Croatia bound!

Bright and early tomorrow morning, long before the sun rises, my alarm clock will gently bring me out of Dream World. I will stumble out of bed, groggy and sleepy-eyed, and make my way to the kitchen to get my Moka pot started making my morning coffee. And about an hour later, around 4:30, a taxi will arrive to take me to the airport. Because tomorrow morning, I am Croatia bound!

The main purpose of my trip is to attend the ISIC: The Information Behaviour Conference at the University of Zadar. There, I will deliver my paper, “Managing and evaluating personal reputations on the basis of information shared on social media: a Generation X perspective”, on Thursday to a (hopefully) eager audience of fellow academics.

Because flights to Split are only once a week, I will have a couple of non-conference days to explore. So it’s kind of like a free mini-holiday! (A well-earned one, though. Writing academic research papers is not an easy feat!) Sadly, it’s not going to be a quick and easy journey! My flight to Split is a little over three hours. Then I have a 40-minute journey to the bus terminal to catch a bus to Zadar, which will take another three hours. I figure it will be about 12 hours from the time I leave home until I reach my hotel. And I’ll have to do the return journey next Sunday!

I will have all day Monday and Saturday as free days (and a half-day on Friday) to explore. This is my first time travelling to Croatia so I’m really excited about the experience. I will be staying quite near the historic city centre and I should be able to hobble around well enough to see a few sites. Top of my list is the Church of St Mary. I’m also hoping that I can find a few unexpected sites through the grace of serendipity.

Initially, I planned to see several old churches and I hoped to run along the beach during my week’s stay. (My hotel is near the shore. Score!) But my broken ankle will really slow me down on the site-seeing, and will completely prevent any running. Still, Broken Ankle: Phase II means that I am hobbling a bit faster and with less pain, so I won’t be laid up in my hotel room the whole time!

Anyhow, I should probably get back to packing so that I’m ready when my taxi arrives bright and early tomorrow morning. And don’t worry, I’ll be sharing plenty of pictures when I return from my travels!