Food

I’m writing tonight’s blog in Notepad because the Internet connetion here at the Swissotel in Sarajevo is so terrible. I can’t even check my email via Wi-Fi. My cell phone is working perfectly thanks to T-Mobile, but I only get 5 GB of free international data each month, so I don’t want to overdo it. But this Wi-Fi situation is upsetting. The rest of the hotel is really nice. I am super impressed with the quality of everything else, so it’s sort of crazy that I can’t get Internet access in my room. I’ll post this the next time I actually have Internet access. ...

We left Krka National Park on the slow boat back to Skradin at 9:30 am and then walked back to our hotel. We had officially checked out of the hotel before we left for Krka earlier that morning, because checkout time was 10:00 am and we had no way to guarantee we would be back by then. So we cleared out our rooms and put all our bags and gear into the van before heading out. But we left our van in the hotel parking lot while we toured the park. We arrived back in Skradin around 10 and walked back up to the hotel to get our van and drive down the coast to Split, the second largest city in Croatia. ...

We had another unexpectedly good breakfast this morning. Our hotel isn’t very big, and the breakfast/dining room is equally small. But they managed to put together a pretty good spread. Lots of cheese and charcuterie, several kinds of granola and other cereals, multiple kinds of juices that were really good, yogurts, fruit, etc. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was really good. So we left for the park full and ready for the day. ...

The hotel was hot. I don’t sleep well when it’s too hot, and it was too hot last night. We tried opening the door to let in the amazingly cool and fresh air from outside, but it was so noisy that we had to close it. Maybe leaving it open and loud would have been a better choice, but instead we suffered and didn’t really sleep more than about 4 hours each. That’s a terrible record for our first night here after a full night of not sleeping on the plane. So we’re going to have to solve something for tonight. Hopefully there won’t be as many late loud parties tonight since it’s Sunday. We’ll see. ...

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, we booked a trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia. We knew we wanted to spend some time there and to see some of the surrounding countries. We got our flights and seats and all that fun stuff booked and paid. Months later, Delta threw us a curve ball. We live in Saint George, Utah, so when we book international trips, we have to decide if we’re going to fly out of Las Vegas or Salt Lake City. The rest of our friends on this trip were flying out of Salt Lake, because they live near there. We opted to fly out of Las Vegas because it was a little cheaper and shorter for us (once you add in the drive to and from either LV or SLC). But there we were, about 6 months after making our choice and Delta cancelled our flight and booked us on new flights that cut a full day from our trip. There was no way that would work, since the rest of the crew wasn’t going to be missing anything and we would have a hard time catching up with them. So we had to make some hard choices and wound up starting our day 3 hours earlier, adding an extra stop in Detroit, and being pretty upset at Delta… But at least we could still arrive in Paris with the rest of the group and then journey on to Ljubljana together. Delta wound up changing little things like plane sizes and schedules, but they didn’t amount to enough for us to have to do anything. ...

Today was our last day on Crete. I really enjoyed Crete. It may not be the “paradise” spoken of by our taxi driver on Santorini, but it’s a pretty, amazing place. The north side has all the cities and is fairly green and beautiful. The center has surprisingly tall and steep mountains. The south side has beautiful beaches. We spent the day at one of those beautiful beaches today. Driving from Chania to Elafonisi Beach is a challenge. The roads are windy and very narrow. In some places they are so narrow only a single direction can proceed at a time. We passed through what looks like a railroad tunnel, barely wide enough for the microbus we were driving. The road takes you through a few small towns where you are sometimes forced to pull to the side into a driveway so traffic coming towards you can get by. If you get carsick easily, this may not be a good trip for you. ...

We got up early to see if there was a response from the boat tour company. They replied during the night. They’re not running the boat that does tours of the volcano this time of year, but offered to have us take their other boat (at twice the price) to visit some beaches. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out either, so we had a day of relaxation ahead. Taking it Easy We got up, packed our bags, and walked to a nearby bakery for breakfast. This one doesn’t have a beautiful view and doesn’t really cater to tourists. That made it a lot cheaper, but it was also a lot more complicated for us to order. I ordered something I had never seen before called “salty pancakes”. Brett got an omelette. Charmaine and Jess each got a Greek yogurt. The portions were huge, as they always are in this country. It was a real job eating all our food, but we managed to do it. ...

It’s pretty cool here right now, so we didn’t see the need to get up super early to start our big hike. We got up at a reasonable time, walked around town until we found a nice breakfast place overlooking the ocean, and then started walking from Fira to Oia. Breakfast was pretty good, but it was more expensive than it was worth, in my opinion. I guess that’s what you get when you go to a place with a nice view. Instead of the typical Greek yogurt, I went for some coconut yogurt with mangos and chia seeds. It was tasty, but I definitely could have used a bit more food before setting out on our hike. ...

The day started early. We had to drive back to Athens in time to catch a flight to Santorini, and that meant leaving the hotel before 7:00. Breakfast doesn’t start until 7, but we hoped to sneak in and get a doggie bag for ourselves anyway. No. The lady setting up the buffet wasn’t going to fall for our tricks and excuses. We did finally talk her in to letting us grab “a role” before walking out to the car. ...

We went to bed a bit early last night. For some reason staying up through the night on a flight will do that to you. So we went to sleep around eight and woke up around five. That’s a bit earlier than we were hoping, but the traffic noise was starting to build and it didn’t seem like we would be able to fall back to sleep. Today is Sunday. A lot of things seem to be closed on Sunday, even in Athens. We walked around the hotel in search of an ATM, an electronics store (hoping to buy a plug adapter), and to find some breakfast. We found an ATM at a bank across the street from the hotel. Across another street from there is a bakery called Bread Factory. We had no choice but to buy some pastries. The pastries were good, especially the mini Pain au Chocolat. ...