Hello, friends! Parents!

It felt strange to be in the air again after travelling by land and sea for so long. Very atypical compared to past travels! From my window seat, I got some nice views of that pretty blue water, plus a strange cloud canyon once we breached the cloud cover.

I was pretty hungry when I landed in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, but I was SO TIRED of bread and greasy foods. The airport cafe was selling salads and smoothies, and I was soooo happy to get one of each. The salad wasn’t even a good salad. It wasn’t a bad salad, but it was just… Fine. And yet, it was so very appreciated. The smoothie was pretty bomb.

It felt so good to get some fruit and veggies in me!!

After landing, I went straight to my Airbnb to drop off my things. The whole way there, I told myself over and over that I just needed to drop off my bags and get out of the house, but my well-laid plans were futile.

The place was so nice and so big. It was listed as a “studio,” but it was actually a giant one bedroom apartment, with a separate mud room, water closet, bathroom, living room, dining area, and kitchen. It even had French doors to the bedroom! It was giving “The Astrological Guide to a Broken Heart” vibes, if you’ve seen that show on Netflix! It’s Italian. Very posh.

So, yeah. I did not drop off my things and leave. Instead, I looked at flights again. The option to flee directly from Zagreb had disappeared, but there was another reasonably viable option that would allow me to leave after my next destination, with a quick layover in New York. I hmm’d. I hawed. I called my mom. I called my boyfriend. I cried a lot.

Everybody had the same things to say. The confusion. The incredulity.

“If you’re tired, maybe you should just take it easy for a couple days!”

“Maybe you should just take a break from hostels and reset.”

“Don’t you think you’ll regret it once you get home and realize there’s nothing exciting going on here?”

People were also kept attributing my desire to go home to “homesickness,” which is not the case. The real thing I’m feeling is “travel fatigue.” I erred big time when I told my poor boyfriend that he is “not even one percent of the reason I want to come home early.”

I feel bad about having said that, but it’s true! My desire to come home early has nothing to do with missing things at home. It’s all about just… Not wanting to be doing what I’m doing anymore.

And for the record, my poor boyfriend is probably 92% of the reason I’m excited about the idea of going home early. Just not the motivation. Make sense?

There were a few things that I kept coming back to during these days and these conversations:

1. I’m tired, but not in a “need to rest” kind of way.

2. I know myself and I know my body, and it really doesn’t seem like this feeling will go away in a couple of days. I would hate to end up in a beautiful place next week that I’ve been wanting to visit for years and just be feeling this way the whole time. It really feels like if I stay, I will be in a “toughing it out” mindset, which isn’t the most lovely or enjoyable. Not the way I’d like to feel while prancing around Europe.

3. I really felt excited when I looked at those flights to come home. I felt something closer to dread when I got my reminder emails about upcoming hostel reservations.

The big tell-tale sign this was probably the right choice for me was the excitement when I looked at those flights home. I’ve felt that feeling dozens of times – the excitement at the thought of a trip. Once I look at flights and get that feeling, the trip is basically a done-deal. I’ve never felt that when I’ve looked at tickets to go home, but it’s still a very familiar feeling.

So I bought the tickets.

And then I ran out the door because I was late to meet my new friend Laura for dinner!

Laura had already been to Zagreb at the start of her trip, so she was able to give me a mini walking tour of all the closed and scaffolding-covered churches and museums. Lol.

There was a big earthquake in Zagreb in 2020, and the city is hard at work making repairs to lots of these older, historical buildings. Good luck to them! Bad luck for us, haha.

For dinner, we had some vegetarian kebabs and some really yummy green juice.

Laura was all about her “last gelato,” and refused to agree that she could still find gelato in the states, haha. I was SO full after dinner, but I got sucked into the excitement. It was painful, haha.

We wandered a little bit more and I walked Laura back to her hostel, where I also almost stayed! Then I hitched a tram back to my cozy Airbnb. Very glad I did not stay in the hostel, haha.

In the morning, I had another day tour – this time to Plitvice Lakes. I had considered this trip from Split, but it’s a four hour drive from there, so I opted for Krka instead. Krka was so tiny, though, so I was feeling some regret. Luckily it was only three hours from Zagreb, so I scheduled a tour for later in my trip. Peep the bougainvillea on the way to the van pick-up!

Here’s the catch: remember how I keep talking about this whole “rain” thing that’s been going on?? And honestly, it’s not even that it seems like that much rain – it’s just that any amount of rain during travel is a bit finicky, and a decent amount of it is downright frustrating. Well, turns out my frustration wasn’t misplaced. I received a message from my tour guide the day before the tour notifying me that due to record amounts of rain, the entire park was flooded and mostly closed. Oh, joy! We would only be able to walk around the upper walls of the canyon and look down on the park.

