ESL Blogs

Hi guys,

here I am with my controversial blog about … Croatia :-D I am sure Evangelina will be happy about it! ;-) So my question is: "Have you ever heard of Croatia? No?" Ohhhhh… so let me little bit introduce you this Mediterranean (blee.. terrible word!) country, since I spent there incredible holidays with my family. Wait, wait… I hope you are not searching it now.. ehmm.. somewhere in Asia or Africa! If yes.. then you better don't read more! :-D Croatia is situated in the southern Europe and it took us some hours to get there from the Czech republic by car. "Some hours" means, if I sum it up around 16 hours (1.100 km) :-D This distance might seem too much but in general Croatia is called Czech sea and it is very popular among people in my country, so we don't consider it long journey. However, traveling with the kids isn't that easy, so we decided to stay one night half way in the northern part of Croatia and it wasn't bad idea at all. We saw also inland villages that aren't so shiny and beautiful like those by the sea, places where people are alive just thanx to the agriculture. Places, where night is super duper dark that you are just wondering, if you became blind or not.

Anyway, this country has kind of various climate because of the mixture air of the inland mountains and the mediterranean sea. As for this damn climate, I have to point out, it played with us little bit, when we were on our journey because we were so lucky and experienced very strong wind called BORA, which comes from the mountains to the sea and sometimes brings heavy storms. Believe it or not but because of this silly wind max. speed on the highway was reduced to 40 km/h :-D Luckily it wasn't long distance but it felt like our car would soon turn to plane and we would simply fly away... actually not bad idea... we would ge there earlier :-)

So, finally we turned from the highway to Makarska riviera, which was our destination and… ooppss.. it welcomed us with cloudy, later rainy weather. I didn't believe my eyes!

You know, south of Croatia was always known for its settled weather, so what the hell was going on here???! We were close to our destination - city and I felt for a while, it was getting warmer, so I said to my husband: 'Pfff.. you see? It is getting warmer, at least something!“ And he just replied: „ Yeah, it is warmer because I turned on central heating in the car… it is 17 degrees outside.“ Oh my goooshhh, I had to laugh and cry! Such a long distance we have traveled to spend holiday by the sea and it was raining! We arrived to our apartment and the owner was really nice because he helped us with the kids and even came with umbrella. My mood reached the first stadium of depression and I started googling the weather forecasts but... guess what? They all showed that it was 30 degrees and sunny! I felt like telling all those websites… GO TO HELLLLL!!!!! So guys, one important thing: Don't rely on the weather forecasts because they are lately playing tricky game with us :-D

The very next morning when I woke up, I saw cloudy sky BUT it wasn't raining, which was sort of awesome news. We took breakfast on the balcony and decided to explore our little city – Igrane. Kids were happy to throw the stones into the sea (ehm... where was nobody because of the weather ), we took walk to the steep hill to visit the local church,the tower and enjoyed the nice view...

Oh yeahh… I started feeling better and weather decided to be better too :-) In the afternoon we went for a trip to the Blue and Red lake, which was really amazing experience. Ruin of the castle on the top, lake itself with such beautiful color…In fact, it is hard to describe and one must really see such beauty.

Finally, we could have spent another day on the beach and kids enjoyed it so much that even I was surprised. As you can see, there are not sandy beaches in Croatia and I was little bit worried, if they can enjoy those pebbles but they didn't care, they would just love to spend all the time in the water even with purple lips and shaking teeth :-D Hopefully, weather was better and better so we enjoyed time on the beaches in our city or in the close bays, we were just relaxing and having fun.. BUT..

Yeah it wouldn't be me, I just can't only spend the whole holiday on the beach – I would die! So we decided to take another trip to the historical city called TROGIR. I have to admit this city has its own magic and history was just around each corner. Old smaller streets, beautiful squares with cafe, restuarants, palm promenade, historical fort... In short it was worth visiting and I would spend even more time there.. Maybe next time :-)

Time was flying too fast that it was end of our holidays in Croatia, however on our way back, we decided to make one more trip to Plitvice lakes – place where movie about Vinnetoo was shot. Guess, you are too young to know this movie but if you see this nature with waterfalls, turquoise water, where you can watch every fish, you will feel like in the paradise.. yeah it is really nice in the pictures, right? :-D you dont see those hundreds of people passing by but that is the art of the great photographer :-D So next time... only out of season and early in the morning :-)

Honestly speaking… looking back after some weeks I can just say…Croatia, next time don't play with me, especially as for your weather but I am definately back there next year because I did fell in love with your crystal sea water, rocky mountains, smell of pine trees in the air, local food – especially fish, sound of the cicadas and tasty wine…

P.S. If you are interested, I can add some more pictures here on MyEC.