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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Down By The Sea

My husband and I have been married for almost 10 years (in November it will be 10 years actually). Within those 10 years we have never taken a proper family vacation. We took some amazing conference trips that I mixed a getaway into and we have taken a few nights here and there to go somewhere special, but we have never taken what people would call a real vacation, a place that is usually warm and relaxing. Oh and yes, we would go to Slovakia for a month, but visiting family isn't a vacation, it's visiting family. With all of this said we finally took our first family vacation. 
This whole vacation thing was unplanned and unexpected, but I'm glad we decided to do it last minute. You see, my husband got a new job and there was a last minute schedule change due to Easter leaving him with a week of no work. After some prayer we decided to spend that week in Croatia, a place I would have never visited if we didn't move to Europe. I like to call Croatia a cross between Italy and Greece. 
We decided to drive there as it's not that far and it's a pleasant enough drive. The drive itself takes about 10 hours to where we were going. The road took us through a bit of Hungary and then through Croatia itself. Augustin did a good job in the car like he usually does, but he did have access to a kindle throughout the trip. For the kindle we timed one hour to screen time and one hour off which we usually listened to a story. On the way back the whole trip was a little tougher, we took more stops and it was overall slow going. We didn't get home until 1am while on the way there we were at our airbnb by 11:30pm. 
The whole trip was pretty amazing, windy, rainy and somewhat cold (for me). When we got there the wind blew almost everyday and there were many days of rain with a few sunny days that we took full advantage of. Augustin LOVED playing at the beach and never seemed to have enough time by the water. We made sure to give him a beach day, but because of the cold and cold water he had his rain boots on the whole time. I think we were the only ones playing in the water though. 
One of the sunnier days we took a hike up the mountain that's behind the town we stayed in. The hike was high, beautiful and I am so glad we did it! We found the abandoned and in ruins village that used to be Podgora. It was abandoned after a set of earthquakes destroyed the houses which sent people to seek shelter closer to the beach. The houses were small, unique and beautiful in their ruin. I wanted to take some of the pieces that could be salvaged, but alas, they were not mine to take (like windows). I could explore these kind of villages for days and not get bored. 
Most days I cooked at the place we were staying and luckily I was inspire enough to make some really yummy and healthy dishes. The days I didn't cook we found some nice local food and for the most part it was delicious. We enjoyed the locally grown oranges, olive oil and lemons the most. I wish I could get a truck load of those items straight to my home. We also found the best Croatian cheese and I ate as much as I could of it. 
My favorite town was, of course, Dubrovnik. It was a town like I have never seem before. The streets climbed flights of stairs on either side. The houses were tiny, but the street and their lights with laundry everywhere were amazing. I guess Game of Thrones was filmed there a bit as with Star Wars and the town in really milking that part. The whole old town is surrounded by a wall and it feels like you have stepped into a different place. I will leave out these pictures ( most of them ) as they deserves a blog post of their own. Also Augustin may have joined in with some local boys to play some games. He's so social and always ready to join the fun.
Enough with my words and onto the pictures from the trip!
































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