Buns Of Steel – City Break Edition

Before arriving in Dubrovnik, I was aware that the Old Town was going to be full of stairs.  Despite this, I had chosen to stay there in order to avoid taking a bus to everything I wanted to see.   Okay, truth be told, the only thing that I had to see was the city walls and everything after that was just going to be icing on the cake.  Regardless, I knew that stairs were involved in the one attraction that was on my must do list.  What I hadn’t factored in was the amount of climbing up and down stairs to my hostel, to allergy approved meals (damn you seafood!), and to avoid sleazy restaurant owners amongst a whole lot of other things.

Spotted on my self guided walking tour – man with the white hat not included.

The view while walking the city walls

Showing off the heights of my climb

To add further insult to injury, I also hadn’t factored in my talent of getting lost – in Dubrovnik this meant that I was going to have to repeatedly climb the same staircase many times in hopes of a different result.  From the moment that I woke up to the moment I went to bed, it was just up and down all day long.  My quads, hammies, and gluts were screaming out in pain for me to stop while my eyes wanted to feast on more of the fantastic views provided by the city.  Unfortunately, my legs lost the battle and I continued to push on to see as much as I could in the few days that I had.  I climbed up and around the city walls.  I did all of the self-walking tours of the city and then some considering I went off the beaten path each and every time I started following the marked paths.  Personally, I blame ADD and the need to follow stray cats more than my sense of direction for this one!  But where my sense of direction is to blame is the extra stairs I did to make it to the cable car to get a view of the city.  I may have walked up, down, and all around the damn thing before finding the entrance but hey, sometimes you have to go that extra mile.  Once I had gotten to the top, I was glad I had put in the extra effort as the view from the top was well worth it.

City Walls once again

The pretty section of the stairs I climbed daily

 

View from the cable car

All in all, Dubrovnik gave me cool but sun-filled days that made all that unexpected exercise easy to handle.  At the end of every day, I may have been worn out but extremely glad that I had a few jam-packed days of exploring the city.

Sleepless Night To Dubrovnik

The rains, thunder, and lightening got heavier, louder and more frequent as day turned to night in Zadar.  The glimpse of sunshine was amazing but I was thankful that it wasn’t long before I’d be seated on the bus destined for Dubrovnik.  My plan was to curl up on my seat and sleep but as luck would have it; a Canadian Chatty Cathy found me and started gabbing away about her days at Western, her family, and other random jibber jabber as the bus left the terminal.  She was excited about everything (oh to be young and so full of hopes and dreams…) but why she chose me to pour out every thought in her head will forever remain a mystery.

I thought about giving her a line that I didn’t speak English but I’m pretty sure my Canadian Passport was going to expose my lie.  So in true Canadian fashion, I sucked it up and humoured her while dropping heavy hints that I was tired, required sleep, and maybe she should move to the empty seats across from us.  I hinted and she ignored and we continued this dance until a Croatian man sitting nearby had enough and decided to move seats in a huff while muttering something about loud girls under his breath.  Shortly after this, her battery finally ran out of juice and it was as though she had fallen asleep mid sentence.  This moment couldn’t have come soon enough and finally I was going to get the rest that I was so desperately looking for.  As the bus winded around the coastal towns of Croatia in the dark, the heavy rains changed to a light mist which filled my heart with sunshine hope.  I drifted in and out of sleep but was struggling to get decent shuteye as I was roasting.  For the world of me, I couldn’t figure out why the hell I was so hot.  I had already stripped off all my additional layers and was sitting in my lulus and a tank top while sweating up a storm.  Was I getting sick?  Was I suffering from a fever?  Was Chatty Cathy a human furnace?  Was Chatty Cathy even human?

I looked around and realized that the German boys (befriended thanks to Chatty Cathy) also looked to be boiling.  Just like me, they had stripped down as much as humanly possible and were anxiously waiting to leave this hot box of a bus.  I remember thinking that there were worse things than a hot bus as I reached into my purse.  It was at this moment that I remembered the 2 Butler’s chocolate bars from my leaving prezzies that I had stashed there encase of a hunger emergency.  Thanks to the heat on the bus, these bars weren’t going to help fight hunger as they had turned into liquid form and coded everything inside my bag, including edges of my passport.  I vowed to fully clean my bag when I got to the hostel but did a rough cleaning as best I could.  By the time I was done, the sun was up and the bus was pulling into the Dubrovnik bus terminal.  This couldn’t have come soon enough as I rushed off the bus into the cool morning air while trying to lick off as much of the remainder of the chocolate on my hands.  Before long, I bid adieu to my single serving friend and was off on my Dubrovnik adventure.

