Final Snapshot from Croatia: Dubrovnik and Goodbye

"It's time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I'd much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure."- Ernie Harwell

So here we sit on a plane to Cologne reflecting on our three months in Croatia. I am not sure what I expected before we arrived though I had been told how beautiful it is here. We had planned to live a normal life, sending the kids to kindy and ballet classes for continuity and keeping travel to a minimum. Instead we explored the coast from top to bottom and also visited Hungary and Slovenia. While it has been busier than I expected we also made time to relax and enjoy the good life in the country

Living in a small hamlet in the countryside, exploring ruins, climbing trees, going on long walks and learning to speak Croatian through daily conversation with special people is a better education for a young child than kindergarten.

The companionship of your brother/sister  a dog and a village of people who are all related to you, no matter how distantly and are happy to see you everyday and will miss you when you are gone beats a ballet class hands down. We can have continuity when we get home, in Croatia we had something special that you just can't buy.

But before we leave Croatia I have one more visit to share, and so last and certainly not least here are our highlights of Dubrovnik.

Many years before I met Rob I worked with a young man who told me that I must put Dubrovnik on my bucket list and I have always remembered this advice and regretted that we hadn't fitted it in. However once we arrived in the village for our four week stay we realised that without heating we could freeze at night and so we ordered a pot bellied stove which would take two days to be delivered and so we jumped in the car and drove down to Dubrovnik.

Travelling in off season again paid off as we had our pick of accommodation and as we had our car to think about and were not keen for hiking miles up hill to the old town we decided to stay at a hotel on the bus route twenty minutes away. And so for the price of an apartment in the old town we stayed in an all-inclusive hotel much to the delight of the children. We were in fact we were amongst the last guests for the season and the day we left they closed down.

Our plan for the first morning was of course to walk the walls and again we were treated to brilliant weather. They say despite the fact that there was not much of a summer this year the overall average has been higher than normal due to a mild winter and now a beautiful autumn.

And so in the lovely sunshine we walked the walls, which need no explaining and so I will let them speak for themselves.

Unlike Split, with its spectacular Diocletian's Palace, hidden away and incorporated into the fabric of the city, Dubrovnik hides nothing and from the walls the whole city is on show.

The walk was much longer than we expected but it was worth it and there was a lot of places to rest. We have often wondered where all the tourists had got to when Trogir, Zadar and Sibernik had appeared as ghost towns. Well we certainly found them in Dubrovnik, by the bus and boat load.

After a quick trip back to the hotel for lunch and a rest we came back in the evening to explore by twilight, which comes early now.  We had been given Dubrovnik cards by fellow guests of our hotel who were leaving so we visited a museum in a lovely old palazzo which included a photographic exhibition of the city during the war in the early 1990's.

While we have been in Croatia we have seen much evidence of the damage done during this conflict and we have had disturbing conversations with a cousin, a school teacher for forty eight years, about the impact on her students of living in a war torn country. I believe the scars left on the country are less evident in tourist areas, and while I had been told to look out for bullet holes in the wall of Dubrovnik we could find none. 

We decided that Dubrovnik is a truly international city, by appearance not immediately recognisable as a Croatian city. It has a fascinating history that differs completely from most of Croatia. While many Croatian cities came under the control of Venice, Dubrovnik (which was then known as the Republic of Ragusa) was a serious rival of the Venetian empire and even had colonies in Africa and the "new world". Much of its glory was lost after a devastating earthquake in the 1600's and then the empire came to an end upon the arrival of Napoleon.

On our last day we took a boat cruise as we just had to see those walls from the sea. And so we took a glass bottom boat trip which lasted an hour, out of the harbour, past the walls and out and around the island of shore before coming back in again. It was a tiny old boat, and Rob and I sang the Gilligan's  Island theme song and the kids had no idea what had gotten into us.

And so a last memory of Dubrovnik would have to be the cats, they are everywhere, even jumping into my lap at lunch. But we were pretty sure that the cat on this menu didn't mean what we thought it meant. 

And so our Croatian adventure is over but we still have much more to go before we arrive home in mid January and so now we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and move on to the next big adventure..coming soon

Snaphots from Croatia: Makarska Riviera

 "A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints" - Wilfred Peterson



A quick lunch with teta Mila on our way through Sibernik

Upon our return from Slovenia we were very pleased to have friends we had met at the kids school in the UK come to Croatia to spend a week with us. It was such a treat for the kids, especially Emma, to have friends to play with. While my understanding of Croatian has improved a little, it was lovely to have English speaking friends to enjoy a chat and to share this beautiful part of the world with.

