Getting to Croatia is an interesting journey, especially with Covid-19. In addition to the normal hassle of passports, entry documents, and dealing with airlines Covid has introduced the new challenge of needing a negative test result that is no less than 48 hours old in order to keep traveling. The clock is ticking!
As individuals, our journeys started out in three different states: New York, Texas, and Florida. For Nate and myself, the journey began with a flight to New York on January 1 where we stayed the night at our classmate's house (shoutout to Si Cong). The next morning all three of us met up at JFK to catch our flight to Istanbul. All of us attempted to catch some sleep on the flight with varying success. Everything was going to plan up until this point...
Then our flight arrived in Istanbul late, giving us about 20 minutes to get to our next flight before departure. By the time we got to the gate we thought we had just barely made it, but we were turned away. Frustrated by our close call, we found the Turkish Airlines concierge desk to reschedule our flight, which turned out to be the same time the following day, January 3rd. Turkish Airlines took care of the hotel and shuttle to and from the airport, along with food while we were in Istanbul. We still had to buy Turkish visas for the night though. That just left the unfortunate problem of finding a Covid testing site for Luke to take another test, since his previous test would be out of the 24-48 hour time slot needed to fly. Luckily, there was a testing site just outside of baggage claim.
The hotel we were staying at was 30 minutes from the airport because even during the pandemic the hotel at the airport was booked full. Some people might be excited to have a day in Istanbul to explore, but there was no exploration for us. Turkey was in lockdown and citizens were not allowed to go out, so we thought it would best to stay at the hotel. While we didn't get to meet many of the locals we did get to meet Esteban, a stray cat that was skilled at walking through revolving doors, much to the hotel staff's irritation.
We left the hotel at 4 am the next morning to continue our travels without any other troubles or delays. We arrived in Zagreb at 7:30 am, hopped in the rental car, and headed to Rijeka. It was a pleasant 2-hour drive, with one short stop by immigration control, who checked our papers and trunk then let us go with no explanation of why they had stopped us.
We finally arrived at the apartment where we would be staying and got settled in. The apartment is very nice, with two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a nice kitchen where we can cook meals for ourselves, which is important since most restaurants are still closed because of Covid. We need to go to a laundromat to wash our clothes though. The location couldn't be better: right in the middle of Rijeka. This allows us to be within walking distance of almost everything we might need along with most of the attractions of the city. Plus work is only about 20 minutes away!
