Escape from Zadar!

We've spent the past 3 weeks exploring the ins and outs of Zadar. These adventures have been entirely on foot, save for our excursion to Plitvice Lakes and bus trip to Nin. We now know the area well enough to give directions. Want to know how to get to the post office? bus stop? beach? German mega-resort? No problem! We can help! (Just don't ask us how to pronounce the street names, ok?)

Old Town Zadar is a pedestrian-only zone. Nice!

We've also settled into a daily routine. Our typical schedule goes something like this:

12 pm: Wake up.
12-2 pm: Have some coffee, eat some French toast, check email and catch up on Facebook.
2-2:05 pm: Have a discussion about sleeping in too late and missing out on life.
2:05-2:15 pm: Conclude that we must do something awesome today. Discuss various activities. Settle on walking around Zadar because it's too late to catch a ferry or a bus. Natalie says, "ok, but I'm in the middle of reading this really funny blog post about falling off a scooter in Thailand. Gimme 5 minutes."
2:45 pm [30 minutes later]: Natalie announces, "I'm done! I'll just take a quick shower and throw on a little makeup. I'll be ready in 20 minutes."
3:30 pm [45 minutes later]: Leave the apartment.
3:30-9 pm: Start walking. Realize it's happy hour, have a beer. Walk some more. Catch the sunset.
9 pm: Return home, make dinner, review the day's photos, do some work, watch a documentary on Netflix.
3:00 am: Go to bed.

No maple syrup here, so we had to use fruit.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that we've gotten acclimated to our new surroundings so quickly. We're also entirely happy with our decision to overhaul our lifestyle. The lesson here, my friends, is that Groundhog Day can strike anyone, anywhere, anytime. We've found it here in Croatia!

On Thursday afternoon, the walls of the world were closing in on me. I could not stand another day walking laps around Zadar. I was also tired of starting at my computer screen. I had a bit of a meltdown.

While Jim was diligently working away on his latest pet project, I burst into the room and desperately pleaded, "I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!! We didn't turn our lives upside down to get stuck in a meaningless pattern of repetition! We're in Croatia, for goodness sake!"

"Ok... so what do you want to do?" Jim replied calmly.

I triumphantly proclaimed, "Let's rent a car and go on a ROAD TRIP! We'll hit the road tonight!"

Here is my best attempt to re-create Jim's reaction:

Jim didn't quite know what hit him, as this entire scenario appeared to come completely out of left field. Judging by my persistence, he quickly realized that we weren't going to spend the evening sitting around, carefully planning out a trip. We took 20 minutes to do a quick reality check (looking up rental prices, scouting out Google maps). Within the hour, we had keys to a Mazda 2. That's how I spell S-U-C-C-E-S-S!

The rest was easy. We picked a direction, and off we went.

We ended up making two trips, one on Thursday night and another today. Posts about our road trips are coming soon, I promise. For now, I'll leave you with a little foreshadowing. See that duct tape? It's on our rental car...

Custom detailing, courtesy of Jim and Natalie.