This series will go country by country through my two-year trip. I plan on sharing some experiences, thoughts, and photos of each country that I visited.

Country by Country 09: Croatia

The train ride from Budapest to Zagreb, Croatia was a little longer than I'd have liked, but we arrived in one piece. After having lunch, we found the car rental place and picked up our rental car. We drove straight to Ljubljana, Slovenia which I will post about soon. After a few days in Slovenia, we were back in Croatia, heading south toward Dubrovnik.

Our first night in Croatia was spent in Pula. We found a "Hotel on a Boat" on booking.com and it turned out great. We had some time to kill before checking into our room, so we visited the coliseum that they have there. It's the biggest coliseum outside of Italy.

The Coliseum in Pula.

The Coliseum in Pula.

After having a beer at the coliseum, we checked into our boat. The lady who owned the boat was a sweetheart and welcomed us with some wine.

Sunset in the harbor.

My dad enjoying the view.

Me enjoying being on a boat!

I loved spending the night on the boat, even though the boat never went anywhere and we had to shower in the harbor showers. I grew up watching a show called "Flipper" and I always wished that we lived on the water and had a boat. Sleeping on the boat brought some of those childhood dreams back to life.

We left Pula in the morning and drove down to Split. Split was a pretty place to look at, but it was a little too crowded with tourists for my taste. One night there was enough for me.

The old fort in Split.

The old fort was my favorite thing to look at in Split.

A cool looking church.

After Split, it was off to Dubrovnik where we were meeting up with an organized "adventure tour". I'm not usually one for organized tours, but this one was a lot of fun. My favorite aspect of the tour was the smaller, out-of-the-way places that we stayed in. We stayed in several smaller villages and I enjoyed them much more than the cities.

Dubrovnik is a stunning old fort city. It's also a destination for cruise ships. When we got there a ship with several thousand people pulled up and the whole city was stuffed with tourists. We had some lunch and took some photos, then we met up with our tour group. Luckily, we didn't stay in Dubrovnik. We stayed in a nice little town a few miles up the coast.

Dubrovnik has a lot of these tiny, claustrophobic, medieval alleyways. They're awesome.

A small harbor.

A nice area to look at boats.

Dubrovnik.

I'm going to skip a lot of the photos from the tour. Most of them are just photos of water and trees. The tour included a day of ocean kayaking around an island, river canoeing, river rafting, and two hikes through national parks.

Here are some of my photos from our tour that ended in Zagreb.

An old fort.

An interesting old apartment building.

A cool town on a river.

Homemade liquor that was being made at a lunch stop. It was at a small cabin that was a couple hours walk away from the closest road. They have to use donkeys to bring in supplies.

Waterfall selfie.

A nice village that we stayed in. It had this tiny, bright blue river running through it.

A lovely old building.

A view of one of the national parks that we visited.

Finally, we made it to Zagreb. Our tour dropped us off and we had a day or two to kill. Here are some of my photos of Zagreb.

Decorations on a church.

Building decorations.

A cool little church with a nice roof.

Zagreb.

After Zagreb, we went back to Hungary to catch our flights. Stay tuned for the next installment which will be about Slovenia.