I’m sitting on the couch in Sarah’s and Britt’s flat. We leave for Vancouver today. Weird!

Our time in London, for the second time, has been relaxing and a good transition between Croatia and Vancouver. When we arrived on Friday, we were wiped! We spent that evening chilling in the flat with Sarah, eating and enjoying great conversation.

The next day, we partially recreated our first Saturday that we spent here in may, with a trip to Notting Hill to check out the antiques at the Portabello Market. During our stay in Europe, we spent a great deal of time in Antique markets looking for a blue Danish Salt container from the 50′s. Yes I know. Very specific.

Well whaddaya know! We actually found it! I would post a picture but it’s already packed away.

Although we couldn’t actually find THE house with the blue door from the movie, but we saw tons that were good imitations. The owners had painted over the blue because of all the tourists. Fair enough.

We topped off the market with some falafels from the Happy Vegetarian (mmmmm) before wandering about Kensington High Street.

That evening, we stayed local, going for a beer at the Dacre Arms Pub (looked like a living room inside!) and dinner at the Spice of Life, a delicious curry house down the hill.

Sunday was spent on “the Heath” watching locals fly their kites as we enjoyed snacks on the picnic blanket. It was a pretty awesome way to spend the afternoon.

There is a myth that Blackheath got it’s name from the middle ages, when the park was used as a burial pit for the dead during Black Plague. There isn’t any historical evidence to back that up and others say it’s because of the black soil.

Later that night, we headed into town and for dinner at Landon and Crystals (friends of ours from Vancouver). It was so great to see more familiar faces.

Monday, our last full day in Vancouver, was busy! I went to visit Dress for Success London (will post about that on the DFS blog soon) before meeting Sean on Oxford street. After lunch with Landon, we shopped then hit the gym with Sarah. Yes we went to the gym. It’s a fancy one and has these things called power plates, which is a platform that vibrates an you do exercises on them. It was neat, and it kinda tickled.

We said our goodbyes to our wonderful hosts this morning and packed up our bags to go.

Thanks London, it’s been a slice!

Stay tuned for a recap post on our trip.

Our last stop in Croatia was Dubrovnik, nicknamed The Pearl of the Adriatic. We arrived here Saturday morning after a 3 hour bus ride from Orebic, along a beautiful coastal road. On the bus we met a guy from Holland with the best tshirt ever.

We rented an apartment, which was an attic studio in the top floor of our host’s family house, right in the center of the old town. It was a cool little place and had all we needed. The roof of the house had to be replaced, along with a majority of the others in the old town, after the war of independence in 1991. More about that to follow.

Dubrovnik is a popular port town for cruise ships, and when we arrived the old town was PACKED with tour groups, so during the weekend we escaped by heading to the beach.

As the crowds subsided, we walked the old town walls, where you get some amazing views of both the town and the surrounding area.

Unfortunately early in the week Val was not feeling well, probably due to the constant heat, so we used the time to just relax, and visited the War Photos Limited exhibition. It was a moving Gallery that covered the current uprisings of the Arab spring in a country by country analysis. They also had a huge section dedicated to the war of independence, that started in 1991 when Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia.

On Tuesday Val was feeling better, so we got up early and hiked the mountain behind Dubrovnik. At the top there were incredible vistas of the old town and the coast, as well as a restaurant and a Cable Car, which is how most tourists get up. We wandered around the top, but not too far, as the mountain (and many areas of the Croatian countryside) had land mines placed by both sides, and the clearing is not yet complete. As it was sweaty hot by the time we were finished, we took the Cable car down.

On Wednesday we continued with the adventure theme and joined a 7km kayak trip with a stop to do some snorkeling. It was fun, but a challenge as we had to contend with some big waves.

The last day of our time here, we met up with a friend, Brit, who was traveling Croatia as well. We spent our last afternoon hanging out on some rocks outside the city walls and swimming – something we had done almost every day of the week.

