Our roadtrip is underway* and we are still holding steady. All’s well here as we have found a steady rhythm of wake up-coffeetime-explore-drive-explore(new city)-read-sleep repeat. And we have driven a lot in this first part of the road trip. In hindsight, front-loading some of the longer drives while getting accustomed to driving in Europe, on top of staying at some of the places for only a night (which of course forces a concentrated, ‘We must get all the exploring into this 5 hour window!!!’) obviously made for a frenzied, exhausting first week of roadtrip. I think we are both exhaling a sigh of relief after the last few days that our momentum has slowed coming into the last half of the road trip. The stunning blue of the Dalmatian coastline here in Croatia also probably deserves some credit for that relief.

The start of the roadtrip started with bigger cities up front. Berlin, Prague then Vienna. In the speed to get this post up, I may go through these quickly and won’t do the cities themselves justice. All together, these cities were I think what the expectation is coming to a big European city from the States. There are the old city centers with some buildings past 1000 years old but then almost more impressively buildings from 800 years ago still in active use. And then around those old towns are much more built up, modern cities that show the different development paths each place has taken over the years. Where Ash and I are from, the old town has the Reed Opera house built in 1870 which is comparatively very old by West Coast standards. Additionally, with these big European cities they are distinctly foreign but familiar, in the way a new, big global cities are.  All together, some big take-aways we learned. Go to the popular touristy spots at night, there are so fewer people that you can actually walk around and see a space.

I am glad that Ashley is loving Croatia. I had visited when I was in college and loved it and had raved to Ashley that it was imperative we come here, that it was one of the better parts of Europe. I think I have a convert in Ashley. After first going to Lake Plitivice (which we still cannot pronounce anywhere near correct, Croatian has some tricky phonemes… it is a good thing we were assured by Ashley’s friend Damir that ‘If there was a single waiter that did not speak English then we should call him’). If I were to upload just half of the pictures Ashley took there (our camera ran out of memory at this point), we would overrun our memory allocation for this site. But this place seems fake, as if Disney had come in without a budget to create a naturewalk. Again, big mistake, we only spent a night here before continuing south to Dubrovnik, a walled seatown from Roman times (and Game of Thrones and Star Wars fame!) More importantly, we have been eating fresh-caught seafood and driving along the coast with lookouts where you can look out to the sea and spy small coastal towns tucked into the hillside. The place we are staying is out away from the melee of tour buses and cruise ships, on top of the hill where our commute into the city is to walk along a ridge overlooking the city (and sometimes pass a big herd of sheep just laying in the shade), then a glass cable car to just outside the walls of the city.  We took a stop in Makarska for espresso and were surprised by an incredible selection of Croatian goat and sheep cheeses. Even being here before, this has been so surprising and has been a wonderful place to relax. On to Split next and the adventure continues 🙂

*Written a bit ago, Road trip is nearing finish, so it looks like we’ve made it ok, we just were going from one city to the next to stop long enough to write (or had too spotty of internet to upload anything).