Our Life in a Paradise

here we go! starting the 5 am train ride in our little car! note the pink pillow the size of a dog bed. it turns out to attract a lot of attention, I am not sure why. I didn't see the problem with carrying it around. 

This past weekend, we discovered a new paradise called Pula, Croatia and boy oh boy, what a paradise it is. Courtney, Grace, Sarah and I left at 5 am to catch our first train which was about a 7 hour ride, where we got on a bus in Zagreb, Croatia for another 4 hours. The problem was of course things didn't go as planned. Our train "broke" so about halfway through we drove backwards to get on a different bus, where we drove about 40 minutes to get on another train for another hour to Zagreb. This ride was interesting as I met a very charming train conductor (per my obnoxious pink pillow) and also broke the trash can in our car.  When we finally got on our bus to Pula, drove through the beautiful countryside and almost rolled off a cliff because we drove on the EDGE of mountains, we landed in paradise. PULA IS BEAUTIFUL. Now let me preach my praises to a program called Couch-Surfing. For those of you who don't know what that is, its a program where people open their homes on this website, couchsurfing.org, and you can look for places to stay throughout the world, volunteer your home, or just be looking for people to meet in that area. There are people doing this all over the world. The two benefits, its FREE and you meet really cool locals in all these areas. You look at their profile, check their number of friends and reviews and if they have overwhelmingly good results, you ask them to stay and hopefully they say yes! Well, we had set it up with this man named Rich, a South Korean man who had studied in Oklahoma then went to Chiropractor school and opened a practice in Pula where he is now extremely successful. He works with all the very famous tennis players, traveling to all the big tournaments. No big deal that he has all their rackets sitting around his house and Roger Federer, among many others,  in his phone. Rich was waiting for us at the station, piled us all into his little Audi and off we went! That night he cooked us an amazing dinner in his awesome apartment and then took us to a nice day&night bar lounge with an incredible atmosphere and view! The next day, we got some coffee at the same lounge and then went to an amazing national park/beach in Pula. MOST AMAZING THING. It was miles off the road and when we arrived I couldn't believe it. The water was a beautiful deep blue/green that you could see right through! Hello Adriatic sea! There is no sand on the beaches in Croatia, its all rocks and cliffs. Which lead to the coolest thing we did... Cliff diving! We jumped off these INSANELY high cliffs into a cove below of beautiful water. It was INSANE. Some people tried to show me up with backflips and such but who can beat a girl screaming as she throws herself of the ledge with no form? Certainly no backflip... not like thats cool or anything. The other thing about the beach... the rocks are so slippery it wasn't normal. Needless to say, anyone who knows me, knows I fall everywhere I go. I think we ended up counting 9 falls for the day? There was also this safari forest, all bamboo in the park and that's where we ate lunch! There was structure in the middle of it that was a simple kitchen and bar, and then little huts built out of bamboo all around for you to sit in and eat. It was so cool. Needless to say, it was an incredible day spent playing in the Adriatic Sea. That night we enjoyed a nice meal of southern comfort cooking- fried chick and the BEST smashed potatoes ever. I didn't think it was possible to compete with Mama Stirling's potatoes but this guy managed to do pretty well. The next day we explored downtown Pula where we saw an INCREDIBLE Amphitheater... one of 3 free standing ones left in the world. It was the 6th largest one ever built. It was so cool to explore and the architecture was amazing. You would have loved it, Daddy. To finish off the day, we went to enjoy a nice meal in a adorable cafe where I ordered, for the second time that weekend, Cevapcici, the most delicious Croatian meat dish. I don't know what it is really or how to say it. All I know is that is was delicious. Grace ordered Mackerel and when they came out they were whole fishies sitting on the plate. They looked at me with their eyeballs. She liked them a lot which is nice for her. We got gelato for the trip home, my favorite thing ever (it sucks in America) and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the balcony looking at beautiful Pula, wondering if this was really my life. We packed up our things and regretfully had to say goodbye. Rich dropped us off and we thanked him one million times for an incredible weekend. There is no better to see a place than with a local who loves where they live. He said the reason he does couchsurfing is so he can see other people enjoying Pula. You'd have to be out of your mind to not love this place. All in all, even with the miserable trip home from 8pm to 11 am the next day, riding the bus for 4 hours, then "hitchhiked" with a gelato shop owner to the Zagreb bus station (don't worry it was only 5 minutes and we were very lost), then slept on the train station floor for 3 hours, followed by one more 6 hour train ride, we made it. And it was incredible. Once again, coming "home" and home is Budapest is a feeling I don't think will ever get old. Watch out Mom and Dad, I might never leave ;) Just kidding, I love you enough to come home. GO TO PULA. You'll love it I promise. and if you're too scared, you don't HAVE to cliff jump. But if you don't, you're lame. 

Sarah and I with our pink pillows! Zagreb bus station! 

Pula here we come!

Croatian countryside

Croatian countryside x2

a nice panoramic grace took that I photobombed.. nice view though. 

our Couch-Surfing home!

view from the porch balcony! 

view of the water from the balcony!

Rich! all the way in Croatia he's reppin' KU! 

Grace & my room! 

All of us with Rich at the night lounge, he bought us all roses! 

PULA PULA PULA

postcard picture perfect 

the Pula beach we went to!

cliff's to dive from!

happiest in the worldddd- siempre <3

playing in the Adriatic Sea! 

after I cliff dove! 

ME CLIFF DIVING! (and screaming)

pre-cliff dive!

my delicious Cevapcici sandwich at Safari Bar!

Bamboo hut!

the kitchen/bar!

one of the many fun toys they had!

hamster wheel!

the crew at the top of the tower!

Pula's Amphitheater! 

Pula's Amphitheater! x2

Pula's Amphitheater! x3

Pula's Amphitheater! x4

we're professional gladiators, duh. 

my mission of the trip: handstands in every cool place. SUCCESS.

Grace's fishies. 

my Cevapcici! 

told you we slept on the floor of the train station. approximate time: 3 am.