Yesterday (Friday) we got up at 4am and took an early flight to Zagreb, and then to London – we had a very tight layover and had to make a mad dash through the airport, but all ended well.

We are now hanging out with our friend Sarah and will be chilling here in London for a few days until we say goodbye to Europe.

I truly couldn’t think of anything for the title. And there is supposed to be an accent over it but word press doesn’t like it apparently.

After 9 days in 5 cities, we slowed down the pace once we arrived in Orebi?. We took a a ferry from Stari Grad (other side of Hvar island) and parked ourselves on the deck to soak up some rays and the sea air for the 4 hour ride.

The ferry stopped off in Kor?ula (another island) where we got off an hopped aboard a much tinier boat to take us to the Peljašac Pennisula (the mainland) right to Orebi?. This area is known for wine and olive oil!

There aren’t any buses that run in the town – so we lugged our bags in the hottest part of the day 1.2 km to our apartment. I’ll be so happy to not carry a bag like that for a while.

There isn’t much to do here other than go to the beach. So the next day, that’s what we did. We took our floaties and lay in the sun. Glorious!

We finally got to settle into a place – and maybe because we were so relaxed, Sean came down with a nasty cold. The next two days were spent lazing about the apartment – with a couple short trips down to the beach.

On Thursday, Sean felt much better, so we took the 20 minute ferry ride to Kor?ula to explore. This town is much more of a tourist destination compared to Orebi?. It is like mini Dubrovnik – with stone walls surrounding the perimeter of the old town.

Marco Polo was apparently born there (or it is claimed that he is born there) so after weaving through the streets, we walked up through his home to a tower that overlooks the ocean.

There were so many little streets in this town that were so quiet – I was able to take some sweet photos!

Yesterday was our last day there and we probably rented the coolest thing ever. A paddle boat with a waterslide on it! A freakin waterslide! For an hour, we slid down the slide in as many variations as we could think of, paddling out far from the shore. We were gutsy enough to bring a camera (my phone) to take photos and some videos.

The scariest part was sitting on the floaty to take pictures. I was terrified I would drop it. But not terrified enough to miss sweet photo opps.

We just arrived in Dubrovnik this morning and will spend the next 6 nights here before hitting up London (again) and then Vancouver!

Oh, one more thing. If you are out in Croatia at the grocery store and need butter. Don’t get “doma?i svježi kvasac”. The packaging looks like it could be butter. But it’s homemade fresh yeast. It wouldn’t taste very nice on your pancakes.

It looks like it could be butter right?

And I didnt eat it. Thankfully yeast is a beige colour and smells funky.

We have been on the road for well over 100 days now, through 11 countries for a total of 21,000km so far. We have used technology a great deal during this time to make the trip easier, and I wanted to share some of my tips. Sorry for those expecting a trip update, maybe tomorrow

The Blog
Using wordpress and the manifest theme I created a simple blog hosted on my own domain. This was tweaked for aesthetics and a location plugin was added so that every post would include our location. I tested this thoroughly with the wordpress iPhone app as it was the main device we would use.

Once on the road, all posts to the blog have been done via wordpress iPhone app. This has been annoying for typos, but helped keep our posts concise.

The only hiccup here is when the blog was hacked, I think it was a wordpress vulnerability.

Photography
I love to take photos, but I find that I am bad at sharing them. For this trip we have been taking photos with a Panasonic GF1 and our iPhones. The iPhone pictures are used in our blog for immediate sharing and the “good” photos will be organized and shared when we get home … eventually.

To spice up the photos on the blog, we have used three applications; Hipstamatic for cool effects, Cross Process for the vintage look and Diptic to merge multiple photos into one.

We have also been uploading our videos to YouTube and linking to them in the blog.

Another tool i used to take panoramas was Photosynth, an iPhone app by Microsoft. Unfortunately viewers need to download silverlight, so I have used it less recently.

Sometimes photos need to be edited before sharing, so we have been using the Photoshop iphone app. It is fairly easy to use, but does add another step in your workflow.

