After Slovenia I had to spend about four hours in the nice but fairly unspectacular Zagreb while I waited for my night-train down to Split. One great thing about Croatia’s capital is that there is a legitimate free transport zone……not that that usually stops me from taking the risk in some of these European cities! I took a tram from the station in the lower town to the upper town which had a huge open square to just sit in and do some people-watching. A couple of pleasant churches were nearby and I walked up some steep steps to get a panoramic view of the city which was very adequate in all honesty.

 

I left Zagreb at 9.30pm and I was lucky enough to be in a cabin with just one other person which meant that we could have three seats each and get a fair bit of sleep during the eight hour journey. As soon as I arrived in Split I went next door to the bus station and took a fairly immediate bus down to Dubrovnik which pulled in at about 11am having travelled through some stunning coastal scenery on the Adriatic coast albeit with a quite rude Polish guy constantly leaning across me to take some poor quality photos through the window.

 

It seemed like I had been on the move for about 48 hours so my plan was to hit the beach in the afternoon to finally chill out by the sea and enjoy the 30+ degrees sunshine. Before that I had to find a place to stay which took a while which was mainly down to the fact that I underestimated the walk from the bus station to the outskirts of the famous old town!

Having got lost I somehow ended up at the YHA which was full but they said to just enquire at any house which had the word ‘sobe’ outside it. I enquired at the first house I saw, but the lady had no rooms available. However, she enquired for me at the neighbours house and within a few minutes I had myself a room in a house across from the YHA at a cheaper price. Furthermore, it was only about five minutes away from a beach which I went to straight away and I enjoyed some much-needed relaxation time on the pebble beach.

The enclosed ‘old town’ was my destination late afternoon and as marvellous as the marble streets and rose-tiled roofs were I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed with the place such were the rave reviews its received in recent times. I started walking up to the lookout point but for once I actually gave up on something as I was feeling tired and was content with the views I had already seen on the way up. I had an early night and left early to get on the 8am bus to Mostar in Bosnia & Herzogovena but was gutted to find out that it was already full so I had to wait around for five hours before the next bus.