after sleeping in a bit longer than we wanted to this morning (we meet a cool Aussie last night and stayed out a bit later than expected), we grabbed a quick bite at the same cafe we ate at yesterday and hit the road towards the north. the drive took about five hours, and the highways here are loads better than what we had all last week in eastern europe. plus, we cruised along at about 130 – 140/km per hour, so we made some serious time.

we pulled into Venice around 4pm, parked our car at a huge ramp right outside the city, and i almost died laughing when we pulled into our spot and saw what section we were in. this is totally an inside joke, but a few of you following along will enjoy this…

after catching the shuttle train that takes you into Venice (ever so creatively named “The People Mover”), we were able to find our hostel for the night with relative ease. we grabbed a quick bite, looked around the area we’re staying in, and are now settling down for the night. i only grabbed a few pictures while walking to dinner, but we are staying here tomorrow night as well, giving us a whole day to explore the town. i’m pretty sure it’ll be super.

look for a new post later tomorow afternoon (your time) with what i hope will be filled with lots of wonderful images of Venice.

yes, you read that right. we’re now in Italy. about three days ago while looking at the calendar, we realized we had plenty of time to get up the coast of Croatia. enough time, actually, that Bob suggested we take a few days to run over to Venice once we got to northern Croatia. so we started looking into it and shortly into our research found a ferry that runs from Split, Croatia to Ancona, Italy. it wasn’t too expensive, and with the time we could save by not having to drive clear up and around the coast of Croatia, we figured we could also jump over to Rome for a day or two. hells yeah we booked it. seven hours later on a humoungus ferry across the Adriadic Sea, i’m now sitting in Bob’s cousin’s flat smack dab in the middle of Rome. (i have a feeling none of you reading this will ever want to travel with me – ever!)

here’s our ferry. she’s the one on the left

this morning we headed out to see the sights after a really good pastry breakfast at a local deli, and holy moly is this city fantastic! for those of you who may not know me well, i travel to experience other culture. it’s as simple as that. (well, i like to snap a picture or two as well…) whether this be through art, architecture, people watching, or a simple chat at a roadside market, i find experiencing other people’s way of life first hand so rewarding. there’s no way you can have tea with a rural family in northern Vietnam in their dirt floored home, see how happy they are, and not have it effect you in some way. here in Rome, there’s no way you can walk around these buildings, many of them so much older than we can even imagine in the States, and not be moved by their beauty, the story behind their existence, or the stories their walls could tell. it’s amazing, and it’s my hope that everyone back home will be able to take a trip to someplace unfamiliar, someplace new, heck, maybe even somewhere that’s scares the living bejesus out of you sometime in your life. with an open mind, i have no doubt that trip would change you into a slightly better version of yourself.

since i’m better at making pictures than i am at narrating our days, i’ll again let the below images tell about our day and what we saw. the highlights today included the Vatican Museum (with the Sistine Chapel), St. Peter’s Square, the Pantheon (built in the 2nd century!!!), the Colosseum, and all the crazy awesome sights in between.

…i woke up somewhere i had no idea i’d be during this trip. but we went with the flow, traveled a good bit yesterday, and here we are.

more pictures and our location to follow later tonight. (the above image is about a block down the street from where we stayed last night – any guesses?)

when i left you yesterday, i said i’d fill you in with a few photos of our short trip into Serbia. above is the market we stopped at with a really nice clerk. below is some produce at his shop and the scenery just outside the town the store was in – i’m sure you’ll find the countryside way different than you would expect. (i felt the same way)

from there we headed back into Montenegro where we ended up in Podgorica for the night. Bob drove a good part of the way, so I was able to make a few photos along the way. (BTW – the mountains from Serbia to Podgorica were STUNNING!!! best mountain drive of the trip by far.)

after finding our hostel in Podgorica, we headed into the downtown area for a bit to eat. we parked on a main street at about 4:30pm, ate, surfed the interwebs for a bit, and walked back to our car. about halfway down the street i look at Bob, he looked at me, and we both say at the same time, “DUDE, WHERE’S OUR CAR!!” it was gone. nowhere in sight. and after a few seconds of total disbelief and WTF laughing, we called the guy that runs our hostel who was nice enough to drive in and take us to the police station where they towed our car to. €85 later, we were back in business. you can see an example of how they towed our car here. (how ironic that Bob shot that video just a few days ago, right?)

so that brings us to today. we were up and driving by 9:00am on our way to Dubrovnik, Croatia, and sure-as shit, we get flagged over by The Man five minutes outside town! round two with the cops in Podgorica! this time i was driving without my headlights on. (i forgot to point out the no parking sign on the street we got towed was about the size of a note pad, was clear on the other end of the block, and simply said “OD 17:00 – 05:00”- just so you aren’t thinking we are being careless) so we get flagged over, the cop tries to tell me i owe him €30 for the fine, and i work my magic to get out of the fine. WINNER!!!

before reaching Dubrovnik today, we caught a quick ferry ride that was pretty neat. we figured it saved a few minutes off our trip, so that’s always good. plus, the houses around the water were really pretty.

about ten minutes out from Dubrovnik, i noticed how close we were to Bosnia. it took us about a minute to decide that we needed to see if we could find a way in. why not, right? so after a bit of asking around and looking at our GPS, we found the way and about a half an hour later, we were in Bosnia. not wanting to flag ourselves and have the boarder guards think we were up to no good crossing in and out in mere minutes, we decided to stop for a bite to eat. problem was we had no Bosnia Marks (their currency), the area we were in was a ghost town, and we knew no one would speak English. we decided on Resturan Dubrovnik only because it was the only food joint in town, and i ran up to see if they would take plastic. no dice. the owner did say he would take Croatian cash, and having stopped earlier today to get some, we were golden.

to paint you a picture of this place, it was a one room “cafe” of sorts (about 30′ x 25′), dingy, with a group of five Bosnian gentleman at the table next to us engaged in a heated discussion – politics i’m sure. the owner was really nice, but didn’t speak a drop of English. so after no luck trying to charade and draw pictures of what we wanted, i simply got up and followed him into the kitchen (picture a 1970’s residential kitchen) and pointed out what looked good. he laughed, i laughed, and i think the woman cooking thought we were both mad. the food turned out to be really good, and before we left, we got a quick photo with the owner, who again, could probably have told the best stories if not for the language barrier between us.

we got to Dubrovnik by 5, found a hostel in the Old Town area, walked around for an hour or so snapping some photos, ate at an Irish Pub, and are heading to bed shortly. i’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on how unbelievably cool it is here. i’ll point out i didn’t like how the photo i made looking down on the whole area turned out, so i instead used it to show you where our room is for tonight. no lie! i also added one Bob shot of me taking that photo. enjoy!