We started out uploading our photos to Flickr to back them up, but the Flickr iPhone app tended to crash while uploading, hopefully it will be updated soon.

For image backup we bought some extra memory sticks, and whenever we get access to a PC (only 3 times this trip) we back up all the camera and iPhone photos. This is definitely a vulnerability, and could be addressed by backing up more frequently at an Internet cafe.

Language
With 8 different languages, there is no way we would learn much of each before the trip, so I had the google translate application ready.

In actual fact, almost everyone we have met either could speak some English or we would get the point across through hand gestures.

Accomodation
Being gone so long, we didn’t want to book everything in advance, so we just booked our first few accommodations so that we wouldn’t be stressed when we arrived.

Since then the following resources have helped.

Homelidays is a great website where you can rent apartments from home owners throughout Europe (mostly in France and Italy though). People post photos and reviews and we have only had great results. Note that these are usually for longer stays (3 nights plus). The interface is not mobile friendly, but we made it work.

Two similar options for home rental are VRBO and Homeaway. We used homeaway once and were happy. VRBO doesn’t have a mobile site, homeaway does (and has a new app we did not try).

Booking.com has an easy to use iPhone application that we used for looking at accommodation reviews and booking. They have fairly good selection in most European countries, and the in app map helps choose a place in the right location.

Accor hotels is a hotel group in Europe with a number of properties ranging in value – though not in all cities. We stayed in two of their hotels and thought they were fine. They have an iPhone app that I used to book at least one.

Trip advisor is a great resource for accommodation, and their iPhone app is fairly easy. Unfortunately you need to jump out to find price and availability, as their focus is on providing reviews. We often used this in conjunction with booking.com.

Though we only stayed in a hostel once, there are a number of sites dedicated to hostel reviews and booking, I think we used hostelbookers.com.

I downloaded the airbnb application, and we did browse through the places at times, though we didn’t use it, so I can’t give a true opinion. The app is easy to use though.

Getting Around
We have traveled around by foot, train, bus, plane, boat, rental car and taxi so far. One common denominator, we usually don’t know where we are. To help there are some tools I recommend.

If you are traveling by train in Europe the Deutsche Bahn application for the iPhone is a must. It gives you schedules for every train in Europe, with accurate times and in Germany includes platform number and delays. You can even save your trip itinerary to the calendar app. This app also connects to the local transit in many cities, and helps do end to end route planning. An alternative is the Rail Europe app, but it is not nearly as good.

To find our accommodation, or a recommended eatery, we rely heavily on google maps. Often, if I know we will not have a data connection, I will screen cap our walking routes for reference while out and about. When you are trying to make your way through the narrow streets of Seville or Venice, you end up consulting the map more than you realize.

To find a rental car I used hertz, sixt and budget. They all have mobile sites, and sixt even has an app.

In Croatia transport has been by bus or boat. Schedules are often harder to find, though still possible, two helpful sites are www.visit-Croatia.co.uk and www.croatiatraveller.com.

For booking flights we used the bravofly application to see what was available, unfortunately many people have had issues with them, so we didn’t book through the app. We also booked one flight through ryanair, they have cheap flights but watch when you book, they have some hidden check boxes pre-checked to get you “the best” exchange rate and other sneaky things. Also, their site is definitey not mobile friendly.

Finding information online for local
Transpiration (buses, metros and trams) was challenging, especially for smaller towns. To find the route map I would often do an image search on Goolgle, then save the map on the phone for reference. Note that many big cities like Paris and London have dedicated transit applications that make trip planning easy.

Dining
Some places we stayed had kitchens, which was awesome. Many did not, and therefore we had to eat out quite often. To find restaurants the two most common tools were the Yelp and Trip Advisor iPhone apps. In big cities there are many choices, but in smaller towns the number of reviewed eateries is often limited. We did find our favorite tapas bar in Seville through Trip Advisor, so it has been successful.

Data Connection
Using all the apps listed above requires a data connection. Many of our accommodations had free wifi, but some charged, and when out and about finding free wifi is a challenge.

