Eleven days, driving over 1,700 miles, seven countries and one festival later...!
UH-mazing! Had so much fun and can officially say I've slept overnight in a car in a Croatian carpark, raved on a boat, lived a day off nothing but Redbull and chocolate bars, and eaten octopus. Should probably start by listing what cities we visited in order and write everything chronologically..
VERONA: drove here Friday night, took us about 6 hours and we arrived at our pre-planned campsite at about 3.30am. The whole drive ran smoothly apart from I soon learned that Italien drivers LOVE to occupy at least two out of three lanes, swirving in and out as they please, or just plain driving down the middle. Not safe, nor helpful. Our campsite was positioned quite high up in the mountains and when we arrived we were greeted by a beautiful creature with dreadlocks and, because it was so hot and we were cream crackered from driving, took our sleeping bags from the car, unrolled them and slept there on the bare ground. It was a bit of a ants infest and itchy but knackered after driving, we all manged to sleep through until about 10am. Then we woke and from the campsite, got to see a almost birds eye view of the beauty that is Verona. So so beautiful and a view occupied by a collection of pastel stone mixed in wtih green, loads of different shades of vines, trees and leaves, all crawling up the stunning architecture scattered around the city. Walking about, all the men had dreads and all the women smoked. The city itself was just spectacular.
The four of us visited the ampitheater and imagined what it must have been like to witness gladiator fights there, complete with Ridley Scott tigers etc lol walked around, generally just becam over whelmed and continously impressed with the aesthetics of the city. Total Romeo&Juliet land everywhere you look and sooo want to go out and live there for a few months, write a book on love or something equally wank and amazing.
Ate dinner, drank wine, returned to the campsite and slept inside the tent, Luigi, then headed off early on Sunday to drive to Padova to catch a train to Venice.
VENICE: caught the train and arrived about midday. Wow. As soon as you step off the train and set foot out of the station, unlike anything you've ever seen before! Stunning, but as you can expect, very very touristy and heard nothing but Brit and American accents wandering around. Despite, it's home to some incredible sights, array of cute but impressive little buildings, shops, churches and houses. There was breath taking scenery driving through to Padova actually, you just don't expect Italy to be that green! Or at least I didn't anyway.
Went to a restaurant and had a sexual meal of pasta, pizza - typical Italien stuff that tasted extremely yummy and at the end I ordered this cold cappacino desert thing ( NERO FONDENTE ) and OHHHMYYGOOODD Heaven in a mug! I wish to God I could have brought a bucket load back as it was by far, the most chocolatey gooey mess I have ever tasted. aaaaaaahhh want more!! Brought two masks whilst in Venice - one for fashion and I want to dress up and wear it to every fancy dress party even if there isn't one, and a cool, black and gold decorative one to place in my flat for decoration sake. Coolness.
SLOVENIA 1: We actually drove through and spent some time in Slovenia twice, both either side of our time in Croatia, but the first time was at night after leaving Venice and not so kind or as fun compared to the second time. We had no intention or actual plan of actually staying in Slovenia so in the car had to make some late night pretty frantic phone calls, asking any campsite we could find if they had room for us and then typing there address into our sat nav. Thankfully, we got through to one and they said we could stay after asking Nina where she was from and hearing that we were Swiss and got there about 11. When we pulled up in Nati's UK corsa they became immediately suspicious and got very funny about us claiming we were Swiss. After checking both Nina and Nati's passports and being satisfied that we were actually Swiss and not English (I kept my mouth closed) we were allowed to stay. When we left the next day, the owner admitted, had we actually turned out to be English, he wouldn't have let us stay. Obviously had a bad experience with sunburnt Brits in the past, or, just really, really racist! Regardless, we soon stayed out our already hostile welcome and left after getting extremely drunk in the dockyard/harbour that evening (we drove the next day. Not after getting extremely drunk amongst the boats - just thought I'd clear that one up!!).
