It was a gorgeous morning and I busted out my yoga mat on the terrace for some “terrace yoga.” It was pretty amazing actually. I will note for any entrepreneurs out there with a desire to live in Croatia….there is a serious yoga shortage here and this place is ripe for someone to open an amazing studio. I thought I would be able to find something in each city….even if some tiny little place tucked away. Alas, no deal. Yoga has not found this part of the world, such a shame. Good thing I can give myself a class.
We headed to Brela today, which was about 20 minutes away. A beach spot right at the base of the cliffs, with a “village” of sorts (although other than a grocery store and handful of tourist shops and restaurants, I’m not sure where the actual village was). We had a good lunch, but the older kids spent most of it begging to do the jet ski thing again, which we couldn’t do because Lucia was a little monster this morning and we had to point out the behavior didn’t warrant a special activity. See, even on vacation, the family junk still happens. Lest you think it’s all idyllic, fear not.
We then headed back home and straight back to our beach right across death highway (we are perched up high and what separates us from the beach is a crazy fast road with insane drivers, and about 400 rocky steps.) We then spent loads of time just hanging at the beach. I was completely engrossed in finding rock treasures. There are the most beautiful flat and polished rocks if you look…some with striations and all sorts of pretty colors. I’ve collect a good size bag and I’m happy just looking at them. Ava almost stepped on a sea urchin of some type which captivated the kids for a sizeable amount of time. They swam around on the bright yellow floaty we bought, which we now realize only tourists buy because all the beaches are rocky, so a REAL Croatian buys an air mattress—which is double strong and rock proof. Ours will no doubt pop any minute.
I came back to our condo with the two little kids late afternoon, and was promptly met by Boris, our landlord—well, technically his mother owns the place, but he manages it. Super nice guy and with him he brought cheese that his mother had made and aged 40 months---and let me tell you, it was pretty fantastic according to everyone in our family who eats dairy. Drizzled with olive oil they had pressed themselves from their olive trees. Boris was telling me that in Croatia “kids” stay with their parents until about age 30, and that was normal (he looked to be just around 30). I told him my 15 year old was already wondering when she could legally live on her own, which Boris found very funny.
And then, just as I thought we’d escaped all the potential dangers of the day…death highway, John’s driving, jet skis (at least for today), stepping on sea urchins….I get a call from John saying Ava’s twisted her ankle pretty bad and we needed to hobble her home. Lovely. She’s now icing it, down for the count at least for today.
I’m having a cup of mint tea because the AC is jacked up to frigid in our place. Oh, that reminds me. The car AC may, or may not be totally broken. The car only has 1500 miles on it, but we went to turn on the AC mid-day and it didn’t work. It worked yesterday, but today it decided that it was too hot to actually fire itself up. We’re crossing our fingers that it miraculously fixes itself overnight.
John’s making dinner….and you can see the fancy Croatian meat dish. Ok, not really. They are just hot dogs, with a fancy Croatian sounding name on the front of the package—put on a nice-ish plate (John said it makes the food look better). I follow my “abroad food” mantra…which is to make sure you feed the kids enough junk they recognize so they don’t go off the rails. For example we’ve bought boxes of Kellog's Cinnamon Crunch cereal—which at home I would never buy, but here it keeps the sanity. They are forced to try all kinds of things on a daily basis that are new, or different (and sometimes really funky/bad)….sometimes you just need the comfort of what you know or something with a predictable taste.
Tomorrow I think we’ll hit Split, which is one of the cities people think of when they think of Croatia (big cruise stop). We shall see…..
Signed, ME {lv}
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