The trip didn't start out incredibly auspiciously. On the plane, the guy beside me thought a shower was the way the devil got inside him. Egh.

Getting in, though, popped out of Zadar's teensy airport we caught the end of a dazzling pink sunset and hopped, eazy peazy-style, onto a bus that scoots us into the city.

When the bus stopped and an old creepy dude got on to ask if anyone wanted a sobe (room) for the night, we thought it was weird. Now we don't. More on that later.

We decided to do a ten-hour trip down to Dubrovnik (southern coast) for the first night because we got into Zadar late and didn't want to waste the night. What was supposed to be 8 hours of rest turned into about 2 with excited giggling about future trip plans and way too many hands of cards.

We got into Old Town Dubrovnik at around 6 am, and I have to say that's the best time possible -- before all the damn tourists get there. It's gorgeous, it is, but it became a swarm of fat Brits the next day at noon-ish.

Espresso rules and food is hard to find before 9 am, though, and all menus have flags above the different pages and everything in four languages. Not a great sign, in my book.

We decided to do a camp site for the first night and found out camps aren't cheap anymore. We grabbed a pack of 6 tickets from a newsstand (costs more on the bus) and took a bus to Lapad. That was the only camping night, admittedly. Immediately we began our Croatian tradition of napping at every opportunity. We started naming the trip at this juncture:

Napping in a Country that Doesn't Matter.

I mean, really, what has Croatia ever done for the world? Can you really imagine an entire race of CROATIANS? They even have their own silly language, although it's really Serbian/Bosnian.

Off-point.

Upon waking from the first nap of many, I was in a tizzy. Must. Eat. Soon.

We employed boy scout knowledge to lead us to the restaurant with the most phenomenal view. Crystal green water like you've never seen and rocks built into the cliff wall to scamper down. I'm afraid of the sea -- sharks and all -- and the first view from the boulders scared the bejeezus out of me. Somehow I got over it.

Insert second nap here (on the rocks).

Before the sun-drenched sea time we ate "crazy pasta" -- mussels and more mussels with a smattering of pasta, all smothered in cheese.

Found our way around the peninsula and ended up on a pretty crowded beach (still near Lapad). Gelato flows here and we loaded up -- hazelnut and cherry and strawberry and pineapple.

Will there be a lot about food in this entry?

That's a silly question, really. Is George Clooney a sexy beast? Hell yes, there will be a lot about food.

En route home we got some spaghetti drowning in melted fresh cheese.

We spiffed up as much as you can in a tent and headed back to our little town, Lapad. I'm glad we were in a neighbouring town, versus in Dubrovnik.

By now we had realized that Croatian women -- or women who come to the Croatian coast -- are basically all smoking hot.

As in, 4 of 5 girls is a head-spinner. And the ladies are not afraid to wear knickers as bottoms, day-round. It's encouragement to shun clothes altogether, really. More on that later.

Amazing dinner on a rooftop. Fish soup is really a rich, clear broth and we tasted it at least three times -- it kept getting better and better.

When we made our way back to D-town the next day it was mayhem -- lobster-esque burnt Englishmen all around. Not what I wish for a holiday.

So we broke out, y'all.

Where can we go from here?

Mljet was decided on -- a quiet little island barely in my Lonely Planet. An easy ferry ride and we were there. But where were we, really? At first it was a little scary -- we pulled up to absolute nothing: a closed restaurant and closed car hire.

But there was a bus. Woohoo!

I remembered the book saying Polace and Pomena are the two towns and the former is bigger. But when the driver called for us to get off, I tried to stay on the bus. On a full bus, no one else got off. I still have zero idea where they all went.

So there we are, laden with bags, sweaty, at 6 pm on a gravel and dirt road. Ummmm...

We start walking. It's looking grim. We know there's one hotel on the entire island.

Then we see a restaurant... With a sign for a sobe (room) out front. We ask... Not expensive, either. Looking good.

A few buildings further and a thick old woman offers us a room. That's all she said -- a room with toilet for just you.

