After a long, tiring day yesterday I was up bright and early today. I woke up at 6:30am in order to catch an 8am train into Croatia.
My train ride was just over 2 hours into the city of Zagreb and was highlighted by having my passport checked and stamped twice as we exited Slovenia and then 10 minutes later as we entered Croatia.
Passport checks have been few and far between thanks to the Schenegen agreement which basically allows for open borders between most European counties. This was only my second time out of the Schenegen area (hence the passport check) and I will be facing many more passport checks in the next month or two as I’m travelling exclusively out of the Schenegen area.
The other thing that comes with being out of the area is most of the countries here still use their own currency and not the euro. Such is the case with Croatia where I exchanged all my euros for kunas. I gave them 200 and got 1500 in return. For the rest of the day I tried to convert things my diving by 7.5 – good way to hurt my head.
Anyway, the train arrived into Zagreb around 10:30 and after a walk to the bus station and a quick lunch I was hopping on a 1pm bus to Zadar.
After a nice little three and a half hour bus ride I finally arrived at my destination and got to my hostel around 5pm.
My hostel has about 10 people staying in it, 5 of whom are from Saskatchewan in Canada so basically Canada is taking over here.
After settling in I walked down to the old city for dinner. I didn’t really take any time to explore as that’s what I have planned for tomorrow. Besides, I was hungry so I just v-lined straight for the restaurant the girl at the front desk had recommended.
The dinner was great both good and bad. The food was amazing as I started with an assortment of pates and cheese with toast and then finished it off with a filet minion done in a mushroom sauce with cheese filled ravioli and fries. The service, however, sucked.
Coming from the service industry I’ve always heard that no matter how good the food is, if the service sucks it doesn’t matter. These words rang very true tonight as what should have been a great meal turned into a lackluster one just because of the service.
Anyway – rant over…
After walking back to the hostel I just kind of took it easy catching up on my photo uploads, facebooking and, of course, this blog.
Tomorrow I’ll explore the old city here in Zadar before heading to the Plitvice National Park the next day. Should be a great couple of days…
