On reflection, I feel that we could have maybe stayed in Portugal a little longer. As with all of this year of adventure, we don’t really know what our plans are one week to the next. And so it was with Portugal. We did debate starting our Portuguese trip in the Algarve, and thought better of it. Travelling up from Lisbon to Porto, I had looked at Coimbra as a place to visit. It appealed. Yet, we bypassed it.
There was one country we knew we wouldn’t bypass. A country that was up near the top of our “must visit” list when we left home in Perth back in June. And perhaps we fixated on this a little too much and overlooked other towns in Portugal that we could have visited.
That said, getting to Croatia was easier said than done. Our only route in from Porto was to have a hop in Barcelona. So, that’s what we did. Flying in to Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat Airport, we had two nights in Catalonia before heading across the Adriatic.
Barcelona bound
Barcelona is a city I’ve visited a couple of times previously. And had great memories. Who can forget THAT night in May 1999?
“Football, bloody hell.”
This time, dare I say it, it didn’t impress as much as I’d hoped. With the benefit of reflection in the intervening couple of weeks, I’m now wondering whether this is because we had already travelled through Spain, and we had seen some beautiful towns and cities? Compared with the orange tree lined streets of Seville, Las Ramblas just looked, well, decidedly shabby.
Travel choices
Either way, we played the tourist for a couple of days before our alarm clock woke us at 3.10am for our taxi to the airport. Travelling on a budget sharpens the senses and given a choice between a 6am flight out of the country that is a few hundred dollars cheaper than the one that flies at a more convenient time, the choice is simple.
And so, we found ourselves, a little bleary eyed, on the early Vueling flight from Barcelona to Split. We were finally headed to Croatia.
On departure from Barcelona, we had a plan to “get around” the 90/180 days in the Schengen region*. You see, we were leaving the EU to enter Croatia. To avoid giving away how many of our 90 days we had used up in the EU we would switch to our UK passport.
Alas, we were foiled. The immigration officer at Barcelona looked confused as he flipped through the pages of our passport. Obviously looking for the tell-tale entry stamp, which would allow him to check we hadn’t over stayed our welcome.
The thing was, there was no entry stamp. It was sitting in our Australian passports.
“You have another passport?”, he barked.
Sheepishly, we dug out our Australian passports, and he found our entry details, before heavily stamping our departure. We had used up 44 of our allocated 90 days in the 180 day period. 46 remain and thankfully Croatia is not classed in the EU, so the clock stops ticking.
For now.
*90/180 Day Rule
As a traveller, you are permitted to travel through the EU for 90 days in a continuous 180 day period. Three months from six. For every day you are in a Schengen country, you use a day of your allowance. Once up to 90 days, you then have to leave and can not return until another 90 days have elapsed.
We got up to 44 days before we “stopped the clock” heading into Croatia. When we next re-enter a country in the Schengen region, our clock starts again and we have the remaining 46 days to use before we need to leave again.
Simple, eh?
Up next
What we hope will be a lot simpler is Croatia. Our plan is to bob around, island hopping for a few weeks, soaking up the late summer/autumn sun. Keep an eye out for the next instalment.
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