What a salesman.

She shows us to the room and we're smitten kittens. Brand new shower and bathroom, fresh and nice, giganormous balcony overlooking the Adriatic and the bay. Perfect location, smack in the middle of the restaurants. Fridge, stove, check.

And cheap.

We are lucky puppies.

Turns out she also runs the grocery store, rents out boats and bikes, and generally hustles like woah.

We're pretty sure she'd rent out her daughter if the price was right.

Oh yeah, and her daughter was hot. Of course.

We stuffed our faces for a few days, stocking up on the freshest veg imaginable and making salads with mozzarella, something local like gouda, neon red tomato, creamy avocado, meaty parma prosciutto, basil, oregano, salt, and used an entire bottle of olive oil. It's a local speciality. As is bread. Oh Dear God, the bakeries.

My friend wanted to rent a boat, but I was worried about our lack of skill/ experience. Those concerns were assuaged when we saw two little girls zooming across the bay.

So the next day we grabbed one. Went full throttle (pointed the gas toward the rabbit, versus the turtle) and sped toward the blue horizon.

We bobbed in the water, playing cards (yeah, we're wild!) And sunned to our hearts' content. Then we got adventurous and found our own private cove. Neon green (not in a radioactive way) and postcard-ready backdrop.

Anchor down.

Despite my Jaws fear, I followed my friend in. Even though I saw a jelly fish as we pulled up.

Oh yeah, and I was in my birthday suit. If you can't get into your birthday suit on a boat in the Adriatic, when can you?

Trouble is, as I was struggling to get back in the boat a boat pulled up.

Wow.

Embarrassed, we high-tailed it out of the cove. I'm gunning it because we seem to be going slowly. Whoopsie, the anchor's not up.

The rest of the day is a lazy daze.

We pulled a mattress onto the deck to use as Ground Zero for card-playing and reading. D gave me the first book (Northern Lights) in the His Dark Materials series. I ate it for breakfast and now I'm hungry for more.

We ate pasta and more pasta and risotto cooked in squid's black ink. We had seafood galore and crepes and fish soup enough to swim in.

We walked. We walked among Roman ruins. Which we could see from our balcony. Which cost us less than ten quid each.

We randomly bought apple wine so strong we had to play a drinking game to get it down.

We consumed our weight in cheese and prosciutto.

Finally it came time to leave, as we did yesterday. We asked where we could go (on Sunday there weren't many options) and skedaddled in that direction. Catamaran to Sobra, then we were told the boat to another peninsula leaves from there. Not true, but the port we need to get to is just 500 meters away. No biggie, let's get some carbonara first.

Carbonara, carbonara. Methinks they were trying to use up the carbonara for the day.

We start off for our merry 10-minute walk. Around a forested bend (bordering on the glittering sea, I must add, we see our bastard boat, but the (hot) lady who gave us that genius estimation should never work at the planning commission.

It was a mile, minimum.

I brought one pair of shoes. They're gold and shiny and wonderful, but they are very much not hiking shoes. We half walked, half scurried to the boat, making it on. New name:

Schlepping Though The Beautiful Country That Doesn't Matter.

Pljesek was the next stop, near a beach called Prapratno. And that's all we knew. We didn't have a car, a bus, a ferry, an anything. We had our bags and along the coast we see a beach and three buildings.

We hop into an ice cream shop. My people.

And old, but snazzily dressed lady asks where we're going. We're looking for a cab.

A town called Ston is a few miles away. She offers to take us there. A scary-looking cabbie is now also jostling for attention. Hmmmn, bug-eyed-cabbie-looking-for-money-who-looks-like-a-scary-ex or nice-pantsuit-lady? Tough choice, I know.

So we say that we really need a campsite. Turns out the beach we can see is a friggin campsite. Of all the luck...

So we walk it and before we can get there, see a sign for a sobe. 20 quid for both of us. We do a price comparison with the camp: 7 quid difference.

Hello, private shower and (of course) balcony.

