After spending a month in Iceland, I am now back on the road! Spending some time in Iceland was nice, but I was so ready to leave the (almost) constant rain. I’m honestly so glad to not be there right now, there seems to be a storm about every other day. Which is pretty normal for this time of year (and most of the year tbh).
I left Iceland with a one way ticket to Milan, Italy, and pretty much no plan. I had booked three nights at a hostel in Milan, but that was it. I didn’t really have any intentions to stay in Milan, I just found a cheap flight there, hadn’t been there before, so I figured I might as well just book it 🙂
In a perfect world I would have gone to Asia, but yeah not an option at the moment 🙂 So I figured I would spend a few months traveling around Europe since even though I’ve been around Europe a lot, there are still some interesting countries I haven’t been to. Originally I wanted to start by traveling around Italy for a while, visiting places like Cinque Terre, Rome, Positano, Venice, Sicily, and then continue to Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. This all should have been easy enough given that I have an Icelandic passport so no visas needed, and since I’ve already had covid, was just one email away from getting the EU Covid Pass. Or that’s what I thought :)) After about 20 emails and various phone calls, the Ministry of Health just didn’t quite feel like issuing it even though I had two certificates stating I’d had covid, since I wasn’t in Iceland when I had it so they couldn’t see it in their “system” :))) I could write a whole blog post about this process and how ridiculous it all is, but won’t bore you with that haha. I wasn’t too thrilled about all this, so a lawyer at the Ministry of Health is looking into this atm 🙂
Given I don’t have this pass, I’m not as free to travel around Europe as I should be.I could still go to Italy, just couldn’t eat inside restaurants, go to museums or go on long distance trains or buses without getting a rapid test :))) I still had a good time in Milan, I wasn’t really planning on going to museums or eating inside restaurants anyway so it didn’t really affect me. But still would have been nice to have the option lol. So I explored a lot of the outside, not so much of the inside :)) kinda felt like a dog, not allowed anywhere inside lol. But yeah, I still a had good time in Milan. I stayed at a super nice host and spend a few I spend a few days exploring Milan, eating pizza (outside :))) ) and drinking Aperol Spritz :))
However, I quickly found out that I kinda had too much luggage to be staying in hostels, I had a really hard time just finding things in my suitcases and it was just annoying. Hostels in Europe are also kind of expensive, so in the end it’s cheaper to find a room or an apartment to rent than to be staying in hostels. So I did a little research and decided that Split, Croatia, would be the perfect place to stay for a month or two. Unfortunately, a lot of other people seem to have reached the same conclusion, as just about every decent apartment seemed to be booked out for the next couple of weeks :))) I ended up booking a super cute apartment close to the beach from the middle of October, for a ridiculously low price, just under 600EUR per month. I’m super excited to be able to unpack my bags and not have to drag my luggage around every couple of days 🙂 And also to be able to use whatever stuff is at the bottom of my suitcase, up until now I’ve kind of just been using whatever happened to be on the top. I will definitely do some shorter trips from Split though, but won’t need to bring all my stuff along lol.
But yeah I think the lesson learned from this is that when I’m planning to stay a month or two in the same place, I might need to book it more than a day or two in advance lol. So now I’m trying to decide where I’ll want to stay after christmas 🙂 Mexico is pretty high on that list. So is Costa Rica haha.
After spending a few days in Milan, I started making my way towards Croatia. All this planning was happening very last minute, I was literally sitting at my hostel in Milan looking for flights departing the following day, which isn’t ideal when it comes to prices lol. So I decided to just go a little slower and started by booking a train to Venice. Not a bad place for a little stopover 🙂 I hadn’t been there for a few years so was excited to visit once again! Although my hostel in Milan was nice, hostels in europe don’t really have the same backpackers atmosphere as the ones in asia and central/south america. I can’t really pinpoint why exactly, it’s just not the same. And after someone turned all the lights on in the middle of the night in my room, I immediately promised myself that I’d get myself a hotel room in Venice 🙂 Which I did. I will say it was pretty damn nice to have my own room. Especially being the only one in control of whether or not the lights were on :)))
Originally I booked two nights in Venice, but pretty much immediately after I arrived there, I just knew I wanted to extend my stay. Venice is seriously so beautiful. Even though it was kinda raining the first day, I still loved it haha. It’s one of those places where everything is pretty. If you haven’t been yet, do add it to your list! The best time to visit I would say is just before or after the high season – April/May, maybe June is okay, or September/October. When it’s still warm but not too hot or as packed with tourists as in July and August.
