Lori and Troy do Europe 2025

I woke up ahead of Lori and it appears that she was able to get to sleep even with an imaginary stench. I was starting to smell the meal prep wiffing up the stairs to our room. It was not a nice bacon smell either. I stepped into the sink and shower area that was open to the bedroom as Lori slept. I leaned over to wash my face and was hit with the stench. It was emulating from the sink drain. I immediately slung my head back and nearly detached my head from my shoulders! Since Lori was only 5ft away she must have been awaken by vertebra cracking from my reaction. I found your imaginary stench! She immediately jumped on me and said “see, I told you”. This 800 year old drain have produced a smell that is indescribable. How did I miss this smell that the night before. I put a wet towel over the sink drain and shower drain to keep the smell from escaping. Now the smell was in my nostril hairs and I could not shake it. Coupled with the meal prep from the kitchen we quickly got dressed and exited the hotel to look for breakfast elsewhere.

We found a spot on the promenade to clear our nasal passages. Most of the cruise ships were gone by the time we got there at about 9am. We had some breakfast and watched a few of the remaining ships leave. It was a really nice morning and a good way to reset our senses. The problem now is that our luggage is in the room soaking in the 800 years of stench.

Our ferry doesn’t leave until 2:30pm from Split so we have a lot of time since we are checking out earlier than expected. We went back to the landfill room and quickly packed up and left. Yes, skipping right over the morning shower.

Split was about a 30 minute drive so Lori started looking for things to do before our ferry trip to Hvar. We arrived in Split and found that it was a pretty big city. There were massive cruise ships in the harbor as well as tourist shops everywhere. It had the feeling of a tourist trap and they were busy with cruise crowds. This is something that Lori hates, crowds and tourist shops.

We walked around while Lori tried to set up a rickshaw ride around town. She was able to call someone and set it up in time for us to still make our ferry at 2:30pm. While we were walking we think that I narrowly escaped a pick pocket. While we were walking this girl started to past next to me, she stumbled oddly and laid herself out on the ground. Fortunately my insensitivity won out. As I stared at her lying on the ground another tourist darted up and helped her up. I think I was more puzzled by the way she fell than worried about her potential injuries. She stood up and quickly walked away. As Lori and I discussed my lack of compassion I looked down to see that my leg pocket with my phone was unzipped. I am pretty consistent with keeping that zipped so I was curious if she maybe did it or I just forgot. Maybe she saw the open pocket and thought I would help her up and then she could grab the contents from my pocket. We watched her walk up to a girl that was walking towards her with a rolling suitcase. They obviously knew each other which raised our suspicions. How did this random girl know someone who is traveling?

We continued on and had lunch before the rickshaw ride around town. We had Vegan Tuna bowls with lettuce which was ok. Our rickshaw ride was approaching so we headed out. We made it about 50 ft before the guy from the restaurant stopped us. “I think you forgot to pay” he said. How embarrassing! We must have apologized 10 times which he said that it happens all the time. That helped but we were still embarrassed!

We found the rickshaw driver at the arranged meeting spot. He was a 22 year old college student named Petter. He was a very nice guy and very personable. He is an Electrical Engineering student. He told us that it costs him $50-$60 euros a year for college and the rest is free! He also told us that Nurses make about $1200 euros per month and that is for the experienced ones!

Petter biked us around for over an hour for $60 euros. He hit all the highlights that we wanted to see. We walked to our car and drove to the ferry. We got in line and realized that it was the wrong line. We slithered out of our spot and backed out of there. We got in the other line and waited to be loaded.

By moving to the other line we ended up 3rd in line to exit the ferry which gave us an advantage for checking in at our hotel. The ferry was packed full of people. There were a lot of people wearing Spartan Finisher shirts. I could not figure out where they were coming from but obviously they were headed to Hvar. We arrived at the Stari Grad dock and exited the ferry. It is amazing how bomb proof that pedestrians think they are. They cross the crosswalks without even looking. I realize they have the right away but accidents happen especially when there our tourists in green Suzukis trying to navigate in a foreign country. Pedestrians kept darting in front of us and it was keeping us from exiting the boat. Not a good thing when you are in the front and there are 100 cars impatiently stacked up behind you.

The hotel was about 5min drive from the dock. I dropped off Lori to get first in line and the check in desk. I parked the car and hoofed the luggage to the reception desk. I had to dodge bell hops trying to help me because all that spells is T.I.P. I made it to reception to have another guy ask me if I wanted to check in. I looked around and saw Lori sitting in the bar enjoying a drink. I told the guy “I don’t know why my wife is sitting there but I will get her”. Lori sashays in and checks us in. She told me that a different receptionist offered a welcome drink while she did the check in. This is a 5 star resort called the Maslina Resort. Lori reserved this with points from her credit card. We get a free room upgrade, $100 euro resort credit and free breakfast. Lori reminded the hostess of the room upgrade right when she arrived at the reception desk. Now it was time to see the upgrade. The hostess made me leave my luggage which is something that I never do and led us to our room. It was nice with a partial view of the Sea. The girl asked if we would like her to show us around the room? I looked around as it was your basic hotel room and I responded “I think we can see it fine, thank you”. Lori, in a convincing tone conveniently stated “this is not an upgraded room” just as the hostess left the room. A little embarrassing for me but Lori knows what she is doing. I started to unpack and within 10 min we received a call from the front desk that they were going to try and upgrade us by moving some things around. Yup, start packing everything back up and waited for the call. The next room was a full view of the sea and a much larger room. She did it again!

During this upgrade Sophia called and was telling us about her Condo buying experience. We decided to help by reviewing her paperwork while relaxing at the bar. This took a few hours but we are happy to help her. We had dinner a short time later and both had the Leg of Lamb which literally fell off the bone and was delicious!! We went for a night stroll down the promenade and called it a night. Tomorrow we plan on driving to the town of Hvar.