In Italy I found a device from TIM that is essentially a portable router. You place a data SIM in and it broadcasts wifi to 5 devices. We used this with our iPhones and my friends laptop with surprising speed.

Getting a prepaid data SIM is not too hard, but you must buy one for each country, as data roaming rates are too high. The best resource for prepaid sim card rates was http://prepaidwithdata.wikia.com/wiki/Prepaid_SIM_with_data.

One last note, when choosing your sim provider take into account their coverage. Some discount providers cover less rural areas, so if you will be heading to those places and need wifi (ie for driving directions) you could be out of luck.

Another option if you have an unlocked phone is to place the data sim directly in the phone. Unfortunately I am tethered to Fido in perpetuity.

Devices
As noted above, the only devices we brought with us were two iPhones and a camera. When lugging a bag around frequently every pound ads up, and I have even bemoaned the weight of the camera, though I wouldn’t change it.

We considered both a laptop and an iPad, but didn’t bring either as we didn’t want the worry or the weight. I could see an iPad being nice for more detailed websites, and for movies.

We did have one hiccup with the iphone, mine stopped charging in Italy and we weren’t able to get to an apple store until France. During this time we shared Vals iPhone. Luckily all the key information was stored online, so it didn’t hinder us too much.

In Paris Apple was awesome and gave me a new iPhone, the only downside was that all the photos on my device that weren’t backed up (about 300) were lost.

Communication
In order to stay in contact with friends and family, as well as getting ahold of people to make reservations in Europe, we used four tools.

Email has been used often, and as we use Gmail, all the mail is available even if the device isn’t.

To make phone calls, we have relied on Skype. The iPhone app is easy to use, but doesn’t allow you to buy skype credit, which is annoying. Also note, calling any landline or mobile in Canada or US will only use 2c a
minute, but if you call Europe, mobile rates are much higher (20c plus) and will really cut into those skype credits.

For instant messaging we have used a few different apps including Whatsapp and Hookt Messenger. These are nice as SMS replacement when roaming.

We have rarely made direct calls or sent texts, as roaming rates are ridiculous (75c text, $2 per min). There have been some regulations and limits passed in the EU, but nothing if you are outside.

One other thing that has been awesome is FaceTime. There are occasional issues and it uses a huge amount of data, but seeing someone in person is great. Val has used this often to see her young niece. Another video call option is skype, but the quality is nowhere near FaceTime.

Money
A few things on money, credit card is not accepted everywhere, so cash is needed. Exchange shops have horrible rates so avoid them if you can. If you will be taking money out often, try and find a bank that is part of the Global ATM alliance, giving you free withdrawals at many international banks (usually a $5 charge).

If you need to send money while away, or even transfer funds between accounts, the paypal app is super easy to use.

Also, if your bank has an application, or any sort of mobile banking, I would recommend setting it up before you leave. It is nice to track your spending and ensure any fraud is dealt with in a timely manner.

Conclusion
Technology can make your travels much easier, but don’t let it get in the way. Spend time connecting with people, not just the Internet.

If you have questions, clarifications or rebuttals please feel free to post them.

We arrived on Hvar island yesterday around noon. We took a super-fast catamaran from Split and in an hour we were there. The boat was packed and exiting was mayhem, as luggage was piled by the exit.

Hvar is one of the fancier islands, for sure, with huge yachts etc – but also has the clearest most beautiful water I have ever ever seen! We are in their highest season right now, and I’m fairly certain I have heard more Italian than Croatian.

Once we settled into our hotel, we made a beeline for the store then the beach. I made probably the best purchase of the whole trip that day.

So we sat on a white pebble beach and swam I’m in love with the aqua coloured waters of the Adriatic. It is still ridiculously hot, so we have been sweating through our clothes like mad! Part of our time here was spent washing clothes. In the sink. My fave (not!).

At dusk, we ventured into the beautiful old town. Much like Split, the buildings go back as far as 400AD but they ate
still used. As we searched for food, it seemed that the Italian influence is really strong, serving endless slices of pizza. I never thought I’d say it, but so sick of pizza.

