Croatia. Is. Awesome.

Who knew that the place that I was looking forward to the least would be so much fun?

We docked in Dubrovnik, which is on the coast of southern Croatia, yesterday morning. It's absolutely gorgeous here! Cute white houses with clay-colored roofs everywhere. As soon as we got here, I headed out for a kayaking and snorkeling trip for my biology class. (Side note: our kayaking guide was so cute…which is apparently a recurring theme with Croatian men). When we got there, we all had to get into pairs for our kayaks. I didn’t really know anyone, so I was paired with some kid from California. He wasn’t much of a talker, but I figured as long as we could kayak over to the island without any problems, then we’d be good. I got in the front, he took the back, and we were off. Not very gracefully though...we veered to the left. And then back to the right. And then we were turning in a circle. And it was just bad all around. He and I couldn’t seem to get in sync with one another for the life of us. We hit other people’s kayaks about 20 times, and they started to just get out of the way when they saw us coming. Like I said before, he wasn’t the communicating type…so when I tried to figure things out, I would only hear unintelligible mumbling and the occasional grunt. After a few failed attempts at communication, I decided to give up and just start paddling the way I wanted to. And somehow, we managed to get over to the island.

On the island, they handed us snorkels, and we headed off in search of marine life. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see. Actually, I probably saw more beer cans than fish. After about an hour and a half of beer can sightings, we got in our kayaks to head back to the mainland. I’m not quite sure what happened to my kayak buddy…but he was WAY more talkative this time around. This chatty new side to him made it way easier to maneuver our way back. We didn’t hit ONE person this time, and we even managed to get a nice rhythm going. To the shock and awe of our fellow kayakers, we somehow managed to race ahead of most of them. It turned out to be pretty fun…but also unbelievably tiring. My arms were super sore when I woke up this morning.

After kayaking, I headed back and got ready to go to dinner. I met up with my friends, and we headed into Old Town, which is basically…the old part of town. Shocking, I know. It’s actually really pretty though. There are these big fortressy-type walls that surround the whole area and when you go inside the walls, there are a ton of cute little restaurants and shops. We had a really, really good dinner, too. I’m not quite sure what Croatian food is exactly, but so far, the food here has been my favorite. I had zero expectations about this place, so I’ve been really pleasantly surprised. Since we’d all had a long day, we decided to call it a night early…well it was midnight, but that’s pretty early considering some of our other nights.

This morning, Carmella, Brianna, and I decided to do a boat tour that took us to a few islands off the coast of Dubrovnik. (Turns out sky-diving, our original plan, is apparently not something that they do in this part of Croatia much. We were misinformed by some dude on the ship). The island tour cost 230 kuna (or about 50 bucks) for all day with lunch and unlimited drinks included, so it was a pretty sweet deal considering how expensive everything has been lately. After we got onto our cool piratey-looking boat, we saw our Dean of Everything (I’m not really sure what his title is…but basically he’s the main dude in charge of the whole shebang) and his wife and their son and daughter-in-law get on too. My friends and I gave each other ‘this could be awkward’ looks, but we said hi to them, exchanged pleasantries, and went our separate ways on the small boat. As soon as our Dean and his family were out of hearing distance, Carmella looked over at us and in the most serious tone I’ve heard from her yet, whispered, ‘I will not, under any circumstances, let the Dean see me in a BIKINI.’ Fair enough.

We went to a total of three islands. We spent an hour at each of the first two. Both were pretty, but there wasn’t much to do at either of them besides take a few pictures here and there. At the third island, we were given a little over three hours to explore. As we started walking, we realized that we were right behind the dean and his family. Although they were walking super slowly, we didn’t want to be rude by passing them, so we continued to walk slowly behind them. After about ten minutes, the dean’s wife turned back to us and said, ‘We have no idea where we’re going, so you probably don’t wanna follow us.’ Oh gosh. We decided to stop at some random shop to avoid having to awkwardly seem like we were following them anymore.

After delaying ourselves for a bit, we wandered to the path that led to the other side of the island where the Grand Beach was. There were a lot of golf-cart type things that were offering to drive you to the beach for 20 kuna a piece (less than 4 bucks). We looked at a map, and Carmella decided that the beach didn’t look too far, so we’d save a buck and just walk along the path. Talk about an idiot move. We walked. And we walked. And the more we walked, the steeper the path got. And the steeper the path got, the more my body hated me. And the more carts of happy, un-sweaty people that zoomed by, the more I resented Carmella’s decision-making skills. After about 25 minutes of intensely-inclined walking, we finally reached the top and started to make our descent. After about 20 more minutes of walking down, we finally reached the beach. We searched along the beach to find three chairs for us and kept walking until we spotted a few together. Triumphantly, we hurried over to some chairs and plopped our stuff down before anyone else could snag them.

After we disrobed and applied sunscreen, we all sat down ready to get our tan on. At this point, I started to take in my surroundings. It was a gorgeous beach. Pretty sand. Lots of cute Europeans strewn about. And…oh God…is that the dean and his family? In the chairs RIGHT NEXT TO OURS!?!? Please don’t tell me that in our mad dash to get chairs, we’d picked ones that were oh-so-conveniently next to them! I looked over at Carmella and Brianna who had apparently come to this same realization. So much for the dean not seeing us half-naked. We did our best to avoid eye contact and pretend as if we’d never seen them. Which was half-true since we hadn’t seen them at first. Oh well…not much we can do about it now. After laying out and swimming for a couple hours, it was time to head back to our boat. We had yet another awkward exchange with the dean in which he made a ‘following us, again?’ kind of joke. On the way back, we took a cart. It was the best four bucks I’ve spent this whole trip. Our driver was yet another super cute Croatian guy. He was thrilled to learn that I came from Tennessee, where his favorite drink, Jack Daniel’s, is made. I told him he could come visit anytime.

When we got back from our island tour, we headed back to the ship, where we freshened up. We went into Old Town in search of another good restaurant. After walking around for awhile, we found one that had a great view of the harbor and mid-range prices, so we decided it was perfect. After we sat down and were given menus, I took a look at the tables around us. And guess who was there…THE DEAN! And his family. AGAIN! Of all the bajillion places to eat, we just so happen to pick the SAME EXACT restaurant as them!? As if things couldn’t get MORE awkward with them. At this point, we all kind of gave up on caring about whether or not they thought we were following them. We waved hello and tried to ignore the slightly creeped out looks on their faces. Dinner was delicious, and we wandered around for a bit before heading back to the ship.

Tomorrow, I’ve got an SAS trip to Montenegro, which I’m super excited for! Also, we hear that Croatian nightlife is pretty good, so we’ll probably try to hit up a dance club tomorrow night!