When we left you last time, our Tuscan adventure had ended with me looking to hire a water blaster to get the last of the massage oil out of some hard to reach places, before making our way to Croatia. And the ferry ride across to Croatia certainly had its moments.
We were on the overnight ferry that left at 10pm, but we had to line up in our car well in advance and wait. Of course after sitting in the car for 2hrs it was at the point of getting waved onto the ferry that Olivia decided to proclaim that she needed to wee. Thankfully we’ve become quite adept at finding a patch of grass and holding Liv’s legs like she’s on a toilet seat. We’ve had to do it so many times I reckon if we need to clean windows when we get home we can just get her to drink some Windex then pick her up, point and shoot.
So after a long day, a long wait and a frantic child toilet stop I wasn’t overly impressed to see a small clump of motorbike riders skip around the endless queue, with a few jamming their wheels in front of us as we approached passport control. And right beside my window was what looked like a pretty nerdy and innocuous bikie. So the temptation to wind down the window and expunge a days worth of frustration by giving him and his 4 nerdy mates a verbal spray was pretty high. Something made me hold my tongue for the first time in my life though, and I’m glad I did. Firstly, it turns out that bikes go on first anyway so their line skip was justified. But more importantly as they got onto the boat the 4 guys who appeared to be part of the ‘We Love Bikes and Changes to Accounting Standards’ Motorcycle Club met up with a 50 strong group of hardened German compatriots, where the physical characteristics were dominated by whole body tattoos and missing teeth. If that wasn’t enough, as we settled into the boat cafeteria to try and chip at some overcooked lasagne with plastic utensils, the Germans sat at tables near us and produced what looked like machetes that they used to hack into chunks of meat that they ate with fistfuls of bread. Couldn’t help but think if I had have hurled that abuse before boarding that meat could have been me. Given the amount of wine and cheese I’ve eaten this trip my arse could have fed the whole bikie crew (would have been a pretty fatty cut of meat though).
So after a night locked in our cabin (I checked the locks a few times) we landed in Croatia – a land where to start with the language is a bit of a challenge. Let’s just say that if you find yourself on Croatian Wheel of Fortune, ‘buying a vowel’ is a complete waste of money. And cafes are a bit different here too – we stopped to get some food and coffee but quickly discovered that the staples in Croatia are tobacco and hard liquor. If you want a morning coffee, the trade off is to come out of the cafe smelling like you have just rolled out of a Sydney niteclub in the 90’s.
But after injesting some caffeine and inadvertently half a pack of Marlboros, we drove up to Plitvice Lakes which is a National Park housing massive lakes that feed into huge waterfalls. The lakes were beautiful; massive bodies of water funneling through narrow inlets creating violent torrents of water over which walkways were built. I’m glad we were here before peak season though as sections of the walkway are narrow, with masses of people trying to surge past others posing for photos. I thought one Chinese lady was going to get thrown over a waterfall as she spent ages and about 20 snaps trying to perfect the nonchalant over the shoulder smoulder in front of a waterfall look while holding up impatient tourists.
But the walkways gave an accurate insight into regional Croatian traffic in general – lanes aren’t quite wide enough but this has no impact on the speed of passing. It seems that all Croatians have watched the movie Speed one too many times, and believe their cars will explode if they drop below 80kms/h even if this is around corners on narrow roads bounded by rocks and cliffs. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve gripped the wheel harder than Kanye grips his own genitals as a high speed vehicle approaches.
Then it was time to head down to Split. And this was the first wobble we’ve had in our AirBnb experience. I’ve always made contact with the host a day or so before we arrive to make sure all is ok. And it all appeared ok with Split, with instructions to call a Croatian cell phone number 1hr before we arrive. Which we did, only to get a recorded voice message that the number was unavailable. And we tried and tried and tried again with no luck right up until we were standing on the pavement holding two tired kids outside what was meant to be our apartment for the next few days. Just as we started to think we’d been part of an elaborate Croatian Airbnb sting a lady with limited English appeared saying ‘apartment, apartment?’. We were so tired we assumed she was our contact – at that stage we didn’t care if we were being led into a kidney harvesting facility under the guise of a place to stay. As long as the bath of ice was comfortable enough to sleep in. But we woke up with all kidneys intact so she must have been the apartment owner.
Split itself was mixed. The Old Town is beautiful, the immediate surrounding areas are nice but the rest is pretty horrible. And their main beach that all the locals recommend a visit to is a small strip of dirt, covered in discarded alcohol bottles and seaweed, and with a thin oily film on top of the water. And the shallows are filled with local males in speedos banging the inside of a tennis ball backwards and forwards. Wasn’t exactly the place where you’d want to frolic or get a mouthful of seawater. Although Millie loved adorning her sandcastles with the whisky bottles that ‘smelled like daddy’.
After coming out of Tuscany, the food and wine was also an adjustment. After working through elaborate tasting instructions in Italy about different flavours hitting different parts of the tongue, and where even the house wine was delightful, we weren’t quite prepared for the Croatian adjustment. On our first night we did get two glasses of house red with what was rumoured to be steak and gnocchi (just like Meatloaf is rumoured to sound good live) and the wine tasting experience was one I haven’t experienced before. The wine seemed to numb the tongue completely, then skip over it to first smash into the roof of the mouth then burn the back of the throat. I wasn’t sure whether we were meant to drink it or use it as a fuel reserve for the car. It also led to some pretty heavy rationing of our last remaining bottle of Tuscan wine. Like two lost hikers trying to make their last reserves stretch until being saved, it could only be dribbled out on special nights. And when it was gone I did consider going the hiker route and drinking my own urine rather than rolling the dice on the Croatian wine again. So we finished up our time in Split by giving it a new name – Shplit. Because some parts are very nice but there are some aspects of it that are a little bit shit.
We have since moved onto the Croatian Islands which are beautiful, and where I have offered a viewing of Krys’ breasts in lieu of a tip, but we’ll pick that up later.
Ugodan dan.
Trent, Krystal, Emelia, Olivia and some struggling tastebuds
smallthoughts 