CROATIA: Hoorah! Love YOU Croatia, yes I do. So after realising that our sat nav didn't actually know where Croatia was or have any idea of anywhere outside of the EU (not even UK which, last time I checked, was definitely part of the EU!!) anyway, drove a few something hours to coastal town Split, four days before Soundwave festival and plenty of time to look around, see more of Croatia and enjoy the beach. And enjoy the beach we did!! Thirty five point five degrees at 9pm driving when we arrived. Ouch. Can imagine how sweaty poor Jasper (the car) and us four girls were inside. Luckily, we found a tourist office pretty quick and being greeted by four girls that were very nice and lovely and offered him euros, the man let us have a awesome two bed appartment with four beds, right next to the sea for 25euro pp a night, it was perfect and I still can't beleive we got it so cheap! So that worked our pretty damn awesome and we were all really happy with that set up! Agreed to stay two nights and utilised them well soaking up the sun on the beach and pouring lots of vodka down us in the eve :)
Whilst enjoying the local nightlife, met a load of lads on tour from Oz that were highly attractive but the most arrogant wankers you've ever met. Snogged one of them then did yoga in the sea with Nati at 3am to cleanse myself in all the spirtual, waterness lol Drove to Zadar early that morning at intense Croatia heat, mixed with car fumes and all the vodka from the night before.. pretty unforgiving and a little bit pukey but was fiiiiinneee and we drove to Zadar and had lunch on the beach and I took photos of people and their dogs, it was lovely.
The food, in particular the fish, in Croatia is actually sublime. In the few days we were there I ate the best tuna steak of my life, the best mussels, fish platter in general, sea food risotto and grilled squid. SO YUMMY and collected a whole load of different ideas and recepies I want to experiment with when I get back. Moving on.. We arrived in Petrcane and where Soundwave festival was and to be honest, Soundwave deserves a whole post to itself so I'll come back to that one in my next blog but oh my LOVED IT! Amazing! Best festival ever and took lots of photos for you all to see.
Was quite upset to leave Croatia but we got to drive through Slovenia (again) and on to see Austria, Germany and a weird little country next to Switzerland called Lichenstein. Did really love it in Croatia and would definitely go back, most especially for Soundwave festival which turly was amazing and the boat party rocked my socks off! That, the people and the food was just wank worthy. Also, and I will stop going on about how much I love Croatia! it's really great that it hasn't been totally spoilt and ruined by tourists yet. I mean, Soudnwave was very English but it's a festival and it was widely advertised in the UK so what do you expect? but the locals were all super friendly and there weren't too many socks and sandal wearing tit bag tourists everywhere you went so that was nice. Definitely recommend Croatia, especially Split and Zadar!
So SLOVENIA (again!): nice, and actually got to look around this time and weren't constantly under the watch of racist campsite owners! On the way to Slovenia we did sleep in a random carpark as we made the mistake of leaving straight after the music ended on Sunday so were exhuasted by 1am. Managed to sleep fine though was just a bit cold and uncomfortable! Drove on about 5-9am and ended up in some place I can't remember but it was nice and still in Slovenia and we went for breakfast and I had mushroom soup in a bread cup which was fantastic and all mushy and delcious. Definitely have to try making that when I'm home! Proper winter food for comfort, mmm. Anyhoo, lots of coffee and then I started to feel mental and laugh hysterically for no reason what so ever and my eyes would stream and the others would look at me quite concerned but I was having the best time! Out of it completely with tiredness but so gone you feel calm and a space caddet. Walked around a castle then I had a laughing fit and had to lie down on the grass by the car and fell alseep, then Nati drove us to a lake in Austria and we slept there until evening.
Thinking we probably needed somewhere proper to sleep, I drove three hours onto Salzburg where it turned out no hostels were available... into a internet cafe to look up campsites! Found one 3km and raced round there, 5 mins before the reception shut and booked ourselves in. No faffing about with Luigi and straight to McDonalds where I think we brought everything on the menu... Ate, drove back and had our coldest and worst night in the tent yet. Awoke, tired, grouchy, wanting bed and drove a million miles to Switzerland through Germany and Lichenstein. And that was Austria! We saw, we ate, we got rained on and left lol wouldn't recommend it but to be fair didn't see much and ideally would have liked to have seen Vienna and not Salzburg but in context of the whole experience, I can't complain, the whole trip was great and basically life affirming. I enjoyed it a lot and thank the people involced and Berocca for sponsoring my hangovers.
