Friday 10 July 2009

One of the Best Trips Ever!

We're home. I've almost finished the laundry and we enjoyed 24 hours to rediscover our garden and toys. I really love summer when the boys are home. No schedule. Just fun.

We can honestly say that there is nothing we would change about our trip to Croatia. We had a ball. We relaxed, we played, we explored and we are grateful!
Here are the pictures from the last day on the boat and the days at the resort.


Three little monkeys. (Christopher is wearing his new Croatia football strip!)


The Anambra before our last day.

Our good looking captain!

Monkey #3 working the crank for the main sail.

Le Meridian Split



Split, Croatia.
As you can see, it's not nearly as picturesque as the rest of our stops and the Le Meridian stood out like a sore thumb but boy did we enjoy the luxury! We stayed in their marina our last night aboard Anambra and the Miss Universe Croatia (aka Miss Croatia) Pageant was being held at the resort. Charlie and Scott were enthralled and the rest of us were a little bored! We watched for a little while and loved seeing the marina full of high roller boats. (also a casino at the hotel)


Disembarking at the marina in Split.



Haven't lost our Scottish tans!





Luxury, pure luxury! "Proper beds and pillows." said Christopher!





The hotel had a restaurant with a terrace over-looking the pool and sea and we enjoyed a few dinners here. The food was not great but the service and views were spectacular! They had the first children's menu we'd seen in Croatia and it was printed on a balloon. Charlie was determined to learn how to blow up a balloon on his own so he spent the entire meal doing just that!






While I was not thrilled to see the Children's menu, Christopher loved the plate full of old standbys. American hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken strips.





The sunset during dinner. One other thing we loved about all of the restaurants was dining al fresco. I do not think we ate indoors once while in Croatia with the exception of breakfast at the hotel. We loved that!
On Monday, after a few days of enjoying the resort, we headed into old Split to check it out. Split is much larger than any of the other cities we'd visited and is a popular cruise ship port. Well, that leads to crowds and lots of touristy stuff. The old section of town is built on top of the Diocletian's Palace. While we were impressed with the ruins, we kept looking for an actual building, a palace. We'd misinterpreted the guide books because the palace ruins are now intertwined with cafes, shops and apartments. So no palace to walk into and tour but the evidence of it's structure is all around you. The city is almost 2000 years old and that in and of itself is impressive.



These braces keep the buildings from falling together.
Funny!
This is the statue of Grgur Ninsky, a Bishop from the 10th century. He fought for the right for Croatians to use their own language instead of Latin and it is popular belief that if you rub his toe, you will have good luck!
The boys loved this fountain and Ethan just couldn't keep out of it. It was a little deeper than he expected!
This is in the basement of the original palace and the arches were fantastic. Now they serve as stalls for local crafts but you can imagine what life must have been like 2000 years ago, escaping the heat to this underground oasis.
Okay, so maybe the boys are not enjoying this too much. So we went for this:
Yummy with a capital Y!
While we were standing on the street, enjoying our ice cream, a American couple noticed Christopher's Chuy's Dallas t-shirt and made a comment that they love Chuy's too. We visited for a few minutes and then bumped into them about 30 minutes later. We then stood and visited with them for over an hour. They were on a cruise from Venice to Athens and then off to Istanbul. They are from Alabama and their son goes to SMU, hence the reason they know Chuys. We really loved meeting them. Anyway, I digress.
Back to the pool.
We were tired of our hotel food and missed the local family restaurants so on our last night, we headed down the beach to this place. Great food, fantastic location and a spectacular sunset.
Croatia, we'll be back soon!