Matera, Italy

We took a train to Matera. We were going to leave our bags at the left-luggage in Bari, but it was too expensive, so we brought them with us. Matera is an older village built in the rocks and caves. People that lived there were pretty poor and had big families. We visited one cave, Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario, that has been refurnished as it was in 1950 (when the government realized it was inappropriate to have families living in the same room as their horse, pig and chicken.) It was a really impressive visit in the Sassi. After our visit with our backpacks, we took the train back to Bari to catch our high speed train to Rome. Matera is a must see and should be on everybody's list when coming to visit Italy.

 

Dubrovnik, Croatia

We got up early and went for a walk in the Diocletian Palace in Split one last time and came back to the apartment to get our luggage before heading out to the bus station. It is pretty special to see Sarajevo written as a bus destination but that day we were heading to Dubrovnik. After a long bus ride with pretty cool scenery, we got to our destination and had to get out of the 'cold' of the bus to get back walking in 30+ degrees. On our way we made a little incursion in Bosnia, maybe an hour, but enough so we want to go back to visit. Our home for a few days is a bedroom in a 3 bedroom apartment, including a private balcony. We relaxed at night, enjoying the AC in our room.

The next day, we woke up late, took it slow and went out to visit Dubrovnik Grad (old town). The city within the wall is really nice with all the small cobblestone streets. The view of the Adriatic sea is pretty cool too. We walked around for a while and went through a small doorway in the wall where we had an amazing view of the sea PLUS there were stairs to get in the water.. so we did! Water was warm, but felt cold with the tropical weather outside, it was also turquoise and salty. We had a wonderful time!

We had a second full day to enjoy in Dubrovnik which was great as it is very beautiful and relaxing here. After over a month moving a lot we are getting exhausted and we need to relax from time to time. We went for another nice walk back in the old city. We looked at a few places to swim but decided to go back to the same spot as yesterday. We enjoyed the old town some more before coming back to the apartment and spent some time on our wonderful balcony.

On our last morning here we got ready to take the boat to Italy. It wasn't in the plan to visit Italy but from here it was a good option to keep using the train pass which is not valid in Bosnia or Montenegro south from Croatia. The boat left on time, at noon, after the border control to leave Croatia.

 

 

 

 

Split, Croatia

We spent 2 nights in Split. The night we got there we just relaxed as we were really tired from a long bus day including the stop in Plitvice National Park. The next day, we visited the old town called Diocletian Unesco Palace for a while, went around the market, walked on the Riva waterfront promenade and got on top of Suma Marjan Park where we had a nice view over the city. We went to Bacvice beach, which was really crowded, but swimming in the Adriatic Sea cooled us off for a while. We then relaxed in the small studio we rented for the rest of the evening.