Caught a nice pinkishly pink sunset and freshened up for din-din at the only restaurant around. Who needs options when there's soup this good? And fried cheese, and a platter of mixed meats.

We hung out in Ston for a bit and met some incredibly nice people, chowing down on a huge breakfast platter and making friends.

Walls should be mentioned here. Ston is surrounded by an amazing fortress, the oldest in Europe. It's stunning when you're driving up.

We decide to move on and get an (extremely expensive) taxi to the bus stop. Except... Wait... This isn't a bus station. It's the side of the road.

Amazingly one came before we were thoroughly dusty and completely broken of spirit. Woohoo!

Bus length estimations are apparently total bull, but that's fine.

Surprisingly, Croatia has clearly made a decision to veer more toward quality than I expected.

The highway is brand new, internet is fantastic, buses are fresh and so clean-clean, etc.

It makes things far more expensive than most other places (Central America, Japan, Africa, etc) but you're pretty comfortable the vast majority of the time.

Am I getting old in admitting that I appreciate that?

En route to Split I begrudgingly decided to go to Hvar. We heard it was the party island and I was NOT feeling it, but I knew I'd regret it if we didn't go.

So we hopped on a snazzy speedy catamaran (again, perfectly easy and cheap) and made our way to the new Ibiza.

A sobe (room) was negotiated via a complex process.

It involved an incredibly decrepit broad undercutting the other ladies by 50%.

We're bargain shoppers, and we clearly have values.

When this happened, it was as we stepping off the boat. We're in front of a club called Carpe Diem, surrounded by yachts and loveliness.

Aforementioned old lady says her place is 40 meters from the beach.

Hooyah! What a find!

We start walking. She's ancient and wearing flip-flops.

Her extreme edema of the ankles and rear neck area filled out her wrinkles, belying her 85 years of age (she left her passport laying around).

We started going uphill, through neighborhoods. We kept walking. And walking.

Then the key-jangling started.

She pulled them out.

We swept the beading sweat from our brows and put a pep in our steps. The place must be around the bend!

Nope, just a rouse.

She kept jingling them every few minutes just to keep our spirits up. Methinks she was an aerobics instructor in a former life. Or a Marine.

She could hustle.

And made little whimpering noises, too. It was weird.

It's escalation of commitment though, isn't it? At what point do you decide it's too far and turn around, hoping there are still some sobe stragglers left behind? So we trudged on.

Then came the great part -- the homecoming.

It was by far the nastiest building we saw on the walk.

Rust, check.

Juvenile delinquents milling about, check.

There was no sign out front indicating she was renting legally.

And inside it was a hovel.

"Fantastic, thanks! Where do we sign?"

But she was sweet and we couldn't bother to repeat the process.

As we were settling in, we heard some noise outside our door.

Two English youths stood bare-chested staring puzzled at the closed bathroom door. We introduced ourselves. They did the same, then proceeded to introduce the third of their party through the bathroom door. He was locked in. He sounded hot and nervous.

And a bit posh.

A hilarious combo, if you put it all together.

From what we gathered, he went into the toilet and locked the door to ensure privacy. Upon attempting an exit, he found that was not an option.

No, this type of situation never stops being funny.

After introductions and beer distribution (and some taunting of the locked-up, freaked-out boy) I realized they were going about this all wrong: they were being not nearly violent enough with the handle.

So I wrenched and jostled.

Yes, a girl in a baby doll tube dress can be vicious.

Ta daaa, presto!

We left them to their vat of homemade pad thai (excellent money-saver) and had a nice dinner out -- cocktails, dessert, the whole works. And the most gorgeous view.

And as we made our way down the stone stairs to the equally lovely stone footpath running along the harbor, we ran into our British flatmates. One was chatting up the doorgirl.

We left to grab some cheap drinks with them and ended up having a blast.

Then a bunch of people they'd met before stopped by. Ended up with a group of about 10 Brits and me. Love that.

One of their friends jumped from about 50 feet into the sea in Dubrovnik and broke her back. Didn't hit a rock or anything, just the impact from the water. True story.

