so it worked out ok.

The rooms were really nice (more like hotel rooms than anything) and everything was really clean. The best part was the three bathrooms plus showers at the end of the hall. After autocamping, this place seemed like heaven.

We found the girls, drove back up with our stuff, threw everything into our rooms and spent the rest of the day at the beach.

Split, the arrival

We did finally make it to Split. We had driven all the way across our map of Croatia, which was pretty cool. Parking was a nightmare. As a general rule of thumb (in case you ever need to park in Croatia) a space along the road without cars in it, is a place where it is illegal to park. We drove around narrow one way roads, barely missing the cars squashed in on either side of us. We finally found a spot up an alley in front of the "black cat cafe." We walked down to the waterfront and found an internet cafe with cheap wifi. We sat in the shade of unbrellas and just relaxed while Schyler tried to find us a hostel. After about an hour we got some lunch and soon after Schyler had found what sounded like a nice hostel about half an hour outside split. The website didn't let us make a reservation so we would have to just show up.

We parked here at first, hoping to find an internet cafe, but after walking in several directions for about half an hour we decided we were too far away from the city center. It was really hot too. I found a cicada and about four bottle caps so the quick treck wasn't a total loss.

ALRIGHT!

cont.



THE SWISS ALPS!



Remember all those pictures I posted, how I was mad I couldn't show you how huge they are? It's those guys. Now imagine a guardrail-less road winding up those bad boys. Switchbacks every hundred feet, with us sweating around every corner as we see the tiny pine trees a hundred thousand feet below us (and the fact the heat is on to keep the engine alive). BGW's (The Bloody Gutless Wonder, for those of you just joining us, is our beloved fiat van that we rented in Switzerland) top speed is not that impressive going uphill and Schyler often pulled over to the side of the road to let tiny Nissans hauling huge campers drive past us. We reached the top and started down the other side.



Same roads only now going down hill, with a much better top speed.



This is when we descovered something about BGW. The proper velocity, combined with the proper pressure to the breaks, combined with Schylers driving style, combined with the steepness of the road, combined with a turn (this might all seem like a perfect storm of events, but in the Swiss Alps this happened about once ever hundred feet)...



Cause BGW's engine to turn off...



And there is no power steering with a turned off engine.



Actually, the first switchback I thought Schyler was just being weird, throwing his body all the way over to the passenger side and hauling on the wheel. It was not so funny when I realized he was trying to haul the car around the hairpin turn using nothing but muscle and momentum.



Out of the turn and back on the straight BGW started right back up as if nothing had happened.



Next switchback...



Straight, moter. Straight, moter. Straight, moter. Curve, no moter. Frenzied turning, a quick glimpse of a thousand foot drop with no guard rails. Straight moter.



My eventual philosophy was that traveling in Europe involves constantly being close to death. I finally learned to accept, and even enjoy it. By the end of the trip I wasn't fazed by anything. Schyler could have played chicken with a train on the last day and I wouldn't have cared.



I think the closest we got to dying was about an hour after the alps. We were going through another set of switchbacks (we'd gotten them down to a system by this point and I wasn't particulary concerned with this one) only just as the engine died and we began the turn we noticed a bus (which had been blocked from our view until this very moment) coming right toward us from the opposite direction. The only thing I remember from this turn was the look on the bus driver's face. It was a look of complete panic. He gestured with his hand in front of his face as he passed us. He was either praying or flipping us off, I may never know, although I have been keeping an eye out for that particular gesture on the streets of Viterbo. If I ever figure out what it means I will tell you.

So that is the BGW, a van I both hated and loved at intervals, sometimes both at the same time, although I must say, it has given me some of the best stories I have ever had.

Bloody Gutless Wonder Part 2 (for real this time)

You're reading my comments too right? Cause they're funny. They're like little mini blog posts that you get for free along with the big blog posts. I just squished the mosquito bytw. It was full of my blood and now it is on my hand, which is gross, since I didn't wash it, because I don't feel like moving from my chair. Some Italian student will probably get sick after using this computer and then die. And he will probably be the son of some really important Italian diplomat who will declare war on the US (see how exciting studying abroad is???).

Anyway... if you read my comments you will know about the mosquito. It will almost be like our little inside joke. If you've been reading the comments this whole time, you can feel smug about being a little bit better than all the other people who read up till this point and then were like "wait... what mosquito? I'm so confused!" (they will probably be the same people who went "wait... what are they 'wait whatting about?"). See how I'm tying in all these blog posts? I feel like a real writer.

Oh... and I blame any spelling or grammar mistakes on the keyboards over here. Or the fact that I was using Schylers Mac. And before that... uh... I was stressed about the trip or something.

And now I've written to the point where I'm scared to keep going again... so I'm just going to post this and finish the story later. Sorry.