Cioccolato!

Last month we took a day trip to Perugia, Italy for the annual EuroChocolate festival held there. EuroChocolate is one of the biggest chocolate festivals in Europe and draws a crowd of almost a million visitors every year, so anyone who knows how I feel about chocolate can imagine how excited I was.

Perugia was about a 2 hour bus ride away and we got a ChocoCard through the travel program we went with which got us all kinds of tasty free samples. I basically learned you can make just about anything from chocolate, from the surprisingly delicious (pepper flavored chocolate) to the sort-of disgusting (chocolate and pear juice) to the downright ridiculous (chocolate batteries??).

Chocolate liqueur shots.

Posing with Mr. EuroChocolate

The BEST hot chocolate I've ever had. Nothing like American hot chocolate, so rich, thick and creamy it basically just tastes like a melted chocolate bar.

Yep... 32 flavors.

Chocolate kebabs!

Chocolate for dogs

Hot chocolate, anyone?

Mmm.. chocolate covered candied oranges. Probably my favorite thing I got.

Lindt!

Kappa keys

Adventure sports for the chocolate enthusiast--a chocolate rock wall.

CROATIA!

So I can definitely conclude that I will never blog for a living since I’m just now writing about the Croatia trip I took almost a month and a half ago. Sorry mom. Anyway, for this trip I was deciding between going to Greece and Croatia and ultimately picked Croatia because a) I think it’s a lot more likely I’ll go to Greece when I return to Europe in the future and b) I just really wanted to be able to say I went to Croatia for the weekend. So… Split, Croatia it was.

Croatian coast... Only a 5 minute walk from our hostel

We stayed at the Goli & Bossi hostel which was entirely neon yellow on the inside and filled with poorly translated and factually-suspect tidbits about Croatian history. Best one? “First man on moon was of Croatia… I am sure of it.” But hey, they gave us free breakfast every morning so they can make as many false claims about Croatian historical achievements as they want in my book.

So. Much. Yellow.

We spent Friday exploring Split, went to the top of the Bell Tower of St. Duje, wandered around a seafood market and fruit market, and hiked up a hill with a great view of the city.

From the Bell Tower of St. Duje

Diocletian Palace

View from the top of the bell tower

Croatian Kitties!

It was just a tiny bit windy on the way up the mountain

Once we got to the top of the mountain we saw there was a zoo! So we pretty much had to go. Unfortunately, this was probably the sketchiest zoo I’ve ever been to.. and that’s coming from someone who has spent a good amount of time at the Park Street Art & Wine Fair petting zoo. (Alameda shoutout). Not only did the bears have a miniscule, barren cage… but there was a GUINEA PIG with a cage over 2/3rds the size of the bear’s. There was also a monkey snacking on a plastic cup. All in all, PETA would have hated this place.

World's most depressed monkey

Cages optional

Depressing...

The seafood in Split was delicious. One of the best things about Croatia was how much cheaper everything was than in Florence. For an amazing seafood dinner for about ten of us our total was only 600 Kuna (Croatian currency) which sounds like a ridiculous amount but is actually only around 80 Euro.

Shrimp Risotto 

Seafood Linguini

Saturday we spent the first half of the day in Krka National Park (Croatians aren't big on vowels), a gorgeous park filled with waterfalls and rivers that reminded me a lot of Yosemite.

We bought some candied almonds from this lady... delish

Hiking in Krka!

We ended the day with a trip to the tiny island of Trogir, where we wandered around and got pastries at a delicious bakery (which the lady described in her broken English as "cheesy salty cakes"... so we obviously had to get two), plus watched one of the prettiest sunsets I've ever seen. 

Trogir harbor

Sunset in Trogir.. pictures don't do it justice