On The Hunt For A Little Sunshine

One of my struggles with living in Ireland that I talked about openly and relentlessly was the weather.  I thought I’d be able to cope being from Vancouver but it turned out that I had no idea what I was in for.  I hate to admit it but after a while I started to believe that the sky was actually bluer in Ireland because of how amazed I was every time it peeked out from beneath the blanket of grey clouds.  I knew exactly how ridiculous this thought was but still couldn’t help myself.  It also didn’t help that I was able to count the amount of sunny days I experienced in Ireland on my hands and remembered each one with vivid clarity as they were the best things that ever happened to me.

The View While Walking Around Old Town

I finally came to the conclusion that enough was enough and my days gallivanting around Europe would have to feature the sun heavily to make things right in my world.  To make up for the lost sunshine in my life, I decided to start of my days as a jobless layabout in Croatia.  As it was the sun I was after, I decided that the only place to start would be Zadar.  After all, Hitchcock said that it has the most beautiful sunset in the world and from the moment the flight was booked, I was dreaming of laying out in the sun all day only to witness (and instagram…silly little addiction but I suppose we all have one) this majestic moment.  My fantasy was perfect but as luck would have it, reality was going to be a hard pill to swallow!

The Patch of Grass Where I Caught Some Rays

When my flight landed in Zadar, it was sunny but not as warmed as I was hoping for.  Nevertheless, it was perfect t-shirt weather and it was good to feel the sun kiss my skin once again.  I spent the day roaming around the old town and getting myself orientated and eating a little bit (aka a lot more than I’ll ever admit) of gelato before heading over to the sea organ.  It was here that I stretched out and truly appreciated being in the presence of the sun once again.  It looked as though locals and tourists alike were doing exactly what I was doing at that moment.  Just as I was getting comfortable, I realized that I was no longer bathing in the sunlight.  In the brief moment when I shut my eyes, the clouds had rolled in and started covering up the sky.  The sky was looking that familiar grey once again as if it had tagged along on my flight from Dublin with me.  And that was it.  Before I knew it, the rains poured down and the dream of seeing the world’s most beautiful sunset had died.  Fear sunk into my heart and I was just hoping that the weather would improve as I made my way to Dubrovnik the next day.

 

Leaping Into The Unknown…

Someone once told me that I’m extremely self-aware and have a never-ending quest to do what makes me happy.   The someone who was giving me this “talking to” thought he was pointing out my tendencies of being a self-destructive fool so I could change my ways.  Despite that super awkward conversation four years ago, I’m glad to report that if anything has changed, it’s that I’m more of those things that were pointed out as negative aspects to my personality.  The reason I felt the need to share this is because at the end of May, I said farewell to life on the Emerald Isle for just those reasons.  To those who knew me, the news of my departure came as no surprise since Ireland and I could be best compared to a square peg and a round hole.    Over the last few months, I’ve been heavily questioned about what I didn’t like about Ireland but my leaving has very little to do with my fondness or lack there of for the country.  Despite appearances and the randomness I vomited from time to time, I don’t dislike Ireland at all.  I think Ireland is a fun little country worth visiting but what I’ve learned in the past year is visiting and living are two very different things.

Despite my struggles with living in Ireland, I have no regrets about making the move that I did.  Without it, I wouldn’t be leaving with the experiences and friendships that I consider priceless.  Once people accepted the fact that I was leaving, the next question was where to next on my trip around the world.  The honest answer, after I recovered from the assumption that I’m doing a trip around the world, is that I don’t know.  What I do know is that I would like the next city that I live in to be one I settle in.  Maybe it’s just old age rearing its ugly head but I think it would be nice to be less nomadic without losing any of my travel perks.  I know that will be a tough point to negotiate but I’m a firm believer that you don’t get things you don’t ask for.

