No shoes. No hat. No boyfriend.

Hello hello! Guess who's back, your favourite readings! (favourite writer? 😏). This time I want to share some of the stories I carry with me from my first solo trip this summer, with you! I got a flight to Zadar and a ferry ticket from Split to Ancona (Italy) ten days later, and that was pretty much all I knew for a fact at the time. As for you, you can expect a post every three days about little adventures like the ones you are about to delve into! Pictures will be mostly on Instagram, whereas here you'll get all the juice! Stay tuned and hope you enjoy the ride ;)

16th of July 2022

About 4hrs before my flight, my hostel reservation said: cancelled. What, I had just been on the phone with the receptionist the day before - everything was fine. “Big problem,” he said this time around. Apparently, they had two covid cases and needed to close a couple of rooms! There I was, on my way to the airport and wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t somehow, miraculously checked the app on my phone.

Quickly looked into further options... All other hostels in Zadar were over 100€ per night at the time. So then I remembered the first person I’ve ever texted on Couchsurf about a month ago! She couldn’t host me, but gave me her number in case something happened. Something was happening! I had nowhere to sleep that night and my flight was about to be delayed for 2hours!

Offered to pay the same price as the hostel, and in no time, on that train journey, we had ourselves a deal. Her apartment was far more central than where I was supposed to stay, far more beautiful, and overlooked the old town! 😻 couldn’t believe my luck, especially having found a host willing to open the door for me at two in the morning! Bullet number 1: dodged! I stayed three nights, for much less than 100€. She was wonderful and so were the other travellers renting, had lovely conversations and felt like I was in such a safe space. Hold so much gratitude and love for this host, and people like her 🤍

Next day, first day, beach day! Found many sea urchins and learnt that they’re a sign of clear waters! Also due to uncomfortable (and potentially dangerous) spikes to step on, lots of people wear shoes. A few dives later, I met a lovely old lady who asked me whether I had shoes to wear, a hat for the sun, or a boyfriend. Nope, no shoes, no hat, no boyfriend! They laughed.

She also said something I found beautiful, ‘if you don’t believe in God, you come here and you start believing ✨ The views were pretty awesome ✨

Onto the next beach. Met two Italian boys who rapidly multiplied into eight Italian boys on a bachelor’s party. They were good banter and invited me for lunch. (You should have seen my mom's reaction when I told her her daughter was "alone" getting in a car with eight boys for lunch haha) Among the half-Spanish, half-English conversations I was thinking: “there goes my budget of the day (15€) on this tuna steak (17€)”! They paid for it; declared they’d have liked to have someone doing it for them if they were solo travelling :')

There really are incredible people in this world, and I cannot help but delight at the amazing turns life takes. Felt so full of love and light only in the first 12 hours of this trip and it was only getting started 💫

P.S.: keeping all my hosts' names private as I haven’t asked for their consent to share 🙏🏻

Hope you've enjoyed this reading! If so, subscribe to my blog and leave a little heart (you don't need to create an account to do that). Lots of Love,

M.