Wow, what a week... Matty and I just spent our fall break in Italy and Croatia and what a journey it was! So here's how it all began...
I spent hours and hours trying to set up couch surfing for us because we hadn't planned on paying for a place to stay on the whole trip... Well after about 60 requests to people just in Milan I didn't get one yes. So I began to look for hostels and ended up finding one for 9 Euro a night, perfect... So I booked it for two days giving us some sort of a plan. We left the next day for Brno, where we had to fly out of about 2 hours away. We got to Milan and find out that the airport is almost an hour from the city so we had to take shuttle bus into the city then another bus to the area near the hostel which was also way outside of town... We settled in at the hostel and then went back out to the city center in search of food. We were looking for a place called Ciao which was supposed to have cheapish food. We walked up from the metro and the firs thing we saw was the Duomo Cathedral, quite a sight at night...
We walked around for awhile looking for Ciao and seeing all of the shops along the main streets. Tons of designer stores that I had only read about in magazines, things that were so expensive I wouldn't dare even going into a store... It was crazy, I'm surprised we didn't see anyone famous. Anyway we went to Ciao, it ended up being about 7 euro for a plate of pasta so we were just getting used to how much things cost in the European union... The Euro will crush your hopes and dreams lol.
The next day we met up with our friend Avery and explored the city. We walked through a pretty park and went to an aquarium that had pretty boring fish in it... but it was free :) We got bottles of wine and drank that evening in the Piazza del Duomo (Duomo Square), I pet a sleeping pigeon without him/I freaking out lol. He didn't move so I named him Richard lol. We went back to the hostel and woke up the next morning to a lovely breakfast provided by the hostel in the form of a croissant filled with a Jagger flavored pudding of some sort.... as well as "toast" which came in the form of packaged rock hard piece of bread that resembled giant croutons, and a shot of espresso. But that was the best breakfast we got in Italy lol so I am not complaining, it was just... different. More on off breakfasts to come....
We left Milan by train to go up to Como which sits t the very bottom of Lake Como...
We walked around Como for awhile, stopping of course at Billa (supermarket) to pick up our daily lunch of mozzarella and tomatoes before getting on a bus to go up to Bellagio. This bus ride, was crazy, amazing and beautiful. The streets were all one lane as they were on the mountainside among the villages. The driver would honk when we was going around blind corners at what seemed like an alarming speed given the tight roads. We would approach cars at a slower speed and somehow squeeze past each other each time. I tried to snap some photos as we were driving along, they didn't turn out great but I got a few. The lake was stunning and huge lined with small villages the whole way. We got up to Bellagio and walked around before we went over to Menaggio, where we were staying for the night, by ferry. The ferry offered unrivaled views at which point I went a little photo crazy...
When we got to Menaggio our hostel was on the hill right above the ferry landing with a great view of the water and a cool little path leading to a nice book reading spot. We relaxed there and read our books until someone came to check us in.
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| Nice pingpong table outside the hostel |
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| View from the hostel |
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| Path up to the reading spot |
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| The Spot :) |
The hostel was nice, we met a couple guy from New York who are coming to visit us this week. We went to Varenna and explored around there which was beautiful of course :) After that we went back down to Como by train then onto Venice....
Venice was amazing as you can probably imagine, we arrived at about 8 and began searching for a place to stay...to no avail... We walked and walked looking for hostels (which there were only 3 in the city... all full) the hotels we asked wanted upwards of 110 euro so that wasn't going to work. This is the point that we sat down at a cafe and robbed them of their WiFi as I looked at forums titled 'sleeping on the streets of Venice'.... after plenty of searching someone suggested 'Camping Rialto' so I called and spoke to a guy that didn't speak any English so we just decided to go there, we had to take a bus outside of town which actually dropped us off in front of it. We ended up staying in a bungalow tent that had two bed in it. It was a cold night but it was a place to sleep for 9 euro!
We enjoyed Venice the next day, just walking around and seeing all of the canals and gondolas was amazing. There was also a marathon going on in the city so half of the streets were blocked off as the track for the marathon runners. There were a TON of tourists so that wasn't fun but it was still beautiful.
We left Venice to go on our way to Croatia, we intended to go by ferry but the ferry didn't run on Sundays so we had to go by bus. The Croatian countryside is absolutely amazing, its the most beautiful place I have ever seen and will ever see. We got to Rijeka in the daylight which was a first. We had been getting to every place we'd been at night so it was exciting to see somewhere in the daylight for once. It was amazing, we went through a tunnel and came out and were looking at the mountains in the Adriatic Gulf rising out of the foggy mist. The coast there is called the Dalmatian Coast so it's full of islands but the islands aren't flat, they are mountains so that made it even more amazing. We spent the night at a hostel that was more like an apartment turned hostel... + mice + the owner turned up in our room in his underwear at 3 in the morning... the odd things you run into when hosteling. BUT we did meet 2 Australian girls that were pretty cool, we went out to the bars with them and learned about all the things that made Americans so different from Australians lol.
The next day we went on our quest for the Plitvice Lakes... Our whole purpose for the trip. We took a few buses through more of the Croatian countryside that was stunning. All I can say is that this was the most amazing place I have ever seen. I still can't believe that I actually did something that was on the 'things to do before you die' list. I am finally living my life the way that I want to be, completing that list, because what else are we living for?
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| The water was the most amazing emerald blue |
