Hi everyone, I'm still in Croatia! I was supposed to be in Italy a couple of days ago, however I didn't realize that the ferry system here is not so regular=) So I'm ''stuck'" in beautiful Dubrovnik until tomorrow night. I couldn't pick a better place to hang out for a while. My trip through Croatia has been getting better and better on my way down through the country's coast. Split was nice, however when I got to Hvar I was even more impressed. The island has lovely coastline, lots of greenery, a fortress on top of the hill and a cute little old fishing/now tourist village nested into the hills. This is where I met "Team Canada" and Nicki from Australia. Nicki was in the same private accomidation as me. We are practically twins when it comes to what we want to go see, eat, drink...etc. So I'm still traveling with her now. She's great.... Team Canada, however, is a whole nother story. =) I met four friends traveling together from Canada in Hvar. They are from Cambridge and Harvard and two of them row for Cambrige, so quite impressive in that sense. When I was climging up the hill to the fortress I saw them taking a picture infront of a cactus, like they were falling into it. I for some reason decided to make fun of them and say "so...never seen a cactus before?" Which they thought was great and haven't left me alone until now. They are a riot. We decided to have drinks on top of the fortress, where we met Dragon the bartender. That night the Canadians, Nicki and I went to a family run restaurant serving real Dalmation/Croatian food. It was amazing, so good! The owner came out and said that if we trusted him he would just bring out a feast of all the best dishes for us! We had homemade honey wine, Dalmation salad, octopus salad, fresh salad and bread...yum. The rest of the time in Hvar constited of more yummy seafood, Croatian wine, beaches, and cafes. We actually went back to the fortress the next day to see Dragon, who finally gave in and had drinks with us. His family actually rents out the fortress for the year and runs the admissions and restaurant and bar! A fortress as a business? Very cool. After a while he brought out shots for us, which we later found out was Croatian tequila mixed with a cherry liquor both made by his father! So there we were drinking homemade Croatian liquor with a guy that is named after a mythical animal...in a fortress on top of a hill. What a story! I next took the ferry over to Dubrovnik, which turned out to be 7 hours! But the sun came out nicely and the trip turned into a crusie ship-like atmosphere, with a nice little stop on the island of Korcula. When we got to the harbor of Dubrovnik, we were mobbed by people with rooms for rent. Most of us had gotten to know each other on the ferry ride over so whole groups of us decided to go to some of the same places together...which really upset this one older crazy lady. She started yelling at us, saying that they people we were going with were liars and she even told one of the ladies she was going to kill her! So we decided to get out of there in a hurry. I thought Croatia couldn't get any better, but nothing compares to Dubrovnik! The city is surrounded by these enormous white walls that go right up to the ocean. I found out that I had to stay four days because the ferry to Bari in Italy only comes twice a week! But I'm quite happy were I'm at. I won't be able to see Amsterdam, or much of France, but thats travel right? Next time. So I've just been eating really good food (the Croatians make really good chocolate!), walking around the walls of the city, checking out museums and little shops. They have beautiful jewelry here. Lots of coral and pearls. Very creative and very big too. We also went out one night to see the night life here and ended up hanging out with an Australian pilot and his 16 year old son. It was like the father was allowing supervised partying...giving him a kind of an education in going out...just a little bit wierd. Well, I'd better go, next entry will be in Italy!