As usual when summer comes to Europe, we can't help but book a one way ticket to a beautiful destination somewhere along the Mediterranean coast line. We have done little trips around Europe for the past three summers and it's definitely some of the most fun trips we have ever done.
This year we had just arrived back home after a few months in Asia to work at some festivals around Sweden. As soon as the festivals were over, we looked at each other with the same thought as usual, WHERE ARE WE GOING NOW?! We have a very hard time staying in one place for too long haha!
Exploring Croatia has always been high on our bucketlist and we felt like now was the perfect time to do it! The fact that we already spent most of our money in Asia and hadn't been paid for the festival jobs yet was none of our concern and would be a later problem. We checked for last minute tickets and managed to find two one-way tickets to Split, Croatia, for 150 euro total. Done! We paid for our tickets and a few days later we got on the flight.
We loved Split from the second we arrived, we always get a special feeling when we arrive at a new place that we know will be a new favorite, and Split was one of these places. It's hard to explain but it usually starts with butterflies in our stomachs and ends up with us both screaming in happiness. If you know us you know that this is nothing unusual😂. Some of the reasons we felt this way about Split straight away was that there were lots of travelers around (we mainly met Australians and New Zealanders which are our favorite people), tall mountains in the surroundings, clear blue waters, cute alleyways and picturesque buildings all around. What's not to love!? One of the highlights of our week in Split was the fact that our two absolutely crazy old travel buddies that we met in Greece two years ago arrived a day after us! We love meeting up with friends we've made along the way and these guys are pretty much just like us, just a bit more masculine (🤣), and we always make the craziest travel memories together!
When we arrived in Split, we came unprepared to say the least (as usual) and had nowhere to stay. We thought we'd do it old school this time so we picked up a map and went hunting for hostels with spare beds. We rang a lot of doorbells and walked around for a couple of hours until someone finally had a room for us. We're still not sure exactly what to call this place, it wasn't really a hostel, more like three old Croatian dude's living room with a couple of bunk beds set up. The sheets most likely hadn't been changed for weeks and the room stank of cigarettes. Anyway, it was the cheapest place we could find so it had to work. We fell asleep hugging our belongings and got out of there as soon as we woke up in the morning.
Our stay in Split soon turned in to a big party week and that we had an amazing time is an understatement. Of course we did some exploring as well, we walked around every inch of the city, watched pink sunsets over the water and soaked up the sun at the beaches. The beaches were a bit disappointing to be honest. We've been spoiled with gorgeous white sandy beaches in places like Bali and Greece and even though the beaches here were pretty, most of them were very rocky or over crowded. If you visit Split, you should definitely make it out to the islands close by to see some better beaches!
We also took a 40 min bus to the next town over, Omis, where we hiked up to a castle and got amazing views of the coastline. To visit Omis is a MUST! One of the prettiest towns we've seen and the hike was fantastic, although, don't make our mistake and go up in the middle of the day. We did the hike at 12 pm in 35 degree heat and almost fainted a few times on the way up. Views are totally worth it though!
It was pretty hard for us to find accommodation in Split since we usually always stay with couch surfing in Europe (best app in the world that lets you stay for free with other travelers) but in Split we couldn't seem to find any hosts. We wanted to stay on a low budget but ended up having to book a hostel for the week and paid 17 euro each per night to share a room with 6 other people?! It was't even a real hostel, more like someones apartment once again, but a lot more fresh than where we stayed the first night. Definitely not suitable for the anywheregirls budget tho, we prefer to stay for a lot less money... but we loved Split so much it had to be worth it.
So, the travel budget suffered a bit from our time in Split and it was very hard to find cheap vegetarian food (or any vegetarian food at all) as well as cheap accommodation as mentioned. Lucky for us, in an expensive city like Split, one of our friends knew the owner of a pub crawl so we could drink for free every night we went out. Typical us haha! Crozzies bar crawl was the perfect preparty before a night out and we ended up joining the crawl three times. We met heaps of other backpackers, played beer pong and danced the nights away, just how we like it! If you don't happen to know the owner of a pub crawl, there's no need to fear, drinks in the supermarket are super cheap! A 2 liter bottle of beer was less than 3 euro.
After a week of having too much fun and spending a bit too much of the budget, there was still no way our adventure would come to an end so we booked a bus ticket that took us to the next destination, Bosnia! Stay tuned for the next part of our Eurotrip...