Hey!

Yesterday’s post was about my first week on Easter holiday where I explored Bath, Bristol, and Brighton. My second week I went on a sports tour to Croatia with the dance team.

Let me start off by explaining exactly what “Tour” is. It is both a sports team holiday and a classic spring break party holiday. Tour is set up and managed by a company called I Love Tour. They are also the company that arranges trips around England and Europe during the year. It is a sports tour because you attend with your sports team although you can also go as a social person, but that’s not really the point. Tour consists of four days of which two is spent playing sports and competing against other universities that come from across England. Each of the four nights are spent partying in the clubs. One of the clubs we went to was rated as being in the top 100 clubs in the world! The English love “fancy dress” or wearing costumes to nights out, so each night included a theme. Dance team used some of the I Love Tour themes and also made up our own. Our nights included: drink themed night, emoji, Team Surrey blue and gold, and under the sea.

For the drinks themed night, my group decided on Captain Morgan. We dressed up as pirates. The next night, for the emoji theme, a couple of friends and I went as the see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil monkeys. Blue and gold night I just wore a blue skirt and glittered my face…a bit lame of a costume. Another girl wore a really cool Princess Jasmine costume for it though. The final night was my favorite and I dressed as a mermaid and painted scales on my face.

During the day we were able to go to beach parties, boat parties, and explore Croatia. We were based in the town of Porec. It was very quaint with no chain stores. We had lunch in a beautiful courtyard and then bought friendship bracelets at a store where a man hand painted the ceramic jewelry and statues with his family. He was such a friendly guy and suggested some places to go see. We went into a basilica and climbed a tower that gave us a beautiful view of the town.

Dance ended up not performing because the other dance team that was supposed to be there, Sussex, dropped out! We were compensated by getting a free excursion to Rovinj. It was a beautiful drive there and we stopped along a Croatian fjord that had some cute shopping stalls along the cliff.

Once we got to the town, we walked as a team through the cobbled streets, along the water front, and had lunch together. After lunch I wanted to go up a tower in a church on top of a hill. We got to the church, paid to go up the tower, but didn’t make it much further. The steps were half the size they should be, old and wooden, had massive gaps between each step, and would sink as you stepped on them. It was terrifying. We got up about half a flight before we decided to come back down. Going down was even more terrifying. We made it about 1% of the way, but we tried at least! Croatia is unlike many of the other European countries I’ve been to because it isn’t as wealthy. Some of the building facades are crumbling and could use some repairs. It just didn’t have the money coming in as other places like Paris. We did go to small towns, so that could be partially the reason they didn’t have as much money as the cities. I hear Dubrovnik is such a cool and beautiful city. I am not writing the Croatia off quite yet.

Now as I say Croatia isn’t particularly wealthy I don’t want you to think that Croatia and tour isn’t worth going to. Tour was absolutely amazing. Seriously an unforgettable experience and some of the most fun I’ve ever had. It was amazing to spend the days just hanging out with great people having the time of our lives. As I Love Tour puts it “an essential life experience”.

Holly