Traveling through Croatia with my family has definitely been a highlight of my trip so far. After returning from Costa Rica with my students I had 12 days to get rid of 2/3 of my stuff, mail the rest across the country to my parents place (if you ever need to ship things across the USA I highly recommend checking out Amtrak express shipping, by far the best deal), move out of my apartment, and pack for a 3.5 month trip through Europe. Will someone please stop me if I ever try to do that again? I knew it was going to be stressful, but the knowing and the doing were two very different things.

On June 21 I left Baton Rouge at 4:45 in the morning (shout out to C. for letting me crash at her place and then waking up at that ungodly hour and driving me) for the NOLA airport. The security line was horrible inefficient and I was the last person to make it on the flight. Stress is good for the nerves, yeah?  Thankfully I had 14 hours of a layover in Chicago to chill out. I have never been so thankful for a long layover in my life. After spending just under two weeks incredibly stressed and always in a semi conscious state of panic – that I wasn’t going to be able to get everything done, that some thing would go wrong, that…- the ability to sit and have nothing to do was the biggest breath of relief.

14 hours later, at 11:00 pm, I got on a plane set for Iceland. Looking back on it now my body must have really needed sleep. I slept for a couple of hours in the Chicago airport, slept on the flight from Chicago to Iceland, and then slept almost the entire 6 hour layout in Iceland. I arrived in England the night of the 22nd and found my hotel room with little trouble.

The trouble didn’t start until I was in the Frankfurt Airport the following day and learned, upon landing, that my flight to Munich (and then Split) was canceled. I was stuck. There were no more flights. Instead of reuniting with my sister in Split that night I was headed to Hamburg (Yes, I did accidentally ask what time I would get into “hamburger”) where I would spend the night before heading to Split early the next morning. Such is budget traveling sometimes. It took me 6 fights, 4 countries, 4 days and two hotels until I finally arrived in Split.

I was exhausted and (very) smelly, but my sister and I only had one full day alone together in Split and we wanted to make the most of it, so dropped my bags off and then we headed off to Krka Waterfalls.

Krka Waterfalls were completely worth the trip. The waterfalls are located about an hour and a half away by bus from Split just past the town of Skradin. M and I (accidentally) took the long walk up to the waterfalls, swam around, and then enjoyed a wonderful dinner of street kebabs. That night we walked around the beautiful old town before meeting up with two family friends. The next day we went canyoneering and that was also amazing before heading to Korcula Island for the second part of our trip.

 

Recommendations for Split:

-Visit Krka Waterfalls (Try and book the bus back to Split ahead of time as we also got stranded in the town due to an almost completely packed bus)

-Eat lots of gelato

-Spend a day walking around the old town and the markets

-Go canyoneering

-Eat lots of gelato