At present time, there are multiple factors in play that will eventually determine where I’ll go but for the time being, I’ve fallen in love with being a  jobless layabout gallivanting around Europe.  If this is going to be the last hurrah then I’m going to have to make it count, right?  Anyway, as far as my summer travel plans go, I have a concept of where I’m going and what friends are meeting me along the way and the rest will sort itself out.  Fingers crossed anyway.

Taking Advantage of the Irish Summer!

Everyone is always joking that if you go into the cinema to watch a film, you could missed the Irish summer by the time you come out.  After a year in Ireland, this in no longer a laughing matter.  As I quietly suffered from the lack of vitamin D, my prayers were answered with a forecast that was calling for one full day of weekend sun.  So I did what anyone else in my position would do – found a way to be outside from sunrise to sunset.  For me, this was easy as I had held off doing a particular tourist trip in hopes of good weather and luckily my time had come.  After some rushed research, I booked a tour with Extreme Ireland/Day Tours at the last-minute to go check out The Giants Causeway.  Yes, the bus was full and it was still a little nippy outside but there was going to be sun and that was enough to send me over the moon.

Carnlough Harbour – Stop #1

Carrick a Rede Rope Bridge

Like many of the day tours I’ve done, the bus was full of couples and friend duos visiting Ireland.  They were very nice but let’s face it – nobody wants to spend the day third wheeling it with strangers.  Just as I was getting ready to give up on finding someone to talk to, I was joined by a stray singleton trying to make the most of her time in Ireland as well.  My single serving friend, whose name escapes me now, proved to be good fun and a welcome relief as we drive from location to location.  We talked about how Ireland reminded me of parts of either New Zealand or Australia while she told me about where else in Ireland she had been.  We laughed as we talked about the good and bad surprises we had encountered on our travels and our personal highlights of Ireland.

Turns out the bridge wasn’t what I thought!

Turns out that this trip was going to have a few surprised.  The good was that we couldn’t have picked a better day as the driver let us know that only about 1 in 5 times he’s done the trip, have people ever been able to see Scotland.  We were lucky as it was as clear as day.  After this nugget of information, we made our first real stop where we were allowed to distance ourselves from the heard.  We were at the Carrick a Rede Rope Bridge and the grounds that surrounds this area was absolutely stunning and hands down my favourite part of the day.  As for the wee bridge itself – well I was thinking it was going to be comparable to the Capilano Suspension Bridge but instead it was more like a baby version.  Despite it’s size, it was still fun to cross the bridge and give it a slight rock as the family ahead of me posed for some rather awkward photos.  Oh the things I do when photo bombing is taken out of the equation!  Before long, our time was up and we were called back to the bus to make our way to the next stop – The Giants Causeway.  I have always loved the pictures of the Causeway and was glad to finally be making the trek but hated the fact that there seemed to be just as many tourists as there were rocks.  I really shouldn’t have been a surprise since they were coming by the busload and I had just arrived with another 35 other people but it still took me by surprise.  Sadly, I knew that the time had come to put away my camera and just enjoy where I was.

The Giants Causeway – one of the few photos I like

The Giants Causeway – Honeycomb

Looking back on my photos today, it saddens me slightly that I didn’t get a snapshot of my favourite rock formation since it had humans climbing on it like they were monkeys but such is life.  I just didn’t have the patience to wait them out for a decent photo so I booked it back to the restaurant to grab a little grub before the crowds made their way there.  What I had traded for that photo was a decent spot on the patio where I could feel the sun warm up every inch of me as I ate my cafeteria style meal.  One a sunny day, this spot was worth it’s weight in gold and worth giving up that photo opportunity.  Soon after I finished my meal, we were all collected again in order to stick to the schedule.  Despite my best efforts to convince the driver that an unscheduled stop at Bushmills was a matter of life and death, no changes were made to the itinerary posted online.  It was one stop after another that I wasn’t overly fussed about as I’d already been.  Before I knew it, the sun was hanging low in the sky and we were making our way back to Dublin once again.  All in all, this was a good day out and I couldn’t have imagined a better weather to do it in.