Grabovac (small Croatian town)

First I must apologise for any typos or spelling errors in this entry. I had quite a lot of wine at dinner (and tried Croatian beer too- very good, but I have not drank beer since high school- sorry mom- so I don't know what is good anyway).

We are staying at a family home in a very small town in Croatia called Grabovac. It is close to the Plitvice (say that 3 times fast= "Pleet-veet-sah") Lakes Park, which is one of the only UNESCO world heritage sites for natural beauty in Croatia. Tomorrow we will see the lakes, so I can tell you more...

But tonight we had a nice bus ride from Split (the coastline) and the bus drivers forgot to let us out at the town, so we had to walk about a kilometer or more back in to town (as rain threatened to downpour on our heads), then find the hostel (not too hard in a small town, because people recognized the family name of the owners and pointed us in the direction of a large yellow house set back from the main road).

We are staying with a family whose home was destroyed during the war, but their new place was just rebuilt last year and it is so nice!! We have a purivate room with its own bathroom for only $30 USD per night.

We ate dinner with the people who own the house and some cool Canadians also. They cooked up every possible kind of meat on the grill (pork, beef,chicken, čevapčiči-mincemeat "sausage" hamburger, garlic meat, etc), also pasta and salad of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and leeks. We enjoyed the meal and the conversation very much, and after we finished eating, our hosts had the extended family over for a meal as well. We got to see the whole family, and get more of a sense for how regular life happens here. On her way out, Grandma said something to Toshi in Croatian that neither of us understood, but Toshi nicely bowed his head and smiled. She seemed to like that. I think she was hitting on him (but I don't mind).

The people here are so nice and so open, both the other travelers and the locals. It has been so great conversing with everyone and I feel we are really making connections.

We had a nice sunset walk and have been watching some other travelers playing travel scrabble (we are too drunk to play....). It is actually quite a nice spectator sport! (especially for a "word nerd" like me!)