The reason I chose this particular tour was because it touted over five miles of walking/ hiking throughout the park, and that sounded quite lovely. So imagine my disappointment, then, when I learned we would be walking about a mile total, out of the park, instead.

Yeah, not super thrilling. I looked at some feedback online, and enough people said to go for it that I did. In the end, I think it was a decent day, but not worth the $100 for what we got to experience. Bummer.

Our first stop was to the “picturesque” village of Rastoke.

Here’s what it normally looks like:

And here’s what it looked like when we were there:

L.O.L. I thought this waterfall was the most fascinating because it’s normally calm and flat until it reaches the edge. On this day, though, it was bulging upward, as if trying to make more space for itself. There was barely enough width to accommodate the shear volume of water flowing over this edge!

Here’s some more waterfalls and more angles:

Notice the lovely brown color of the churning river, normally that beautiful turquoise color I’ve come to love.

I’m not even sure how some of these little trees are hanging on!

There were ropes strung across the river with numbers and markings that we supposed meant, “If it reaches this height, we’re really in trouble.”

I spent most of my walk with a chummy English boy named Sam. My whole bus was English people and two Kiwis. “Commonwealth and the ex-colony,” as our guide called it. Our guide also told us this was the most rain Croatia had ever recorded in the month of May, and that villages all over the country were flooding and being evacuated. Crazy!

We were told we could do a loop of the town, but when we reached the bridge to bring us across the river, it was about a foot under muddy water. That route turned into an out-and-back pretty quick!

To make up for our lost money spent on admission to the closed park, our guide delivered each of us a bag of goodies, including iced tea, water, a yummy Croatian cheese sandwich, a donut, and some snacks.

I’d told Sam I was “so tired of bread,” so when he opened our lunches and saw what was inside, he apparently thought to himself, “Oh, Lizzy’s gonna love this.” Hahahaha.

After a bit more driving and a lot more chatting with the Scot and Brit next to me, we reached Plitvice.

We started by entering the top of the canyon from the park side and walking across, stopping at length at each viewpoint.

Luckily, this far upstream, the water was still that pretty turquoise color.

Our views were pretty obstructed at times, but we could sometimes make out the path below and see why it was closed: RUSHING water cascaded over parts of the boardwalk, and it seemed as though some real repairs might need to be made before it could be opened again!

There was one path in particular that I would not want to walk on without somehow being harnessed to the railing. It was that crazy.

So yeah, I understand why the park was closed.

After our walk on the first side of the canyon, I stopped in the shop to write a postcard and sip a shot of velebitska degenija, an herbal liqueur the lady behind the counter assured me was “very good.” ‘Twas quite strong!

Then we piled back into the van to exit the park proper and walk the top of the canyon from the other side.

From this side, we actually saw a few people who’d snuck past the barriers and were walking on the paths in protest! It was crazy! I missed one guy walking past that harness-required area, but he was wading through calf-deep water in other parts! Then we saw him stop to dump his shoes out. Cray cray! Our guide said he will most definitely be fined because there is only one way to exit the boardwalks, and there will be park rangers waiting for him there. Oof.

Our guide said the park had literally never been closed for flooding like this. We’re just special. Whomp-whomp.

When we returned to Zagreb, we passed the (closed for construction) National Gallery, and then I was dropped off near my Airbnb next to this funny round building that turned out to be a museum that was actually open.

Say no more!

It was a modern art museum, and it was half under construction (story of this trip), but what was open was really cool, and well worth the five euros!

Only the upstairs was open. The outermost wall had multiple projectors tuned on it, displaying a short claymation film. It was really cool to see multiple scenes at once, rather than only having the option to look at one place, like in a standard movie/ TV scene.

It was some sort of family portrait, and it was a bit…. Strange, for sure. There were some inappropriate scenes, some sad people, some benign scenes of the children playing. The film wrapped with the little girl playing a tune on the fiddle and the whole family rushing to watch. Then the ceiling above the entranceway caved in, lol. Not sure what it means!

The center space held multiple paintings and sculptures.

My favorite part of this space was the acoustics! I realized everything echoed in this vast arena, so I started walking loudly, slapping my toes on the ground to hear the fun bounce-back. Tehehe. The construction guys underneath were even louder.

When I exited the center space, though, I found such a treat!!! I rounded the corner and found the film sets sitting on the ground!!