I spent two days in Venice – mostly just wandering around, having aperol & pizzas and taking lots of photos. Most of the tourists tend to stay around the main canal, where the Puente de Rialto bridge is. That’s sort of the most iconic part of Venice, kind of like the Opera house in Sydney. But as soon as you get away from that area, you will quickly have the streets almost to yourself. So if you’re planning to go to Venice, make sure to not just stick to the main tourist attractions. I would still recommend visiting Puente de Rialto and those more “touristy places”, but they were definitely my least favourite part. It was so crowded with people that it just took away from the experience. Just felt way too touristy
After wandering through Venice for two days, it was time to leave Italy and head over to Croatia. I booked a bus from Venice to Pula, Croatia – which before covid would have been a smooth ride, requiring nothing but my passport. Those were the days lol. But yeah I needed to get a QR code, not in order to enter Croatia but in order to board the bus in Italy. In Iceland, and probably most countries except Italy, this is a straight forward process. You take an antigen test and then get the QR code emailed to you about 30 minutes later. But in Italy there seems to be no such thing as a smooth process. After a bit of confusion about where I could take an antigen test as a non Italian resident, I found a place that was supposed to do just that. There were lots of confused foreigners waiting in front of it, which I kinda thought was a good sign, cause at least I knew they were accepting non Italians 🙂
After a chaotic process of registering, handing over my passport and waiting, I got the test done and had the results like 15 minutes later. So not too bad, I thought, until I looked at the “certificate” I had just received. It was nothing more than a piece of paper that I had filled out, with my name and passport number, and all they had done was checking a box that said negative :)) Knowing that no person in their right mind would accept this piece of paper as a travel document. I expressed that concern to the women working there in a mix of english and spanish as her english wasn’t very good, all I got was “yeah look, negative” and I was like yeah I know but I need a QR code, but all I got was “no QR code”.I might as well have handed over a handwritten note from my mom stating that I didn’t have covid :))) Then she pointed me to a piece of paper on the wall, that looked equally as official as my “certificate”, that stated that the QR code system wasn’t working and that I should receive it within 24 hours. Which would have been too late for my bus, but that wasn’t my biggest concern.
They didn’t ask for my email or my phone number or any other contact info, so my biggest confusion was how they planned to send me the QR code :))) The women didn’t offer any clarification on that and was kinda done with me at this point, my phone was at 3% and my charging bank was empty, so I decided to just go back to the hotel and figure something out. I spent the night on various Italian websites trying to somehow retrieve my QR code certificate, by putting in some random codes that I found on my “certificate”. None of them worked as I always needed some form of an Italian identification number, which obviously I didn’t have :))) This was getting kinda stressful, and at this point I couldn’t wait to leave Italy and be done with this bullshit. I had heard about people getting their QR codes from pharmacies, so I visited two of those the next morning. At the first one they told me they couldn’t get it cause I wasn’t Italian. At the second one they at first told me they couldn’t get it, and I was like yeahhh you can :)) and she was like no we can’t, and I was like yeah please check it :))) After some back and forth she finally went to the computer, and then I heard her print something and I was just like omg I finally have it!! But it wasn’t actually the QR code, but it was a slightly more official looking certificate, not handwritten :))) So at least it was something haha.
When my bus arrived I saw there was a sign saying that you needed a QR code to board, so not too good news for me at this point :)) I just tried to play it cool, put my bags in and went to my seat, hoping that no one would ask me for it. The relief when the bus finally took off omg. We still had two border controls to pass (exiting Slovenia/Schengen and then entering Croatia), but neither of them required a QR code so I wasn’t too stressed about those. At the end no one even asked me for my certificate haha, just needed to show my passport so it was all good! Felt so great when I finally arrived in Croatia, knowing all this QR code bullshit was behind me, as they aren’t required in Croatia :)))
I arrived in Pula in the evening and checked into the private room I had booked. At this point I was getting kinda spoiled after my hotel stay in Venice :))) The hostels in Pula just didn’t look very good and this room actually was pretty cheap haha. And it was just super cute, and right in the centre!
