It's a long way from California...

I'd met Zvonka a while back. Not on Travbuddy, but the same idea - While I was planning a trip to Croatia with my friends, I'd written to her to ask something to the effect of how early in the year you could swim in the Adriatic without freezing. She'd said to maybe stop by if I ever happened to make it there. That trip fell through, but we got to be friends and I kept not making it to Croatia.

Finally this summer wrote "why don't you come travel to Turkey with my friends and I?" Well, she's like me and of course didn't ask until the week before they were leaving... I couldn't make it, so we decided that once she got back next month, we'd travel down to the Croatian coast for her last week of summer vacation.

After what seemed like the longest month ever, I was off. I really hoped it would work out, she'd been backpacking across Turkey with no communication and I was going to meet her based on our quick plan made last month "I'm should arrive back on the 24th, try to get a flight that arrives that night, I'll pick you up" : ) It was going to be interesting trying to find each other if one of us didn't make it!

I love flying though- no window this time, but I usually have my nose pressed to the glass the whole flight watching the landscape go by. To me, the flights are a major part of a trip.

One thing I noticed about Croatia and Slovenia as I flew over at night, its very dark!  Not a lot of people live there, you can see little villages here and there, but there is a lot of open space.  Even Zagreb is relatively small, only 400,000 people downtown and thats the capital!  I'm so used to the world being much more crowded...

What a long journey to get to Croatia! With the cheap seats it was already 19 hours with the stopovers, but after delays at each of the 3 stopovers, it turned into 27! I felt so bad, my friend was nice enough to invite me an pick me up the the airport and every few hours she'd drive out and I'd call with the bad news "2 more hours" "4 more hours..." Finally, late at night, her 3rd trip the the airport, I actually arrived.