Nothing like waking up thunder and pouring rain in a foreign country! Good times had by all in Zagreb this morning. After wolfing down free breakfast at the hotel... and, you know, smuggling out two rolls for later... we took a cab the two tenths of a mile to the train station. In our defense, it was POURING when we called it. It is not our fault the sun was shining merrily by the time the cabbie showed up. It happens!

6 looooong hours later we arrived in Split on the coast of the Adriatic. You step off the train and are facing the beautiful ocean... which was a very cool sight but not nearly as cool as the sight of a lady holding up a sign that said SHANDON ALLEN. I have always wanted that to happen to me... our lives are complete. Our lovely Split hostess walked us along the promenade, ocean on one side, Roman looking ruins on the other... about ten minutes until we got to the Apartment Margarita. Trip Advisor said "stone cottage" and it is! We are above a restaurant and from the front window you can see the sea! Juliana (that is not quite her name but it's not coming to me, so... Juliana it is) left us and we were on our own to explore Split.

First up... lunch. Duh. We ate at the restaurant right across the alley from the apartment, which made it exciting to say, "I'll just run up and put the leftovers in the fridge. Be back in a minute." LOVE IT HERE! :)

We found the ruins of an old palace... there's some good history here, but, unfortunately, this isn't a very informative blog, so google your heart out and let me know what Split is all about! All I know right now is that it is SWEEEET! There are all these alleyways going all over the place and you get lost but eventually show up facing the ocean somewhere and it all works out.

We had dinner at this cool place in the middle of the maze of stone buildings. The meal cost us 97 Kuna, which means I nearly had a panic attack, then did the conversion and realized the total was $17. Whew. Anyway... the promenade was pretty empty this afternoon but in the late evening it filled up with families galore. It had a carnivalish (uh huh, real word - carnivalish) feel with cotton candy, popcorn, balloons, etc. Throw in the mediterreanish feel of stray dogs and cats running amok, and you've got yourself a Split party. When we finally headed home at about 9:30 (party animals!!!) we left quite a party out there.

Tomorrow we are jumping on a ferry to one of the islands, called Brac. Major beach day!

Well... good night! And, as they say in Croatia... "No, we don't take Euros."

Coveted "Quietest Country" Award goes to...

Croatia. It won by a landslide. Just wandering the narrow streets with the rows and rows of outdoor cafes, there was just one thing missing: noise. They are quiet around here. And gruff. That about sums up Zagreb.

But let's go back to Slovenia for a moment. Shandon and I got up at 8 and went down to the advertised "American-style buffet" included in our hotel. SCORE! I'll tell you what... they did it up right! I made mine more of an "Armenian style buffet" because I went straight to the stuffed peppers and had myself a breakfast dolma. Guess what else... Ljubljana is the Book Capital of the World. No kidding. I was among my people all day yesterday and didn't even realize it. We hung around the hotel until check-out... okay, I cannot tell a lie... we went back and slept until 11:30. All this blogging and jumping takes a lot out of us, apparently.

Our train from Ljubljana was at 2, so one short jaunt to a market and a kebob for lunch later, we were headed to Croatia... but only after discovering the neatest contraption since the Snuggie... a conveyor belt that takes your luggage up train stairs for you. (I sure hope you are keeping track of the number of kebobs two girls can have in one 24 hour period, because the tally was up to two... so far) As people filed off our train before we embarked, we noticed boys were shirtless and many girls had knotted their shirts high. It took us 2.2 seconds to realize the train was full and NOT air conditioned. That's okay, you are saying to yourself, sit by the window, Shandon and Laura! Nope... full train, we had no choices, and our window was the broken one. We sat in a compartment with four others... there are these little rooms with three seats facing each other. The other four were from Switzerland, but they were more than willing to share their Skittles and their Croatia guidebooks with us. We only accepted one of those offers... and you should know it was for the guidebook. The train stopped at the Croatian border for a customs official to stamp our passports. This is the first time this has happened, because you can travel anywhere in the European Union without stopping.

So. Zagreb. Quiet. People are not super friendly. Cool buildings. We checked into our super cute and old hotel, then walked to the center. It took us five minutes to find the best bread place in history. We then had a kebob for dinner... ahem, that makes 3. In the main square, I was busy setting up the timer for a picture when I heard Shandon yell, "Hey guys!" I could not imagine that she actually found someone she knew in Zagreb. She did. It was our friends from the AC-Free Train Ride... you can see them in the back of the picture waving.

I think my favorite part of this town is the abundance of corn on the cob stands. Who doesn't enjoy that!? Anyone can get a churro... Late cappuchino in the hotel cafe and we are done!

Headed south tomorrow down the Dalmatian Coast!

short blog... after all, we've got Hallmark Channel in English to get to.

Today was the country Trifeca... not the county Trifeca, like hitting up Kings, Madera, and Fresno counties in one 24 hour block. We had three meals in three different countries... so "let's start at the very beginning... a very good place to start." (If you thought to yourself, "Hmm, that quote sounds like those lyrics from The Sound of Music," you are absolutely right and I commend you.) Anyway... Woke up in Udine and had a wonderful breakfast courtesy of Hotel Principe, including cappuchinos. Can I get a CHA-CHING!? They were delicious and started the day off right. We caught the morning bus from Udine to Villach, Austria. An hour and a half on a bus sounds not so glamorous, but it was some intense scenery as we went through the Austrian alps. The hills were alive... (ok, that is the LAST Sound of Music reference, I promise) We arrived in Villach, Austria, and made the best discovery of the day... Billa. What is Billa? Only the BEST grocery market this side of the Danube! We stocked up on groceries and snacks as if we hadn't eaten in a week... leave it to us to think we hit the jackpot when we found foreign hummus and pita bread. We enjoyed Billa turkey sandwiches while waiting for our train. That was about it for Villach. On the train from Villach to Ljubljana, we befriended a lady from Zagreb who gave us helpful hints for our upcoming Croatia jaunt. Okay. Slovenia. A+. Ljubljana is AWESOME. Our hotel was a quick walk (900 meters... uh huh, we operate in the metric system now... we're legit) from the train statio. The architecture is like nothing I've seen before. The bridges are impressive. There is the Dragon Bridge and the Triple Bridge... the Triple Bridge has three ways to get across and the Dragon Bridge has... drum roll... dragons. We wandered all over the city; it is actually pretty small. We had kebabs for dinner in the main square then returned to our hotel, only to find the hotel lent out bikes for FREE. Say it with me again... CHA-CHING! We rode bikes (Shandon led the way without abandon, I trailed behind like a big chicken) all the way up the hill to the castle. Actually, we rode halfway up the hill then walked the bikes the rest of the way. Don't judge. It was tough. LJUBLJANA WINS EVERYTHING! Croatia, you have big shoes to fill.