"It's gotta suck to end up in Punat when you meant to be in Baška..."

Sadly, we are not the only two Americans on Krk. Drat! We just met two, but one has family here, so maybe that doesn't count. At any rate, apparently Baška is a lot nicer than where we are now, but whatev.

We did some, um, redecorating of the itinerary. Turns out we can get a tour bus to Plitvice from here and back in the same day for $75, including the park tickets, and that seems like a much better plan since otherwise we'd have to take like 50 buses and go from the town we were staying in near Plitvice to Plitvice and then somehow from there to Zagreb to Budapest. Too much! So instead we're staying here another night and going to Plitvice tomorrow. I'm excited.

This also means we have an extra day but we don't know what to do with it. I really want to go to Bosnia since it's right next to Plitvice, but we haven't come up with a plan for that yet. It takes about 10 hours to get to Mostar and that's too much. So we thought hey, let's hike there from Plitvice and get passport stamps from the border guards, right? Except then we remembered: Landmines! Dangit.

And, of course, today was our beach day, but it's cloudy and mega-wind. But if my Birkenstock tan is any indication, I've already gotten a lot of sun.

Yesterday was nice and sunny, though, and we did swim in the Adriatic. Yes, I swam in the Adriatic. Get jealous. It's crystal clear and beautiful. However, we ended up in the German swimming section first and it was all cementy and man-made, with steps, and I took a step down the steps and suddenly I was on my butt with a stubbed pinky toe. The steps were covered in algae and slippery and my poor toe is now a bright red and sore blob of fat. Poor toe.

I also have this mysterious and massive bruise on my shin. It felt sore to touch the past few days, but it's one of those sneaky bruises that don't color for days. And now that it's coloring, it's quite...large. And sore. OHH, poor Amy.

The soles of my feetsies are also discolored. They're kinda Birkenstock-toned now. Yummy!

I never listed my Moroccan swag, or talked about Cinque Terre, or talked about Ljubljana. So here comes the abridged version:

Moroccan Swag

1. Leather ballet flats
2. Leather Moroccan shoes
3. Shot glass
4. Gift for Mom
5. Another gift for Mom
6. Bracelet
7. Necklace
8. Random fabric

All haggled with love. Or exhaustion.

Cinque Terre

That hike. I don't think anything I've read really describes it as a hard hike, so I feel pretty wussy saying so, but that was a hard hike! We'd meant to start in Monterosso, which meant we had to take the train from Vernazza to Monterosso and go from there, but the train was uber late, so instead we started in Vernazza to Corniglia to Manarola to Riomaggiore, then we'd take the train from there back to Monterosso and hike from there to Vernazza. I knew one of the hikes was supposed to be the hardest, but I couldn't remember which. I thought it was either Manarola to Riomaggiore or Monterosso to Vernazza.

Well. There are two hard ones. From Vernazza to Corniglia was 4km of lots of stairs, but fairly wide and had nice fences and no crazy steep drop-offs. Birkenstocks = a-OK. From Monterosso to Vernazza, however, are 5 inch trails with very steep drops and tons and tons of "stairs," if that's what you want to call them. Well, OK, M-V did have lots of real stairs (I took lots of pics), but V-C had lots of fake, rock slabs-for-stairs. At any rate, it was sheer luck we started and ended with the hardest two. We just win.

The hike, though, challenging as I found it, was SPECTACULAR. I LOVED M-V. It twisted and turned into random, tiny woody areas with streams and only one person could fit through at a time so we'd have to squeeze against the walls so people could pass us ("Grazie") and not fall off a sheer cliff to the rocky, beautiful Mediterranean. Oh, Cinque Terre.

Ljubljana

Started out eh. Then turned bleh. Then turned YEAH. The turned LOOOVE. It was rainy and chilly and we'd just finished a 20 hour train ride on a cramped, humid overnight train in tiny, tiny seats with my head bent at strange angles as I dipped in and out of 20-minute sleep sessions and we couldn't find our hostel and my bag weighed, like, 50 pounds? But eventually, our hostel people picked us up and the sky cleared and ohhh, Ljubljana! Such a nice atmosphere! Such good food. Yum, yum and so happy, such nice people. Plus, we went to the Škocjan caves the next day, with its huge bridge crossing a rushing river and it was all Harry Potter esque and "I am not worried, Harry, I am with you" emotional. Then we feasted on the greatest meal ever at the Škocjan restaurant: tomato salad (JUST TOMATOES OMG) and fries (little potato wedges) and a cold Coke. Oh golly! So swell.

And now we are in Croatia and kinda bored since it's too chilly to swim.