Croatia

So for those of you who have been waiting, I am finally back from Croatia and I'm ready to tell you all about it!   We stayed in a mobile home in a camping area of a holiday resort.  Staying in the mobile home was by far the worst part of the trip because there were six of us crammed into a teeny little space that's smaller than the average living room.  But nonetheless it was still an amazing vacation.  The resort we were in was right on the Dalmatian Coast on the Adriatic Sea.  I literally felt like I was walking right through one of my infamous travel books!   On this resort they have a beach (obviously), a pool, and a shopping area filled with souvenir shops and restaurants.  They also had lots of things to keep the kids entertained such as mini golf, pony rides, water-slides, and about a million more things.    The beach was absolutely beautiful and the water was the perfect temperature.  However, after a few days of swimming in the sea I came to a conclusion about myself.  I'm a freshwater girl!!  If you get splashed in the face with fresh lake water its no big deal...it's just water.  But if you get splashed in face with sea water (which was inevitable and unavoidable in my case considering I was with 4 very active kids the whole time)  it tastes disgusting and stings your eyes like crazy!  Another thing I hated about the sea was whenever we got done swimming and dried off we each had enough salt caked on our bodies to fill a few salt shakers.  YUCK!    But luckily for me, Fanny and Flora hated swimming in the sea more than me, so the girls and I spent a lot of time in the nice clean pool. :) 

       -Just a quick story about Fanny because I think it's really cute...First you need to know that

        Fanny has really bad eyesight.  In fact it's terrible.  (which is sad considering she's only 4, 

        but she's so dang cute with her glasses!)     One day when we were at the pool and she 

       wasn't wearing her glasses she was wandering around the pool by herself (usually she likes

        to hold my hand).  After a little while I looked around to make sure she was still doing ok.  

        I turned around just in time to see  her approach a lady who had a swimsuit 

       that looked like mine.  She put her arms around her neck and said "NICOLE!  where is 

       Flora?"  when the lady responded with nothing but a confused look, Fanny restated her 

       question but still the lady just looked at her and laughed.   At this point I went over closer          to her and said "Fanny, Flora and I are right here!"  She then looked at the lady with a                  panicked look and swam away from the lady to me as fast as she could.  ...Since then she has       worn her glasses EVERYWHERE!

My favorite part of the vacation was the boat trip we took from the resort to a national park called Kornati. We left at about 8 in the morning and returned at about 6:30 in the evening.  Kornati National Park is about 3 hours from the mainland, and consists of 365 islands of various size.  The islands were unbelievably beautiful.  I can only hope my pictures can give a small idea.  Also, the water was a shade of blue I'd never seen before.  Words can't begin to describe the beauty of the water.   The boat stopped at one of the major islands and let us off to wander for a few hours.  We ended up going swimming in a salt lake that was on the island (as if we hadn't had enough of salt water).  Around the lake and all over the island they have various wild animals.  The most popular one being the wild donkeys!  It was absolutely hilarious to see them just wandering around but surprisingly they were really tame and mild.  They handled the people very well and all the little kids loved petting them!  After spending some time on the islands we all piled back onto the boat and set off for another 3 hours back to the resort, and even saw a few dolphins on the way.  :)

This is all I can think of for now, so I'll just end with this last little piece of info.  After spending 2 weeks in the sun, for the first time in about 9 years...I'M TAN!!!  :)

I just had to add these pictures of Christoph because they're good for the soul and really make me laugh!  He loves wearing my glasses and Timon's hat!  :)