If you’ve spent any time with me, you probably know I love tiny things.

Let me tell you – I was in tiny heaven!!!

The scenes were like tiny, artful, intricate dollhouses!! So cool!!

The characters themselves were also on display, and they looked quite lifelike. (With the exception of the animals. The animals were weird, haha.)

So yeah, that was pretty great. It did make my schedule a bit frantic though, because I still needed to buy some detergent and do a load of laundry before a scheduled activity in the evening. I also was distracted by a library momentarily, haha. The library was very old-fashioned, smelled like books, and still had a card catalog. Cute!

It was a close call trying to get that laundry done with a 15 minute wash cycle and then hanging it all to dry. I ran onto the tram and fast-walked to the theater for a dance performance!

The theater was on a list of places to visit in Zagreb, but why visit a theater’s exterior when I can attend a performance?! The performance was called DecaDance, and I was super excited.

In the kerfuffle of arriving last minute, I was a little stunned to see a bunch of people dressed to the nines and spilling out onto a gorgeous balcony on the second floor, drinking and snacking.

When I entered this space, feeling wildly under-dressed, I kicked myself for arriving so late! The waiters were clearly serving free hors d’oeuvres, and there were tables overflowing with pre-poured glasses of wine and champagne! The show was starting in only a few minutes, so I shamelessly grabbed a glass of champagne and downed that sucker as I walked across the room. Lololol.

When I got to my seat, a middle-aged American couple talked to me about how excited they were to get tickets last-minute. I mentioned the free champagne, and the lady said, “Oh, you needed some kind of special ticket to get in there. They wouldn’t let us in there.”

Considering my ticket cost about fifteen dollars, I can almost guarantee I did not have that special ticket. So yeah, definitely nipped a free glass of champagne that was not for me. Bahahahahaha.

In my defense, those glasses were definitely going down the drain otherwise!!

The show was so fun. Interesting to look at, entertaining to watch, often funny, clever, and thought-provoking. Everything I love to see in modern dance! I was so pleased!

The first piece started in a triangle, with the dancers in colorful dancewear. They all did the same upper body movements without moving the blocking at all, because half of them were sitting or standing. They later erupted into movement.

Halfway through the performance, the lights turned on and a man came on stage, speaking into a microphone in Croatian. People started standing. I assumed it was intermission. But then nobody moved!

When he spoke again, people laughed, and a couple sat down. The lady next to me frantically asked what he said, as if I spoke Croatian. She then asked the girl on my other side, who translated, “If you make more than €3000 per month, sit down.” To convert, know that Croatians declare their income per month rather than per year, and after taxes rather than before. So that is the equivalent of about $45-50k annual USD. Not a ton of money, but average salary in Croatia is quite low, and we were sitting in the cheap seats, after all. I assume more people sat down below us.

Another line, more laughter, some more sitting. Then, in English, “If you do not understand Croatian, you may sit down.” Man, I wish I understood Croatian! More and more people sat, and the laughter got more and more hysterical. There was an inappropriate one near the end!

For one of my favorite pieces, all the dancers were wearing tuxedos. They sat on chairs in a semi-circle, and it quickly became clear the song was a repetitive, add-one-thing song, like the Twelve Days of Christmas. For the final move, they always splayed themselves out very dramatically, one by one, around the circle. It made for a very cool effect. The last guy in the circle always threw himself out into the middle of the stage in defeat before crawling back to his chair as the rest of the dancers sang loudly.

They also took most of their clothes off, haha.

There was also a cool piece where all of the dancers walked purposefully across the stage, but as they crossed the center, one dancer would leave them and stay. They spent a few moments improving in the middle of the stage while their own voice played, introducing themselves and explaining one very personal thing about them – something about their family, where they came from, their relationship with their bodies, their relationship with dance. It was very cool.

The applause lasted for about six minutes. They kept lowering and raising the curtain, haha.

I took some fun photos at the end and realized this theater must have been inspired by the Paris Opera House! It’s like a photocopy! But then upon Googling, it seems to have opened first, so not sure!

The place I wanted to go for dinner wasn’t serving food anymore, so I settled for a random ramen bar. Big mistake! Not good!

Oh well. You win some; you lose some.

In case you are curious, I’ve cut Sicily, Trieste, and London off my itinerary. After my next stop, I’ll go to New York for a few days and then fly home about ten days early. Very excited! Hopefully I’ll return to Sicily a different time.

Stay tuned for the last stop!

Najbolje želje,

-Lizzy-wa