I didn’t really know anything about Pula, I just knew it was on my way to Split and a few days earlier someone I’m following posted a photo of a “colosseum” in Pula. It looked very much like the one in Rome and I just thought that was kinda cool so I decided to stop there haha. Pula is a pretty small town, with a nice eastern europe feel to it. Very colourful, reminded me a lot of Slovenia and Italy. And then there is the colosseum! I spent two days there which I felt was just enough.
Continuing to make my way to Split, I got on a bus to Zadar, another pretty small town, located on Croatia’s Dalmatian coast. My favourite part about Zadar was probably the coffee place where I had breakfast – it was right next to the ocean, and just had this “local” Croatian feel to it, as it was a bit out of the centre, which was perhaps why there were only local people there. And then me 🙂 It just really felt like I was experiencing the real Croatia haha. Zadar, like many other cities in Croatia, has a very cute old town that I loved wandering through.
After two days in Zadar, I took a bus to Split! That was kind of my “destination” as I had already booked an apartment there from the middle of October, so I was super excited to get there :))Split is the second largest city in Croatia, located on the Adriatic coast. I had heard nothing but good things about it, which I guess was enough to convince me to book an apartment there haha. Luckily I really loved it and am excited to get back there!
Since I’m gonna be staying in Split for at least I month, I figured I’d explore other parts of Croatia until then. This is when I bought a ferry ticket to Hvar, a small island about an hour away from Split. Hvar has been on my bucket list for years, so this felt like the perfect time to finally explore it. I was so ready for the island life so I booked a room for a week through Airbnb. (Airbnb tip – most hosts offer a discount of you stay for a week, or a month).
This week on Hvar has been a dream. Beginning every day by wandering through the island and having breakfast at one of the many restaurants that overlook the ocean.
It’s just something about waking up on an island, so peaceful somehow. I usually bring my laptop to breakfast, check on the stock market and whatever else I might need to get done, then spend the rest of day living the island life :)))
Hvar is very “seasonal” – the season runs from around May through September, this is when the island gets loads of tourists, all restaurants are open and tons of activities are available. Many restaurants and shops then close at the end of the season, and will then open back up around May – so the island gets very quiet, with mostly locals around, during off season. Since it’s the end of the season now, the island is pretty quiet, there are certainly tourists around (including me :))) ) but it isn’t packed, as I’d imagine is the case in July and August. The weather is still nice and warm, and the sea is warm enough for a swim! And as you’ve probably seen if you’re following my on instagram, the sea is so clear! With the island being pretty quiet now, finding your own little private spot on one of the beaches is not even remotely challenging.
The only negative thing I could say about Hvar is that it’s a little expensive, as islands tend to be (Iceland for example lol). It’s nowhere near as expensive as in Iceland though, but meals cost around 10-20 euros, but for the most part they seem to be profiting off of the drinks, most likely counting on the fact that you’ll order them without looking at the menu :))) It’s not uncommon for food to be decently priced, then you order an orange juice, only to find out when you get the check that the juice was 5EUR haha. Which actually, now that I think of it, is more than you’d ever pay for a glass of juice in Iceland.
My next stop is Korcula, another island about an hour away from Hvar! I don’t think I can get enough of island life haha. So more beach days to come! My plan is then to take a ferry to Dubrovnik and from there take a bus to Bosnia and stay there for a few days, before checking into my apartment in Split <3 It feels so weird sometimes to think about that this is really my life, that I can just go wherever I want and pretty much do whatever I want. At this point I can’t imagine showing up to work five days a week and it feels so strange that I used to do just that.
I think that’s it for now – PS if you want to get notified when I publish new blog posts, just click the red bell in the bottom right corner, or follow me on instagram where I usually announce new posts :))))
Share this:
