Croatia

I'll start by saying I never expected Croatia to be as amazing as it was. It was one of those countries that I've heard of but  knew nothing about or had any intention of visiting until we started planning and looking into trips.

We showed up at the bus meeting point and I looked around at the group and noticed something. Other than our tour guide, I was the only guy on the trip. 50 girls. 2 guys. 12 hour bus ride. It's safe to say I was a little worried for my life...

After the 13 hour overnight bus ride (highway was shut down to to incredibly strong wind), we checked into our hostel in Split, Croatia, dropped off our bags, and headed out to go white water rafting. After a bus ride through the mountains, we met the rafting crew at the Cetina River. They gave us our wetsuits, helmets, and water shoes and we were on our way.

We spent about 3 hours rafting down the river with a few breaks to swim and cliff jump. Our tour guide took us up to the top of a cliff (about 15-20 feet tall). It didn't look as far down til about half way into the jump, but it was a great experience. We asked our tour guide, Marco, about life in Croatia and he asked us about the U.S. and our culture. He was a very funny guy and made fun of the girls in the boat for being tired and not paddling hard enough. When it started raining Marco started to sing "It's raining again! Hallelujah!" until we told him the correct lyrics of "It's raining men!". Safe to say he won't be singing that on any future tours. We finished up the rafting in the pouring rain and they had dinner waiting for us (and wine to cheer everyone up).

We spent Saturday cruising Croatia's Dalmatian coastline on the Adriatic Sea on a private boat going island hopping and swimming. Tough life huh? The views from the bow of the boat were amazing and I spent the entire boat ride sitting back and watching the waves go by. Certainly could get used to this lifestyle. We stopped at the islands of Brac and Solta to swim and nap on the rock beach. I couldn't believe how clear and blue the water was. It looked more like a painting than reality. A boat ride back to shore, dinner in Trogir, Croatia, and then we called it a day.

View from the beach

On our way back to Florence on Sunday we stopped at Krka National Park to go swimming in a waterfall. Walking through the paths to get to the waterfall looked like a scene out of Avatar. The water was a little chilly but we all got over it pretty quickly. Swimming out to the base of the waterfall was unreal. It was a perfect way to end the weekend before our 10 hour bus ride back to Florence.