The Friday before the 4th we hopped on a RyanAir flight to Zadar. We took a taxi ride to our apartment and still had the entire day to explore. Our place was about a 5 minute walk to the ocean and about 20 minutes to Old Town.
We started off by sitting outside at a nearby restaurant and eating bacon-wrapped chicken skewers with potatoes, salad and bread.
After our mini-feast we walked around to see what was going on. We strolled along the beach for a while before hitting a cement court surrounded by a bunch of people. We peaked our heads over the wall and saw a bunch of soccer teams filled with 10 year old boys playing on concrete to small goals. Taylor and I grabbed a few cans of Croatian beer while we watched and cheered them on!
As the sun set we decided to venture back towards our apartment. We didn't make it very far before seeing more people playing soccer on a different court surrounded by a chain linked fence. Since there were only a few boys we decided to crawl through the hole in the fence and join them. We split the teams 3 vs 3 and played half court while Taylor sat in the goal. We played for a good hour before it was too dark to see anymore, said "ciao" and went to find some dinner.
We stopped at this fun outdoor BBQ restaurant where we we able to cool off. I ordered a meatball dish that was actually just one giant flat delicious piece of meat and Taylor got the chicken cordon bleu.
The next day was designated to the beach and ocean! First, we went to the local grocery store to grab some sunscreen, beer and a straw mat to sit on. After we were fully prepared we found a small patch of shade and sat down. The ocean was super rocky but that didn't stop us from diving in. We were right next to a pier that everyone was jumping off so of course we did too!
After some water time we sat down and had some lunch. A man with a cooler was walking around selling corn on the cob so we dug into that. Soon, a lady with brochures came up to us. Immediately, we were already thinking, "Whatever you have to offer, we don't want it." We were wrong. She went on about this boat excursion that was taking off the next morning for the entire day that took you to a few different islands. For the cheap price of 30 Euro a person you got breakfast, lunch and dinner, free wine, and a chance to see different parts of Croatia! We were hesitant at first, thinking it was maybe a scam but we decided it sounded too good to pass up.
The rest of the evening we wandered around, finding dinner at an Italian restaurant and enjoyed the sunset. We then headed back to our apartment and crossed our fingers that the boat would be there in the morning!
Our alarms went off at 7:30AM and we walked to the pier where the lady said the boat would be. Sure enough, it was there with a few other people! We hopped on and picked up more people at the City Center. From there, it was about a 3 hour cruise to our first destination. We played cards for a bit and then moved our way up to the front of the boat to enjoy the breeze.
At the beginning of the cruise we were asked where we were from and what we wanted to eat (meat, fish, or both). Once we got to our first stop to have lunch we realized they asked us so that they could sit us with people from our same country. Our table had 7 Americans total. We were all happy to get to know each other but were kind of sad to not be able to mingle with people from other countries! The food was delicious, fish head and all. After lunch we were able to separate and do our own thing for about an hour. At this specific spot there was a lake all enclosed by land but still salt water through the underground channels. That's where we posted up and swam until it was time to load back onto the boat.
On the cruise ride back we stopped briefly at another island. By this time we had made friends with the Aussie's on the boat and we had enough time to jump out the side of the boat and grab a beer. When we got back to our original point we grabbed dinner with our new friends and sat for a couple hours playing cards and talking about all of our travels.
The next morning we hopped on a plane at 7AM and made our way back to Germany! I say this every time BUT this was one of our favorite trips so far!
