a post of pictures

a night in florence

Riomaggio, Cinque Terre (where we are staying)

Ciao America

Novalja, Pag

So I will start off from where I left off. We made it to Novalja, Pag and completely lucked out at the only hostel on the island called the Big Yellow House which was located right on the water. The picture above is the view from our room. I must admit that the actual town of Novalja is not the classiest. I don't think a lot of Americans make it over to the island either because a lot of people were shocked we made the treck over there. Near Novalja is a beach called Zrce Beach that is basically the Ibiza of Croatia. We went to the beach on a bus that played blaring techno the entire way there.

 After spending a few days enjoying the beaches (interestingly enough the best beach was at a campsite), we decided to take a kayaking trip in Zadar. Lizzie and I shared a kayak. While I believe we both individually could kayak in a straight line, our poor coordination skills caused us to zig zag down the river. We still were very pleased at the end of our trip because we got to jump off a 45 foot waterfall and I kayaked down a 12 foot waterfall.

After Croatia, Lizzie and embaraked on a 24 hour journey to Naples. Naples was errr ok...but after talking with some people at our hostel, we decided to take our trip elsewhere. We made some friends in the hostel and a group of us headed to Sorrento the next day to try out our first camping site. Right when we got to Sorrento, we dropped off our bags and headed to Pompei, the town that is in ruins from a volcanic eroption. Pompei was very cool to see. It really amazed me that there was still wood in the buildings from such a long time ago. After Pompei, we went back to our campsite and headed down to the water with our new friends from Naples. We decided to ignore the sign that said the beach closes at 7 and made our way down the hill to the rocks on the water. After enjoying some delicious wine and cheese (that we shared with some seagulls), we took a dip in the ocean and headed back up to our cabins. We learned that the beach really does close at 7 since they had lock the gate to the campsite. We made our way out after some intensene climbing up dirt hills and a whole crew of Italian children to help us escape. We were quite famous at breakfast the next day among the children. We took a ferri to Capri the next day. First, we heckled with many boat owners to get the best deal to take us around the island. We finally found a descent deal from an American women and scheduled to return later that day to start our trip. We waited for quite awhile to get on a bus to Anacapri. The roads in Capri are tres tiny and our big bus zoomed along sharing the road with other buses and driving along a veryyy steep cliff. We got to the town in one piece and made our first stop at a Pizzeria where we ate the most delicious margherita pizzetes and enjoyed a view of a mansion overlooking the water with a vineyard (basically my dream home).

We shopped around and I bought a pair of sandals that were specially made to fit my foot. There are little shops all over Capri for this and they make the shoes in 20 minutes.

After shopping and sampling quite a bit of limoncello, we set out on our boat trip to cruise around the island. We swam through many grottos, went cliff jumping of course, and even got in the blue grotto which was amazing. It is a cave all light up in a luminous blue color. Capri might have been my favorite day of the trip. Once we returned to Sorrento, we cleaned up and enjoyed a farewell dinner with our new friends where there was a band playing American songs in very Italian accents.
 

Boating in Capri

taking on eastern europa

Praha

I am just sitting at our hostel waiting to leave the beautiful Prague. Almost every person I talked to about backpacking through Europe has told me this was one of their favorite cities and I must agree that it is quite beautiful. We arrived to the cutest hostel called Sir Tobys that is very pub/cottage esque. A little exhausted, we decided to grab a late lunch and relax at our hostel the first evening. The free nutella crepe night also lured us to stay in for the night. It is 3 days later and I still can not look at a crepe. I never thought I would see the day when I can't look at Nutella due to overload. The one thing the 4 of us are good at is taking FULL advantage of a free meal over here. There currently is a international theatre design show going on in Prague and it seems our hostel has attracted quite a few of these people. While very interesting, we have found they more enjoy to sit around and talk intellectual literature and theatre.

FREE patries the bakery gave us at 3 am

We headed out the next day on our FREE walking tour. We walked around the old town and Jewish district and learned quite a bit about the history and legends of Prague. We went to the Prague castle and the church attached had the most amazing stainedglass windows I have ever seen. So many colors and detail. That evening, we went to a traditonal Czech restaurant. Christina, Liz, and I split a massive platter of duck, ribs, sausage, pork, cabbage, and potato dumplings. It was suuper cheap and one of my favorite feast of the trip. Later that night, we went on a bar crawl (I mean Prague is known for its night life). As mentioned in my first post, I am not opposed to staying here if the opportunity were to present itself. Christina and I were offered jobs as bar crawl guides...we are playing that one by ear right now...The next day we headed to a monastery perched at one of the highest points in Prague that makes their own beer. The IPA was delicious and we got some great views of the city and castle. We did not have enough time in Prague. I would have loved to stay one more night but we had to hurry on to catch a train to Budapest.

turkish baths

Budapest was a last minute decision. After speaking with some fellow backpackers, we decided we would be missing out by not making our way over to more of Eastern Europe. First of all, the city is completely not what I was expecting. Honestly, it was one of the most beautiful cities I have been to in Europe. I know I say that about a lot of places but Budapest blew us away. We only had 1 full day so we decided to do a bike tour so we could see as much of the city as possible. The architecture was old and beautiful. The history also was very interesting because everything was so recent. They were just freed from Soviet control in 1989. But enough with the history lessons, Budapest nightlife is also one of the best in Europe. Prepared to take full advantage of that, we stayed at the Instant Groove! Party Hostel. I think they focused so much on having a good time at the hostel that they forgot to turn the AC on. After relaxing in the baths (a massive area filled with all different kinds of pools, baths, waters with minerals, etc.), we made our way out last night with a 6 am train to catch. We made it...barely. I am currently in Zagreb, Croatia at the bus station waiting for a bus to Pag, Croatia.

Note: this post was written about a week in a half ago. 

My current city is Cinque Terre