The first day in Croatia

Finally I have arrived to Starigrad in Croatia and hotel Vicko where I’m staying. It is a cute little village and a nice hotel. Nothing fancy, but quite OK. I was lucky to get my own room. It is not that I mind sharing a room, but if I’m given the choice I prefer my own room.

I’m bit tired. It was a late night and a VERY early morning. Two friends of mine, who are borrowing my apartment while I’m away, arrived yesterday afternoon. And since my friend Jannica also knows the girls we all met for dinner at my place. It was a very nice evening that we ended already at 20.30, since I needed to do some final packing and go to bed. Unfortunately I had a lot more last minute things to do than I expected and ended up going to bed shortly before midnight. And then I had to wake up at 2.30.  Two and a half hours of sleep is not enough. L Luckily I can easily sleep on planes and buses, so I managed to get another 2 hours of sleep on the trip to Starigrad.

I have now met the group that I’m travelling with. It consists of 4 couples and one single man. Before you even think it – NO he is NOT my type. All are Swedish and my first impression is that I’m one of the youngest. I might be wrong here. I have a tendency to forget how old I actually am and look at people in my own age as old(er). J It is always a surprise to look in the mirror and realize my own age. Anyhow – they are experienced hikers and seem to be very nice. Tomorrow we will have our first hike and it sounds like it is a fairly easy one.

It is nice and warm here (around 25 degrees Celsius), but somehow we managed to bring the rain from Sweden with us. I’m hoping it will clear up soon. I have brought my rain gear so I will be fine during the hike, but again – I prefer to hike without the rain. I don’t need the sun, I just want to stay out of the rain.

Since I will have a break in the half marathon training program next week I wanted to do the most of the training this week. That meant that I needed to go for the 90 min run today here in Starigrad. So this afternoon I went out. It started out quite ok, even though I felt that I hadn’t had enough sleep. My whole body felt tired. Also the heat was quite tiring. On top of that it started to rain – A LOT. And it didn’t really cool down, so now I was tired - running in the hot and rainy weather. Let’s just say that it wasn’t my favorite run, even if I had a great view all the time. On top of that my headphones broke down and I was flushed with dirty water from a truck a guy was cleaning. I actually finished my run 10 min too early because I was so fed up with the situation.

One nice surprise – they have great food on the hotel. I just came back from the 3 course dinner where the only thing I didn’t like was the banana ice cream for dessert.

Now it is time to get some extra sleep so I can be fit for the hike tomorrow.