Sunday, 24 June 2007

Onto Pula.. and Roman ruins

Up at 8am... well 9am, pack, catch the bus to Rijeka city centre.
Straight onto another bus, heading to Pula (I was told I should go there by Wayne, I took his advice).

I was going to have a sleep on the bus... but again the scenery was too spectacular to sleep through. I was taking photos half the time (I took over 400 photos in my trip to Croatia). I also got chatting to this older British couple. They were telling me some things about England that were interesting (politics, economy, etc... so probably boring to most of you). The main person I was talking to was Sheila and she was telling me about how her daughter is travelling the world as well. They offered me a bed to stay in just out of London if I need it which is cool. I offered my place in NZ (when I get back) if their daughter ever travels over those ways.

View from the bus.

Once I arrived at Pula, I jumped on a bus. Now the people of Croatia are extremely friendly and welcoming. Just about every time I was at a bus stop they would ask where I needed to go and let me know which bus to get on (in broken English usually). It's hard to imagine that as little as 15 years ago they were at war.

I headed straight for my hostel to check in. Now this hostel is the most amasing accommodation I have ever stayed in, as well as the cheapest. It was 10 metres from the water, and it had it's own bar 10 metres the other direction. The photo's explain all. I checked in, but there was nobody in my room. So I went down to the beach for a swim and a little sleep on the beach. I enjoyed my swim, but it was 30 degree and I wasn't wearing sunscreen (naughty boy). So I got extremely sunburnt in the process (well only my stomach, chest and underarms).


Oh did I mention all the topless sunbathing? Young, old, fat, skinny, about quarter of the girls were topless. I felt like a pervert for just being at the beach.... hey I wasn't complaining though.

After a couple of hours, I decided to head into town and do the tourist thing.

There are a lot of Roman ruins around the area, the main one being the Roman Amphitheatre, the largest Roman ruin still around today. It was pretty spectacular to think how old it is, we just don't have anything of that scale in little ol' NZ. I wandered around the city for several hours and took heaps of photos, check them out in my gallery if you want to see them all.


I arrived back at the hostel at 10pm, I straight away heard an Aussie, saw him wearing Rusty shorts and a Billabong hat + t-shirt. I walked straight up to him and said, "so... you from Sydney?" I got it right as well :-P
He was with 2 Scottish lads that were extremely burnt from the day (much worse than me) so we decided to have a few drinks.
We ended up sitting down at a table with a Swedish and a Norwegian girl. Ended up talking about all the places we have visited and traded war stories. Stayed up until around 1am chatting and drinking before we decided to all head off to bed.

No comments: