Day… Idon’tfukenknow on this trip. I reckon I’m about 6 weeks in, so yeah, lets just throw a number out and say 41. Yeah, day 41 on this trip. Day 41 involved us (Me and Triple M) leaving Zadar and heading towards Split. If I have to say one bad thing about Croatia it would be the long old bus rides. Sure, they are picturesque, but 4 hours on a tight bus takes it out of you, especially travelling as intensely as we have been…

Anyway, Split. We found the apartment complex and were greeted by an attractive friendly woman in her mid 30’s, after meeting the last girl in Zadar I was starting to really like how approachable the Croatian women were (well, the ones that spoke English anyway…) Smiles soon turned into absolute panic when she led us up to the top floor. This was the first time I realised she was wearing a very short skirt, and was well ahead of us leading the way up the stairs. I nearly broke my neck violently turning my head away every time I looked forward and all but got an eyeful. Nothing says welcome to Croatia like the slight possibility of going to prison for voyeurism…

We got the room, Miss Panties showed us where to go (No, don’t enter your own innuendo here, I’m already in enough trouble…) on the map. I mentioned about going to an island called Brac and she explained how to get there, and said “Anything you need, give me a call.” I’m not gonna lie I thought about it…

This is NOT a photo of the lady in question, my standards are higher than that, but only slightly...

We spent the day exploring Split… That’s a lie straight off the bat; we spent the day getting drunk in a bar called Fabrique. Matt (Triple M) had beer, I had Orahovac which is…alcohol of some kind. As it is in all of Croatia the coke was more expensive than the spirit, so I rationed the coke and destroyed the bar’s supply of Orahovac. We were both wearing our Watford shirts, which made sense because Manchester United Vs Burnley was on the tele. It didn’t matter though because Matt had Wifi and we found out Watford beat Hull. 30 shots on goal, none on target and we won 1-0. Go team!!!

The next day we vetoed Brac because Matt (and to be fair so did I) wanted a lazy day. So we headed off to the beach and got out our six packs. I was flexing but wasn’t getting any bites, while Matt was slowly edging out into the sea as it was so cold. He got there in the end, and I did a few football tricks with some kids in the street. I’m very rusty now, but I nailed most of the tricks and the ones I didn’t get first time I did it after 2 or 3 attempts. I’m not good enough anymore to beg on the street doing them, but subconsciously I know how to do them and with practice and determination I could shake off the rust if I wanted to.

Then me and Triple M played catch (ballin. Thug life…) I tried to show off and catch one handed, it didn’t work. Throw in the fact I was walking on a stony beach barefoot limping in agony, and I was looking like the hottest free agent in Split! We had some more drinks because we are borderline alkies and then headed back to the room.

Matt stayed in to Skype his girlfriend while I explored the nightlife…Thats the second lie of this post; I actually went to a Croatian ‘erotic dance establishment’…

I walked past it summoning up the courage to go in, then did a lap around the harbour ready to walk in like I’d just won the lottery, only to find out to my disappointment that the door was locked. No eastern European fun for Lewis! Stupid game… So I spent the evening relaxing by the harbour. I thought it would be nice to give Matt some time to himself as we’d been in each others pockets for a long time and it would ease the pressure. I don’t know if it worked but he hasn’t tried to punch me yet so I assume it has…

The next day he headed out right to the Croatian-Montinegrin border to a small unknown town called Dubrovnik. A lot of people had raved about Dubrovnik so I was looking forward to exploring it, however we didn’t have a good time.

…Oh for fucks sake, you’re going to make me ask you aren’t you you needy bastard? OK fine…Why didn’t you have a good time?

How nice of you to ask! We got to Dubrovnik and were told we couldn’t leave Croatia by bus until Thursday (It was Monday at the time), which didn’t bother me, but Matt’s flight was on Saturday in Athens so we wouldn’t have made it. Plan B was for Matt to book a flight somewhere else and he found a cheap one in Rome, so all he needed to do was get a ferry from Dubrovnik to Bari. Except the lady said they stopped running the ferry two days ago…

We asked if there was any way to get to Tirana by bus around here . “No, sorry…” She replied. Mind you, I knew how helpful people were here when the apartment owner gave us a map and while I was working out the ferry lines he replied monotonically, “No, you cannot swim here…”

As a last ditch effort we went back to the bus station, and by chance I recognised a bus that went to Ulcinj, which is a town on the Montenegrin-Albanian border. I asked if we could go there to get to Tirana and the same lady who told us no a few hours beforehand said “Yes.”, without a hint of sarcasm…

So the trip was back on and I bought a ticket to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, thinking that going from one capital city to another would give us the best chance of having lots of buses run there, as opposed to going to Ulcinj and having to go back on yourself. (Triple M bought one too in case you thought I’d left him behind!) To celebrate we went to Dubrovnik castle to get some food. We got some (You want sum..?), but they put on a sneaky 40 Kuna (£5) surcharge on the food which wiped out what we had in our wallets, meaning we didn’t even have enough to share a beer.

We saw some history there. On the castle walls it said about how Croatia fought off a battle from Serbia and Montenegro in 1991. It seems surreal that a battle in a medieval castle happened in Europe only 25 years ago. I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall there…

Inside the main city of Split

I didn’t take any pictures of Dubrovnik because my phone ran out of battery, but it was still nice. Of course it was much better than nice, but after being spoiled by Zadar and Split, Dubrovnik seemed to just be OK in comparison.

Which means we will most likely make it to Triple M’s flight in Athens by Saturday. Next stop, Montenegro, which has only been a country in it’s own right for about 8 years. This is going to be interesting…