calling from some city...

As Scott commented in the mid-adfternoon, today was a bit of a lazy day, but it was definitely enjoyable. We slept in for the first time in quite a while, as we got up by 9 pretty much every day we were in France so we could eat the free breakfast. However, there isnt breakfast at this hostel, so we slept in until 10:30. Scott woke up earlier, but he was nice and let me sleep. It was definitely needed as traveling can be really exhausting at times, especially when you are changing cities. Anyways our first stop was the supermarket, which was about 15 minutes away. We needed to stock up on necessities. First, Scott needed deoderant. Even though we are in Europe, we cannot have a smelly Scott. We got yogurt and apples for breakfast for the next 2 mornings, a 6 pack of large water bottles (Notes: this is the first time we have bought water in bulk. We have just been reusing water bottles and replacing them every few days, and filling up with tap water. We’ve had no problems with the drinking water, but the girls staying in our room said they got sick off the water in another city in Croatia. We decided it was not worth the risk of getting sick and we are just going to stick to bottled water while we are here), a small bottle of Coke, bread and lunch meat to make sandwiches for lunch today, and food for dinner: pasta, tomato sause, chicken, and a pepper and onion to add to the sause. All of this food only cost us 10 euros each- which is amazing. We’re going to be eating great for barely any money at all, thanks to Scott’s excellent cooking.

After dropping the food off at the hostel, we headed out to try to rent a car. About a week ago, we decided it was going to be significantly easier for us to get to the Plitvice National Lakes Park, where we will be on Saturday. Then we would move onto Split from the lakes on Sunday, and continue to the island of Hvar, which is less than 2 hours by ferry. We were running into huge problems with the bus schedule, because they do not run at the times we need. To get from Plitvice to Split, our only options were an 8 hour bus ride during the whole day (even though its only about 4 hours apart, the bus stops so often and makes detours it takes forever) OR we could take an overnight bus. That would put us in Split at 5 am with nothing open. So having a car would allow us to leave Plitvice early Sunday morning, drive to Split, get on a ferry, and arrive in Hvar in early afternoon with time to go to the beach that day. We had run into problems because the car rental office (Hertz) said Scott needed an international driving permit, and he doesn’t have one. However, my guidebook specifically said this was not required. In addition, we decided having a car tomorrow would be very helpful as we are going to Osijek to visit Scott’s relatives. That is a 4 hour bus ride with inconvient times (getting us back to Zagreb at 1 am because there are not any departures between 5-9 pm from Osijek) or 4.5-5.5 hour trains, which we heard was a nightmare and the trains were awful. Having a car would allow us to spend as much time in Osijek that we wanted without being constrained. So we decided just to go down to the office and see if we could rent a car in person, because over the phone was not getting us anywhere.

There we ran into a problem. Today was a national holiday in Croatia, so the office, along with most other places, was closed. We decided to see if we could find another place so we headed into the center to try to find another place. We first ate our lunches in the square, where I noticed a tourist information office. We went in there to see if they could help- and luckily they could! The office has a service they use, and one phone call revealed we would be able to rent the car. However, there was a 1 week minimum for the car. After calling his father, Scott got permission to get the car for the week, as Mr. Hendrickson is generously helping us with the cost of the car. While having a car overall will not save us any money, it is making our travel so much easier and faster. We learned we could get the car this evening, even though they wouldnt start charging us until the morning. Scott and I were instantly thrilled, because now we dont have to ride buses here at all. The only issues will be parking, but 5 nights we know we have available parking at our hotels. It will just be the 2 nights we are in Hvar we will have to figure out where to park. Oh, and the best news of all? The car is a SMARTCAR! This should definitely be hilarious.

Anyways, we decided just to spend the afternoon strolling around the town. We went into the Cathedral, which was very pretty, and another church as well. I really like the architecture of Zagreb because the buildings are all painted bright colors, like pink, yellow, orange, and lilac. It’s very light and pleasant to look at, plus most restaurants have outdoor seating with colorful chairs and umbrellas. After, we found a park with gorgeous colorful flowers to hang out in, and then we decided to go to the Botanical Gardens and explore there for a while. The gardens were cool as they had hundreds of different plants and trees.

We were tired so we decided to head back to the hostel. Since, we have just been relaxing. The car arrived at the hostel and Scott got his instructions on how to drive it. He was bouncing around, he was so excited. He made us a delicious dinner and right now we are doing a load of laundry as it was only 2 euro and we could fit all our stuff into one load. One funny thing happened I should share. We got a thunder and lightening storm tonight, and it was pouring like crazy. Suddenly, one of our roommates came running downstairs to say there was a leak in the roof in the stairway. We run up, and sure enough, there was a 6 inch gap where water was just gushing through as the thunder crashed overhead. Luckily the hostel worker was able to get that under control. It was pretty funny though but luckily nothing got damaged.

Well I am off to shower and go to bed early. Like I said, we are off to Osijek tomorrow for the day!