First entry from Zagreb

Phew,
The expedition has certainly gotten lost a few times this past week... I arrived in Venice to greet my sister on the 6th after a very, very turbulent red eye plane flight. I had pulled an all nighter right before leaving on the trip...all realatively well so far. We spent the night out in a hostel in Lido, which is about a 25 minute water bus ride out past venice... not accesable by land. Sarah had already done the ground work in finding this place and since she now seems to speak Italian fairly well, directions are not too hard to come by. We saw a few churches and such, most importantly I had my first taste of Italian Gellato and it was amazing.

Then the troubles... Sis thought that she booked a train ticket out of the only station in Venice... but it turns out that it was one away from the station where we were staying. We jumped onto a train, without a ticket, to the next station over in hopes of arriving just in time for the train to Bologne and on to Ancona. We missed it. Luckly our ticket was still good for the next train almost three hours later, but when we arrived in Ancona, finally, all the Ferrys to Croatia had stopped for the day, except one overnight one. Sis revealed to me at this time that we did not have a reservation for that night anyhow, so we got on the overnight one. Not altogether a bad ride, I actually enjoy spending the night on a boat, and we got to Split the next day.

The Croatian coast is one of the most beautiful that I have seen in the world, and I have been a fair way around it.

We tried to get a bus from split to sejevnic, to go to Krka national park, but our bus broke down and we had to wait almost two hours on the side of the roafor the next one to come. Once that came it turned out that we had to wait a while for the next bus to leave for Krka... we got to Krka and enjoyed swimming under the water fall and took many good pictures, but when we went to leave it turned out that there were no buses leaving from there... the drop you off but they do not come back to pick you up. A lady at the Kiosk told us that there was a "small bus on small street" by which, after almost fourty minutes of pondering we took to mean, "a taxi on the side road." The taxi driver returned us to the bus station, only to be greeted by another hour long wait for the late bus. There, the bus conductor told us that she would be willing to drop us off in Bibenje, where our next hostel was, but she did not know exactly where it was, just that, we should "go that way and ask for help." That way happened to be a 2km hike to the nearest open establishment (it was 10:30 at night), which was a resturant with marginally helpful staff. A waitress drew us a line on a sheet of paper and sent us on our way. We went around the marina, hardly finding it, but a man on a bicycle finally appeared out of nowhere to give us a personal escort. We made it approximately 6 hours after we said we would arrive. I am happy to report that since then transportation has worked much better, but that was quite a few first days on this expedition.

So far I have been impressed with the beauty of Croatia, and how inexpensive the entire country is. I have not run into any other Americans, but it seems almost all of the continental Europe vacations here, something I take as a good sign. The Croatian people are all very willing to help, and friendly, but there seems to still be a fair amount of petty crime in the area and punctuallity is not a word used to describe anything about the nation. Of course I contrast against the U.S. and Japan, but those are my standards. The food is nothing to write home about, especially after I was able to spend a day in Italy. Have yet to go to a place that offers the real traditional food. I plan on it soon.

More to come later