Vis, CROATIA!

Hello again! After our time in Turkey, we were headed to Croatia for 5 nights! It was an exhausting 27 hours of planes, trains, busses, and ferries before we finally we arrived in our island destination of Vis. It was insanely beautiful and we fell in love instantly. It has a cozy feel to it that Greece somewhat lacks, which has ranked this country a little higher on my list. It might even be #1, but we will see how the last few nights go before I get too ahead of myself!  We were staying on the other side of the island, in an area called Komiza. Our room was small but fit the 3 of us perfectly and had the best view overlooking the unbelievably clear ocean. This is not an exaggeration. The water is so transparent and inviting, every time I looked out the window I was tempted to dive right in. When I say it’s irresistibly clear, I mean that literally. I really couldn’t help but to want to be submerged in it at all times. On top of its perfect appearance, it’s also very salty, so we would just lay there on the water, floating effortlessly. Amazing!  We had 2 nights to enjoy there, and on our first one we just went for a swim, got pizzas at an Italian restaurant on the marina (oops) (trying not to revert back to our old ways) (please refer to Positano post aka eating a pizza a day), and read. We have been reading a lot ever since we bought some books at the Istanbul airport. If I’m being totally honest, we all got kinda hooked on the Fifty Shades of Grey series, but before you get your knickers in a knot, you must know it has a really intriguing story line and is actually just a good ol love story. And who can resist a good love story?! But that’s all I’ll say about that! I’ve also been reading a Jodi Picoult book called Nineteen Minutes, if anyone cares to know, and I’m loving it! It is impossible to put down.  Anyway, this isn’t a book review, don’t worry. What I’m trying to get at is the excessive amount of time we spend reading. As great as it is to read, we take it a little overboard considering we are in some of the most beautiful parts of the world yet we spend at least a quarter of the day nestled in our rooms, sitting in silence as we transport into the world of fictional characters. We’ve been making a conscious effort to get out more and, at the very least, take our reading materials to the beach. We’re working on it.  The second and, unfortunately, final day on Vis, we laid on the beach and went for a dip whenever the humid and overwhelming heat of Croatia became too much. We wandered around and found another beach, only about a 10 minute walk from ours, as the town is very quaint and small. Here we found ourselves people watching for a while, which is one of my favourite pastimes. It’s so interesting to observe other humans and try to figure out their relations to one another, where they’re from, why they’re here, and so on. It’s always crazy to try to put yourself in their skin and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around you. That sounds very shallow, but it’s just weird to grasp that idea since we only see the world through our own eyes; we only truly know the life that we live ourselves, and it’s so easy to forget that every single person experiences the world in their own way… Does this make any sense?? Je ne sais pas. Anyway, where was I… Ah yes. We then headed back for dinner at a more fancy restaurant on the water. We had a delicious, filling meal (I had pasta which I’m ashamed to admit because we’re not in Italy anymore and for some reason I feel guilty about it?!) and finished it off with an ice cream crepe! That wrapped up our second night, because after that… you guessed it…we were back in bookworm mode. I read in bed until my eyes were too heavy to follow the words on the page and I slowly slipped into a deep sleep.  When we awoke, it was time to pack up and head to the ferries to get back to Split, where we will be spending our next 3 nights. As we were waiting at the bus station, a man and a woman in a jeep (I guess you could call it a jeep??) pulled up and offered us a ride. It had a professional tour company name on it so we trusted that it was safe and we hopped in the open roofed back…  At one point, we all questioned this decision when we realized what strange, strange humans were driving us. They stopped at a nice lookout point along the way to take some pictures for us, but on their phone… He pulled out a big flag with a picture of earth on it and went on a little rant about how “we all belong to one earth… No more war! No other flags! Just this one of the earth because we are all together here and that’s all that matters!” That’s not word for word, but that was the gist of his message. By then I was thinking he was some effed up psychopath who was going to hold us hostage in a cave somewhere on the island. Or just kill us. Either one. Luckily, we continued on our way and arrived in the town of Vis, where we would catch our ferry. Along the way, there was a large styrofoam block on the road that they stopped to pick up. No idea why, but they proceeded to put it on the net above us in the back, and asked us to hold it down… We did as we were told but were so confused as to why they wanted it in the first place… What?! Inevitably, it went flying off, so the lady, who was barefoot, got out and retrieved it on the middle of the street. This is very unnecessary for me to add and I know nobody cares and I’m actually really sorry that you just wasted maybe 20 seconds of your life reading that, but it was just SO WEIRD. None of us really knew what was going on. I still have no idea what that was all about. Weird people, I’m telling you… Then we went off on our way to the ferry. It was a weird, weird experience. I still don’t know what to think of it. The only word I can think of to describe it, as you can tell, is weird. I’m just glad we made it out alive. People are odd. Don’t talk to strangers, kids!  And that’s all for today my friends! Stay tuned for some Split adventures! Tal