ITALIJA!

last week i think i probably had the best weekend i have had in a long time. okay yeah, not probably, i did.

let me walk you through this. 

thursday i went to school. boring, boring and more boring.. imagine that. after school i went with the other exchanger student, okay i think by now i can just say emma and you’ll get it, right? right. so me and emma went back to her place, ate some beanutbutter and jelly sandwiches, attempted to talk with her house cleaner, all in croatian might i add, and waited for her host parents to come home from work. why did we do this one might ask? uh yes, because her fabulous, wonderful host parents were taking us to istria and italy for the weekend! :D 

so her parents got home, i helped emma pack her bag for the weekend, we got in the car, and started the 3 hour drive to the sea coast. we arrived in poreč, a seaside town on the peninsula in croatia called istria, around 7 or 8, went to the hotel where we got a little villa for the weekend, and went to get some dinner at the buffet in the hotel. so yeah, were thinking okay, a dinner buffet at a hotel, probably like some meat, a salad, bread, nothing big or special right? wrong. oh my god. we walk into the room and there is so much food there you dont even know what to do. they had everything from like pizza to 10 different kids of fish, and ham and chicken and turkey and like 5 different salads, so much bread, french fries, stuffed tomatoes, vegetables and even raw bacon! plus there was a huge selection of desert.  yeah, i know. im hungry now too. 

so anyways, after a amazing dinner we walked along the sea into the town then back and went to sleep.

friday. 6am my alarm goes off and the last thing i feel like doing is getting out of bed. so i lay back down, close my eyes and suddenly remember “omg dorothy, get up, get up your going to ITALY todaaaay !” so of course i instantly get up and get ready. we left poreč at 8:13am, okay yes, i remember the exact time, shush. anyways. it was to be about a half hour drive to the slovenian borer, than another 2 hours to venice. not to bad, huh? yeah, it wouldnt have been except for the people who work at the slovenian border were on strike. and not on strike like they werent working, they were working just very veryyy slow. so slow that it took us ohh, 2 and a half hours to get through. and we finally got to the place where they ask for your passports, so we hand them over, they stamp them then continue to look though the entire thing at every other stamp we have ever gotten, just to waste time of course, before they gave them back and let us go though. ridiculous. so after about 5 hours of being in the car, we finalllly get to venice! we park the car in a big parking garage outside the city because well, clearly we couldnt drive though the city, not without getting a little wet at least [: 

so let me just tell you straight out how venice was in just two words: absolutely magical. it was seriously everything i had imagined. it was so beautiful, and those italian boys, yes please. we took a boat thought the city then got out and walked around. and we ate pizza of course! so emma and i got our delicious looking pieces of pepperoni pizza, and we had to take some pictures of course. i mean, we were eating pizza in italy, how stereotypical is that? so as were taking pictures of eachother these two girls about our ago standing next to us ask up in perfect english if wed like them to take a picture of us together. so of course we say yes and start talking to them. they tell us they are from san diego and are studying abroad for the year here in italy, in florence! so we tell them were exchange students too, only in croatia! what a coincidence that we’d meet other exchangers ! so we spent a few more hours in venice and headed back to poreč that evening. we got back around 10, went out for dinner then fell asleep. 

saturday we got to sleep in until around nine, went and had some breakfast then drove into poreč for some sight seeing and shoppping! after a few hours we got back in the car and drove to this place practically on the slovenian border for some lunch at this restaurant on top of a mountain with the most amazing view. there they had two big black pigs that are used to hunt for truffles! they were so cute! so we had a huge lunch with amazing food and some good wine, then some weird truffle and chocolate thing for dessert. ive never had a mushroom for desert before, and im not going to lie, i dont really like truffles very much. i would definitely not pay all that money for them. after lunch we drove to this other seaside town named rovinj. it was absolutely gorgeous. this town looks like it has not been changed in hundreds of years. i was one of the prettiest places ive ever been. so after we left rovinj, on our way back to our villa in poreč we stopped at this fjord which is like only one in croatia i think. it was really cool! so we got back to the hotel and had that huge buffet for dinner again. and yes, it was just as amazing as the first time. [: 

sunday was the day we were coming back home to zagreb. we left around 11 and stopped in rijeka, for some coffee of course. im not sure if croatians can go more than about 3 hours without stopping for coffee. i find it hilarious. so anways, rijeka is the 3rd largest city in croatia and so beautiful. i would love to back sometimes for a little more than some coffee. i got home around 1:30 and honestly, it was so good to be home. its odd to me to think this is my home, but it really does feel that way. 

okay well, i think i have definitely bored you enough for one post. [;