CHAPTER XI

We had our spring break here the same time all of the other Aggies were off school. For spring break, I wanted to visit Sara, my Italian exchange student friend from high school, and to see Croatia. An overview of the itinerary: Fly into Venice and stay for the day, visit Sara in Trieste with a day trip to Ljubljana in Slovenia, bus to Rovinj in Croatia, and then finally Split, Croatia, and surprisingly enough, it all went mostly as planned!

Venice was a nice surprise. For some reason, I figured it would be overrated, but that was not the case. We got some breakfast at this bakery café in one of the squares. It was delicious! I spent most of the day just wandering through the different passageways, along the canals, stopped in city squares, and looked into little shops. The whole construction of Venice is puzzling; it's a foundation of petrified wood purposely driven into the water/mud/clay in order to create the city. We were not particularly in the mood for any museums, but I think we still experienced Venice to the full effect for just one day. In true backpacker fashion, the three of us combined toted around three purses, two backpacks, one duffle, the occasional pizza box, and three umbrellas.

That night we all stayed with Sara (yay). We met her at the train station. It was so, so fun to see her after over two years! We filled all of her apartment floor space with makeshift-mattresses and pillows, but it worked. Sara just goes to school in Trieste, but there were lots of sights to see as well. She took us to go see the castle on Sunday. Unfortunately it was raining, so we couldn’t walk all around that area. Nevertheless, Miramare Castle was neat, and it stood right above the water which I loved. It was built by Maximilian in 1860, so it's fairly recent.

Monday, we spent walking all around Trieste, to the bakery, grocery store, downtown, old Roman ruins, gelato shop, and clothing stores. We saw all of the random tourist attractions too. Trieste has a small, Roman amphitheater ruins surrounded by the main city streets and stores. James Joyce also wrote a big portion of Dubliners while vising Croatia; I can understand why the peaceful city and sea would be perfect for creative writing. Sara fixed pasta for lunch, and we met a few of her friends at supper. One of my favorite things was this tiny donut shop that is only open from midnight to 6 am. There isn’t a sign or cash register; the baker is just in the back making fresh donuts, and we walked into the back room to get them.

We decided to take a day trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia; I really didn’t know what to expect, but bus tickets were cheap and it was less than two hours away. From the few hours spent there, I would describe it as a modern, relaxed, and colorful town. We walked by the graffiti park. There is a small river running through the city center and lots of unique bridges to cross it, including the most famous dragon bridge. An old castle stands above the city; we hiked up that hill for a lunch picnic. Either the view from lunch or having coffee right above the river was my favorite part.

Rovinj reminded mean a lot of Venice. The old city area was a tangle of small, cobblestone streets. It is all located on this tiny peninsula. I would love to go back in a month or so to see the city fuller of life. There are some shops that were closed until mid-April. Apparently, in the summer, most of the shops spill out onto the streets, and the town is filled with people. Nevertheless, our time there was picturesque. We started off with breakfast and coffee overlooking the small bay. At the top of the hill were a church and stairs down to a tiny, rock beach. The town had a small local honey where we accidentally bought cranberry honey instead of the raspberry jam we anticipated.

Split was an 11-hour overnight bus ride away from Rovinj. I would be okay if I never ride a bus for that long again. The city center is intertwined within the Diocletian Palace and adjacent to the ferry docks. We got to see the calm city at 6 am which is one advantage (though not crucial) to the bus ride! The morning started off with some reading until a café opened where we could get some cappuccinos, also by the water.

We took a ferry to Brac Island. The ferry was fairly full, even for the off-season, so I think many locals much travel back and forth for work and such. The island is big and has six to eight different, small villages. We had to take a bus to get to the other side once we were there. There is this pointy beach called Zlatni Rat that changes shape based on the wind and currents; it’s super unique! The other highlight on that side of the island is a hiking trail that makes it to the highest peak along the Dalmatian coast, but there was a gate, so we didn’t quite make it to the very top. Still a successful venture though! Croatia has tons of these island up and down its coast, and I would love to see more of them.

For the last day, we went to the Klis fortress in the morning. It is up on a hill and has a spectacular view over Split and the water. My favorite part was that we could free explore over most of the top and exterior of the fortress. Including us, there were probably on ten people visiting. Klis was also used to film some scenes from Game of Thrones which is neat. The rain kept us inside the rest of the afternoon – first waiting inside a café for the bus that never came, and then making dinner and packing up in our Airbnb.

The end.