The 2023 Croatia / Montenegro trip is over. It was an awesome celebratory trip filled with smiles and love. I’m not going to recap it all, but below are the blog-worthy highlights.

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The Shrimp / Beef Gyoza Incident

For the first lunch at our nice hotel, Meghan and I ordered SHRIMP gyoza (dumplings). The server literally double checked “Beef gyoza?” No. Shrimp gyoza. Shrimp.

When they were delivered, Meghan bit hers in half and it was clearly beef inside. The server came over and we told him; “Sorry, I’ll go double check“. Not exactly sure what that means, but okay.

A minute later he comes back and nicely says “I talked to the chef, it’s shrimp” and walks away. Ummmmmmmmmmm…….. wat. What an alpha move. Just look us dead in the eyes with beef literally on the place in front of him and say “it’s shrimp“. We were speechless. Does shrimp translate to cow? What were we not understanding? For two minutes he actually incepted us into thinking it might be shrimp.

We rarely insist in situations like this, but this was too much. We got the guy’s attention and basically said the same thing, to which he apologized, took the plate back, then came over with SHRIMP gyoza a few minutes later. What a whirlwind.

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Sapiens

I was reading Sapiens at the start of the trip and finished it on the way home. Throughout the trip this happened:

• Our Airbnb had about 10 books in the entire place, one of which was a Croatian Sapiens.
• I walked up one of the beaches we were at and someone was reading Sapiens.
• A sports podcast I listen to specifically referenced Sapiens.
• Chuck Klosterman on a separate podcast specifically referenced Sapiens.
• Lex Fridman released a podcast episode with Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, yesterday.

The book is 10 years old! I don’t know what it means, but I actually think it might be a higher power speaking to me.

Anyway, great book. Highly recommend.

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Bathroom Observations

• Water pressure was 10/10 in every place and the water got insanely hot. Like, hotter than the sun. Wild.
• Not ONE bidet in the four places we stayed… disappointed.
• In the hotel however, there was a hose which I THOUGHT you sprayed up your butt, but after attempting it, I realized it’s probably for spraying off skid marks.
• The hotel also only gave us one roll of toilet paper?! Literally finished it the first day. Crushed it.

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Covy & Melon / Home Sick

After about a week away, we both agreed that we were a little home sick. But I think we might have been confusing home sickness for missing the cats. It sounds stupid, but going to bed the last ~3 nights of the trip I was a little anxious just thinking about getting home to the kitties.

An element of home sickness actually does kick in when you’ve eaten out for 20 meals in a row and drink alcohol every day. It’s not a super sustainable way to live for more than a week or two. But it’s one of the few times in life where you push that aside and enjoy yourself. As I said, overall it was a fantastic trip.