We eventually made our way up to an old castle/fortress place to dance, but started to crash soon after. It looked wicked, though, and we got in some shape-throwing.

After a leisurely, wonderful morning we asked where we could get that day via ferry. Split it would be.

We had two options -- hang in Split, find the bus station and get a multi-hour bus to Zadar the next day, then find something to do, then to the bus station again to get a bus to the airport.

Sounds like a lot of buses.

Option Two: Splurge and get a car for the night, making up cost by sleeping in said car, and get to see some waterfalls.

Whaddya think we did?

It was worth it.

Even more so when you hear the craziness that happened on the way.

We get in the car and just start driving in a general direction. What towns are near the waterfalls?

We see one called Sibenic. Looks alright.

An easy hour or so later and we're there. There's a stellar write-up in the book about a place specializing in meaty stews, and we partook in goulash, veal, veal, and more veal... for about £3 per entree. Lovely.

Then we headed into the city, thinking maybe we'd see something that looked less war-torn.

The walls around the perimeter of the city were spattered with bullet holes and looked dire. It looked like what you'd expect Sarajevo to look like.

Not a place you plan to hang out into the wee hours.

But we meandered in, fueled by gelato (apple and strawberry yumminess). Then we decided to... guess! Have another dinner.

We remembered a big courtyard place and made our way along the slippery polished stone walkways. It was an absolutely adorable city. Very Italy/Spain-esque. Charming, glowing light peeking through cracks and romance galore.

I'm really glad we went. Finally, a city truly functioning without tourism.

Our waiter was an older guy, early forties, handsome. He wasn't acting like a waiter at all, aside from taking our order and bringing out food. He had a vibe about him that was used to being in control. We were curious and we (obviously) started chatting, making small talk then asking question after question. Then he started asking some.

Oh yeah, and the stews there were amazing, too.

Yay for soft, soupy meat.

He asked where we were sleeping.

We admitted we were crashing in our rental car.

We lucked out. Turns out our waiter had some crazy times before he got minted and would love to help out fellow travelers. He has four houses (and loved to quote the square footage of each) and has an extra room at his place in Sibenic where he'd love to put us up for the night.

Then he pulled up a chair and drank wine with us for the rest of the night, pointing out Croatia's most famous singer... and the man who cleans the city at night. Conversation ran the gamut from his military service for three years as a captain with 150 men under him, his hatred of grass growing through stones in cities, his vineyard and parma ham curing station at one home, his place in Italy, and his custody daughter over his beloved daughter, whose mother is the child of Croatia's vice president.

Craziness.

He comes to Croatia a few weeks at a time to help his friend who has the restaurant reorganize the place.

On to his friend's bar. He insisted on our drinking (even if it's just coffee) and wouldn't even think about us paying.

We stayed out long after the bars closed and went back to his place. We couldn't tear ourselves out of conversation. And that's a good thing.

After a tweaked-out night (due to the post-midnight coffee) we awoke to more sugary, caffeinated beverages (thanks for the belly, Croatia) and he plopped loads of stuff on my computer (programs, movies) and finally tore ourselves away for the waterfalls. Those were some genuine hugs goodbye, and that's what I love most about travelling. The people you meet.

The waterfalls were cool. I hadn't been to any in a while, and it's a chill vibe. Makes you feel yiddle and gives you that feeling of awe that makes your eyes actually feel different.

After some strokes under the falls we easily skipped over to Zadar. I was driving a manual, by the way, fluidly.

I seriously think I'm a contender for Top Gear.

We realized we had time for... guess what yet again... one more meal! Lasagna, it was, and what a lasagna at that. Zadar was actually cute, as well. Big open market and plenty of small winding streets edged with shopping. And gelato.

Our time was sadly up. At the airport we had some hours to wait and we stayed outside. I stripped down to my bikini while we waited. Hell, I'm not missing some Croatian rays just to meet social standards.

Beach, beach, inland stewing, waterfalls, and some of the most helpful, wonderful people I've ever met.

It was a time.