We were concerned about the weather, as we believed we had already had our last swim for the year and our friends were looking forward to spending some time in the sea. While I originally thought that they would be disappointed I came to realise the differences between the definition of "swimming weather" for an Australian family as compared to an English or, in the case of our friends, a Scottish family.

Also we had a week of lovely days, with a top temperature of perhaps 24 degrees and low and behold our kids decided that it was warm enough to get back in the water. And so much of the week was spent at the various beaches along the Makarska Riviera. Rather than wanting to rush around and see the sights, this weeks priority was relaxation and we were happy to oblige.

We decided on Brela, only twenty minutes away, as the first stop on our exploration of the local beaches. We had visited not long before with Rob's mum and I hope you don't mind I might just add a few things about this lovely day out before I go on. Just before she left we decided to take one of the last day trip cruises out of Makarska and we had spent an hour here in Brela.

I was not keen to visit Bol again, even though it would have given us an opportunity to visit Hvar.  The boat captain suggested the Riviera cruise was better than the Hvar/Brac (Bol) cruise that most visitors take as much of time for that cruise is spent out in the sea going to or coming back from the islands.

Our boat cruise on the other hand stopped first on the other side of Brac, at a little town called Povlja, with a parish church with an amazing history. At one point in time Croatian was writing using three different alphabets and it was here that the earliest examples of this writing were found.

We enjoyed a lovely fish barbeque at sea while we sailed along the beautiful coast line. Sadly it was an overcast day which did not show the glories of this magnificent part of the world in their best light. 

We did however really enjoy our walk along the waterfront at Brela and a stop at a playground. It has been suggested that we take a ten minute walk to see a beautiful rock in the water. While we played Nada attempted the walk but came back saying it was much further than a ten minute walk and she had not made it.

And so here we were a couple of weeks later back again to enjoy the lovely beach and afterwards, having enjoyed the lovely beach for longer than planned, we drove around to the rock sticking out of the water (sorry there is no other romantic name I can apply to it) and were not disappointed that we did as seeing it at sunset was seeing it at its most spectacular.

Another seaside town we visited as most willing tour guides to our friends was Tucepi. Again we had visited with Nada and had a lovely lunch at a café right on the beach, but now the café had closed for the season, though further along many are still open. Coming back to Makarska I was in need of a rest but the others all enjoyed another swim, though by this time I was in a fleece and a couple of layers.

October is Wedding Season in Makarska and BOY do they know how to celebrate

The wonders of the Makarska Riviera are not limited to the coast and we spent a marvellous afternoon driving through the Biokovo National Park. Before we left I cleaned out the car, taking rain coats out of the boot because it was a beautiful day.

As we continued along the road through the mountain, climbing steadily higher and higher, dodging cows and oncoming cars on tiny narrow, hair raising corners, we watched the temperature displayed on the dashboard, getting colder and colder.

Eventually we reached the top and the game of guess how cold it is going to get was won by whoever said 2 degrees and there was snow. Yes one minute you can swim and after an hour of driving you can be playing in the snow. That was unexpected.

After their return to the UK we received a lovely email telling us how much our friends had enjoyed their relaxing holiday in Croatia. On their way back to the Split Airport I was so pleased that they had managed to have a few hours in Trogir and were charmed by the place. They now say that they plan to return to Croatia in the future to explore some more.

We are really glad that they enjoyed the Makarska Riviera as much as we did. But now it was time for us to head back out to the village to spent the remainder of our holiday which amount to around four weeks.

While it might not be everyone's cup of tea we feel so very lucky to be able to spend time in the village where Rob's family have lived for around four hundred years. We love not on the place but also the special people who live such a simple and fulfilling life there.

When we left for the last time (for this trip) yesterday, we reflected on what a special place it is. With so few people still living there and tending their vines and gardens on a daily basis soon a time will come when the village is empty except for the weekenders and holiday makers like us. We feel we owe it to the kids, who did not ever want to leave, to return again while these special people are still there.

Church were l\our family have been baptised, married and buried for over 300 years

Luckily tourism hasn't reached here yet and everyone who visits has a family connection. While I would love to be able to share this experience with others it would spoil the place completely. Perhaps without the connection we feel to a place where practically everyone has the same surname it would not be as special. Mind you with a views like these, clean air, peace and quiet what's not to love.

I have said it before and I will say it again now, it is the people we have shared this experience with that have made it the wonderful life changing adventure that it has been.