What in Croatia??

CIMBA gives students the opportunity to travel to different parts of Europe (or the world, go big or go home right?) at the end of every week. It’s a great deal because we gain an educational experience in a new part of the world, in addition to having the chance to travel anywhere we would like. However, its quite the challenge choosing where exactly to travel with a few major characteristics in mind: Time span (2-3 days), the people that you are traveling with, finances, and personal preferences of where to go. I met a group of five lovely cimbaians during my first week in which we all decided we would spend our first travel weekend together! Everyone was suggesting places to go, thus we could not seem to agree on a destination! “Lets hit up Barcelona!” “I heard Austria has so many nice museums” “Amsterdam literally looks like a movie, we’re going.” Then suddenly a friend states, “Guys, Croatia is where its at”. It was almost like the world stopped for .7 seconds and when it resumed we were all super excited about this exotic- blue watered adventure! 

No one knew much about Croatia. In fact, the only thing we knew collectively amongst the group was that the beaches were beautiful and it was a relatively inexpensive destination. So we packed our swimsuits, printed our bus tickets, and headed towards our adventure to Pula, Croatia! It took approximately 5 hours on a bus to get to Croatia. Once we arrived, we had to exchange our euro’s for kuna, the Croatian currency. Although you can exchange euro’s for kuna, you cannot exchange kuna for euro’s or any other currency, so we took out very little cash at a time! We got an Airbnb about 30 minutes walking distance from downtown Croatia and 30 minutes walking distance from local beaches. Our home was compact with beds, laundry machines, and our own weekend dog named Katie. During our trip, we visited the downtown area where small shops and monumental architecture were lined up next to one another. We also spent a day at the beach where we took a boat trip to explore some caves and cliff dive (no one actually jumped, the water was freezing). Croatia consisted of mandatory gelato breaks, amazing food, and even more amazing scenery. 

For a place that no one knew much about, Croatia did not disappoint. It one of the greatest impromptu travel decisions I have made in a very long time!