Last Day in Croatia

Today was our last day in Croatia and I am definitely sad to leave.  Last night after we got back to the ship we ate a quick dinner and cleaned up a bit before heading out for our last night in Dubrovnik.  We got some pregame materials at the grocery store just outside of port and then took the bus to old town.  At first it was just Janae, Amanda, and me so we went to the old pier and sat on one of the benches to drink.  It was really cute and picturesque with the cliffs all around and a view of the town at night.  Then we went back into the town and met up with some other friends.  Janae and Amanda went to a bar in old town while I met up with my friend Kaitlyn’s group and we went out to some rocks on the shore.  We all hung out there and pregamed some more before heading to Club Fuego.  Fuego was another tourist bar but you got a free drink with the cover charge so that was nice.  I liked it a lot better than East West because it wasn’t just people from SAS there.  There were lots of people from other European countries who were there on vacation.  Over the course of the night we met people from Paris, Norway, and Belgium.  We were out until at least 4:00am and then took a cab back to the ship.  It was a great night and truly memorable!

I slept in a little this morning which was nice.  I think everyone on the ship had a late start after last night.  I spent the day with my friend Andrea and we had a great time.  We waited to catch a bus to old town for a little while but realized that there wasn’t one scheduled to come for another 20 min so we decided to head to the cab stand.  There were tons of cabs and 2 Australian guys who worked on a different cruise ship asked if we wanted to share so we had a fun ride to old town.  They were telling us all about Greece since they have been there a lot so now we definitely got an idea of some stuff to do there.  We got to old town and the guys wouldn’t let us split the cab which was really nice, and they told us to buy ice cream with the money instead haha.

When we got to old town we found this restaurant called Taj Mahal because Andrea had heard really good things about it.  At first I was kind of wondering why we would be going to an Indian restaurant but it turned out that the name didn’t have anything to do with the food.  It wasn’t on the main road and kind of hard to find which might have been why it was so good.  It was absolutely amazing and my favorite meal from Croatia or probably anywhere.  The bread was the best bread I had at any restaurant, even better than all of Italy.  We had an appetizer of peppers that were topped with lots of ricotta cheese and probably something else.  I don’t even like peppers and thought it was good.  Andrea had something called a Gypsy kabob which had 3 different types of meat on it and a special gypsy sauce that was tomato based.  It was good but my meal was definitely more amazing.  I had a dish called sudžukice which was a sausage dish.  My plate literally was like 5 sausages (about the size of regular hot dogs), mustard, and a baked potato with sour cream.  I was full after eating about half of it but there was no way that food was going to waste.  The flavor of the sausage was like nothing I had ever had before – seriously amazing.  I don’t even like mustard either but it was really good with the sausage and made it taste even better.  It truly was an amazing meal!!

After lunch we walked to a really cool beach that was about halfway between the port and old town.  It was this secluded spot that was just like the side of a cliff with a small area flattened out for people to lay out.  You had to climb down the rocks to get into the water, or just jumping off the cliff was the more popular method.  There was a ladder at the bottom for you to get out of the water, but it was really cool since it wasn’t like an actual beach and it was really hidden.  We had to climb down like a billion steps to get there, and the way back up was not fun.  The water was totally amazing too – really blue and warm and it was like extra salty so you could float really easily.  We were there for about an hour and then we walked the rest of the way back to the ship and said goodbye to Croatia.

They actually told us that the ship would be leaving at 8:00pm tonight so we were all back on the ship by 6:00pm like usual and then they made an announcement that we were actually going to stay docked through the night and leave early in the morning.  We all wished that we could stay out in Dubrovnik longer because their big summer festival started tonight, but now we just have to stay on the boat and look at beautiful Croatia through the window for one more night.

Well as you can probably tell I had an amazing time in Croatia.  The people here are awesome and laid back, everything is beautiful, and there is so much to do.  Croatia would be a perfect place for a vacation because you can easily mix beach days with days in town or traveling and seeing historical sites.  I never got a chance to go kayaking around the islands which is something I would love to come back and do as well as spend lots more time exploring.  I think I could stay in Croatia forever!!