Ok so we arrived in Croatia two days ago and I'm already struggling with the language. Firstly our Lonely Planet doesn't cover Croatia so we have no handy phrases, we have learnt thanks ('hvala') and some Aussie guys told us that hello was 'bog', but it sounds a bit too much like toilet so we haven't actually used that yet. Next the supermarkets. We headed to a supermarket yesterday to get some ingredients for a potato bake, I thought I was getting butter, turned out to be some brownish stuff that smelt really bad and was nothing like butter (I have no idea what it was though). Then I got some cream, however this wasn't cream either, it was a sort of ricotta cheese stuff. But luckily the potatoes were potatoes and the cheese was cheese so the potato bake wasn't a complete disaster. Then this morning, we stopped off on our way to the national park for some bread and pate, turns out the pate was infact mustard, hmm not the best way to start your day! So anyway hopefully there won't be too many more stuff ups!

So back to Rovinj, we arrived on Friday night on board the ferry from Venice at 9.30pm and of course we hadn't been organised enough to book any accomodation (due to the high price of internet in Venice). So we found another two guys from Brissie on the ferry that were about as organised as us (except their Lonely Planet has Croatia in it). So we all jumped in a cab and headed to the backpackers that was recommended in their book. However it wasn't a backpackers at all, just a campground with no cabins, nothing other than plots of grass, so while we contemplated sleeping on the ground (coz we all had sleeping bags and the weather was quite balmy) the helpful camp lady found us some accomodation. We arrived at these apartments not quite knowing what to expect but it was a palace (massive bathroom with bath and 2 sinks, big bedroom, internet connection, kitchen with all cooking facilities and a lounge with cable tv - I think the apartment was bigger than some of the hostels we've stayed at) and the owner was the most helpful man! The guys from Brisbane left early on Saturday morning so we had the place to ourselves. We headed out for a big feed of meat (coz it's been quite some time since our last feed of red meat and everything seems cheap here) then took a look around the town. It is quite a pretty place, a small fishing town that has begun to get touristy. We spent today hanging around until 7pm which is when the overnight bus to Split left, so far we are 1 hour into our journey and Paul is already fidgeting (and we seem to be taking a very non-direct route!). So anyway today was spent in the national park, at the beach, eating some of the locally caught fish and hanging out at the pub.

Two other notes about Croatia so far, there are lots of bins everywhere so it's a lot cleaner than Italy and the people here are really friendly and helpful.

Well the bus has begun to make me feel dozy now so I think it must be time for a sleep!

Zilla