Snorkeling fun!

Those four days in Croatia went by way too fast! I was very sad to leave, but in a couple of days we will be in Greece! We have lots of fun trips planned: SAS trip to the acropolis, SAS trip to Delphi, a Greek cooking class, and then going to a Greek island for a day. Exciting!

So yesterday we went on the coveted snorkeling trip! We were lucky that we both got that trip, as a lot of people wanted it! We got off the ship and couldn’t see a bus for our trip, but someone pointed past the buses and a little boat was waiting to take us to the snorkeling place! We sped away from the ship and around a little peninsula to a place called Abyss diving center.  We got our fins and snorkels (which I’m sure weren’t sanitized but whatever) and off we went to a nearby island. I know snorkeling isn’t hard, but they didn’t give any instruction, basically told us just to jump off the side of the boat and snorkel. Well I sucked at it. Every time I tried to breathe through the snorkel underwater, my brain told me “you should not be breathing right now!!” and I froze up. I think I also had a rather crappy snorkel because it kept letting in water and I was tired of blowing air out of it. I gave up on the snorkel and just swam around with my mask, exploring the rocks and swimming with fish. There weren’t too many fish, but I was able to get really close to some of them. The rocks were covered with sea anemones and sea urchins. The water was FRIGID and extremely salty, but it was a lot of fun! After about 45 minutes at the island, we were boated back to the diving center and we had about 2 hours of free time to snorkel off the beach or pay some extra money and go parasailing or tubing or something. We got a couple of fruit smoothies at the bar and then went swimming around the beach. The water was cold, but I went right in. Steven was being a sissy and inching into the water. Silly! There were actually a lot more fish around the beach than at the island, and we just enjoyed swimming around and exploring. It was finally time to leave, and the boat dropped us off right underneath the MV Explorer, definitely a cool experience!

After eating lunch on the ship and washing out all the salty water, we caught the bus to the old city, where there are a ton of shops and restaurants. We had been warned that the marble cobblestones were slippery, and they definitely were! For some reason I was wearing old navy flip flops. Not a good idea. Anyway, our first stop was an ice cream shop that Steven had gone to when he did his tour of the city walls. We got 2 HUGE scoops of ice cream for 20 kuna, which is about 4 dollars. Probably the cheapest ice cream we’ve gotten this whole trip. Croatia seems fairly cheap! We then wandered around the streets, stopping in stores. I was on the lookout for a magnet and a good t-shirt, but everything I was finding was really touristy and poor quality. I found a hand-painted magnet in a food store, where I also picked up some olive oil which I was told was “the best olive oil in Croatia.” I got to try some of it on bread and it was quite tasty! I was told it can go on everything, even vanilla ice cream. I think we’ll skip that one and just stick to bread. =) After shopping around some more, we stopped at Taj Mahal, a restaurant our tour guide had suggested to us. Despite its name, it served traditional Croatian food. We got a sampler platter of lots of different kinds of meats: chicken kebabs, meat patties, sausages. Meat city! It was quite tasty, but we were so full! We walked around some more, but places were starting to close down and once you’ve seen one touristy souvenir shop, you’ve seen them all. We headed back to the ship, tired from an extremely long day.

Today we thought we wanted to go back to the diving center to go tubing or something (riding in an inner tube being dragged by a boat).  There was another SAS snorkeling trip leaving this morning, so we walked down to see if they could tell us how we could get to the place. They apparently had a bunch of openings, so we just bought a ticket for the trip and did the same thing again! We went out again to the island and explored a different area, this time finding a lot more fish. One of Steven’s flippers broke so he had to climb up on some pointy rocks to fix it. Ouch! I swam in an entire school of fish, so close that I could just reach out and touch them. Very cool! I also saw those tiny little shiny fish that change directions really fast to confuse their predators—they are in Finding Nemo and they make shapes while talking to Dory and Marlin (hopefully people know what I’m talking about). They definitely look like they are flashing! After 45 minutes of exhausting swimming, we went back to the dive center. We looked into parasailing but we didn’t have enough cash. We decided on an “aquahog” which is a mix between a tube and a banana raft and seats 2 people. We donned our lifejackets and got into the boat to head out. Getting on the raft was a trip. Steven got on first so he could be in the back, and he fell into the water. While he was getting out, I tried to get on, and I too fell in the water. It was not an easy feat! Finally we both got on and we were off! I was holding on for dear life, but it wasn’t too hard and was a lot of fun! All of a sudden, about halfway through our time, the boat driver started going really fast. I started freaking out. I was being pelted by water from the wake and I was so tired from 2 days of snorkeling that it was getting really hard to hold on. Then he started making sharp turns, and I couldn’t hold on anymore and flew off. Now I know what a skipping stone feels like! Apparently when I flew off, I took Steven with me, so we both ended up in the water waiting for the boat driver to get us. I guess his going fast and doing tight turns was the “grand finale” because we started heading back to the beach with Steven on the raft and my choosing to sit safely on the boat. I am not one for extreme water sports. Definitely not doing that again! Steven, of course, had a blast. =P After that we still had about 1.5 hours of free time, so I swam around with the fish while Steven napped on the “beach.” I am beat!

Again we went back to the ship for food and such, then headed out to the grocery store to spend the last of our kuna. Yay for cheap sodas!

Stupid question, Croatia version:
On a tour of the city walls, the tour guide said, “this is where the prince was beheaded.” A girl asks, “Did he die?”

Tonight’s the last night we have to set our clocks ahead! Woohoo!!