Today, we headed away from town, about 30 minute walk to the bay to enjoy more of the beautiful water. We splurged and rented chairs and an umbrella. The umbrella really kept us cool in the nearly 40 degree weather.

After a quick siesta, headed back into town and climbed the steep hill up to the fortress and took in the amazing view and a kick ass sunset.

Tomorrow, we are heading to Orebi? for 7 nights. You may be wondering why we are staying there so long. Perhaps it’s a big city with lots of sights and lots to do. Nope. Opposite. It’s small and we are 150m from a beach.

Since the end of July, we have visited 11 cities, most of them for 2 nights. We are stoked to settle in and get to know the town. AND I won’t have to repack for a week!

Excellent.

After a wonderful (not) 4 hour bus ride, we arrived in Split, the second largest city in Croatia and part of the Dalmatian Coast.

We watched the temperature rise on the bus ride in and learned, from the lady who was renting us the apartment, that we were in the a heat wave till next week. That explains the 36 degrees at 11am.

Our apartment is in the walls of Diocletians Palace (roman emperor in 300AD) and we were pleased to find out we had a kitchen – Quite possibly the smallest kitchen in the world – but we had one nonetheless. Ah yes. And AC. Glorious air conditioning. I used to think “I don’t really need AC, it’s a nice perk, but not a necessity”. After our ac-less experience in Zadar – resulting in 20+ mosquito bites and major sweating action, I have realized It is, in fact, a necessity in these parts.

We wandered around the city, looking for a grocery store – it seems google maps doesn’t know where stuff is in this city and were lead astray in our attempts and in the sweltering heat. After frozen yogurt re-energized us – we found a grocery store and headed back inside. It was way to hot to be out.

It was a much more reasonable temperature after 6:30 – maybe 30C – so we made our way to a place we found on Tripadvisor called the black cat bistro. Followed by a walk around the ruins.

Today, we made an attempt to get up early – and failed. But eventually headed out to the beach for some sun and water. That lasted maybe an hour and a bit before the heat wave assaulted us and we hid once again and emerged post nap for some foods.

We took more time today, exploring the ruins – and found it to be some of the most impressive we have seen. Unlike many other roman ruins, people live in parts of it, while other parts are crumbled archways, overgrown with greenery. Very cool.

And all over the old town, every nook and cranny, extra space in a square or walkway was used got outdoor patio space of the many many cafes.

Advice for those who visit – watch out for drips from the hundreds of AC unites. No one like a big splat of mystery water in their scalp. Ew.

So we are going to Split (yuk yuk yuk) tomorrow on a big catamaran to Hvar Island for a couple days.

Woot.

After sampling the interior of Croatia, we caught a bus to the final leg of our vacation – Croatia’s Dalmation Coast. Croatia has almost 1800km of beautiful coast on the Adriatic Sea, with 1185 islands scattered along.

We started our tour in Zadar, a town approximately at the center of the coast with a lot of Roman history. Upon arriving on Sunday we headed to the beach, the only appropriate thing to so when the temperature is in the 30s. The water was clean and a very comfortable temperature.

As an aside, the weather in Croatia is hot, with up to 40c expected and this week being the hottest of the year! Our place in Zadar was the only one we booked in Croatia without A/C, so we had two nights of sweating and mosquito attacks – total bite count over 30.

The next day we took a trip into the old town of Zadar. This included diving off the promenade into the water, exploring roman ruins and escaping the sun in a gardens shade.

Zadar has two very cool “art” installations. The first is the sea organ, which creates music based on the force of the waves through pipes in the ocean, with the sound coming out of steps on the promenade.

The second art installation is called The Greeting To The Sun, and it attempts to do the same the Sea Organ does, but with light. Both were crowded at sunset, but were very cool to see.

We finished our time in Zadar enjoying a beautiful sunset, and packed again for a bus ride down the coast to Split.