Our destination was the city of Dubrovnik, which sits on the far southern tip of the country. All in all, both girls did really well on flights there. I had forgotten how much easier it is to travel with an infant than with a mobile baby or toddler. I had also forgotten how much attention little babies attract from fellow travelers. Ashton always seemed to have people smiling at her, touching her (which drives me crazy when strangers do that) or just looking at her (and probably thinking they hope she doesn't cry on their flight). She also came in handy on multiple occasions when we were pulled out of long passport control lines to go to the front.
Baby's first flight
View from our room's balcony by day...
...and by night.
There were multiple swimming pools for us to enjoy plus the resort's private beach. We were at the resort for three full days and two of those days we never left the resort property. The water in the swimming pools was pretty chilly. Unfortunately for Geoff and myself, Olivia didn't seem to mind the cool temperature of it and loved being in the pools.
My pool/beach buddy
View from one of the swimming pools
Down at the beach
Geoff was brave enough get into the cold water
From what I remember reading, despite the extensive number of beaches in Croatia, very few of them are sandy beaches and are instead comprised of pebbles.
Olivia was skeptical of the beach and did not want to get close to the water. Instead, she found her enjoyment in throwing lots of pebbles into the water.
The one day we left the resort, we went into the actual city of Dubrovnik. Our resort was not in the city so we took a 40 minute boat ride along the coastline until we reached Old Town Dubrovnik.
Before we planned this trip, I had heard very little about the city of Dubrovnik and didn't know what to expect. The Old Town part of the city is surrounded by the city walls. The walls were constructed between the 12-17th centuries in order to protect the city from invaders. The walls run uninterrupted around the entire Old Town (a little over a mile in total) and our excursion for the day was to walk along the top of the walls.
Our excursion wasn't without its challenges. It's not easy traveling with small children and Olivia reminded us why. When Olivia gets hungry, she quickly goes into meltdown mode. Similar to her mother. :) However, I know this and came prepared for our trip with a granola bar and banana. Right before we were going to walk up the stairs to get on the wall path, we could tell she's was getting close to the point of no return so we whipped out the granola bar. In the process of opening it, it broke into two pieces. As I'm sure that anyone else with toddlers can relate, the stupidest stuff can set them off and for her at that moment, it was a broken granola bar that she now refused to eat when she desperately needed to. Meltdowns ensued. We got on the wall path and kept trying to distract her with different things to look at, offer her the other food, anything. But nothing did the trick. She was crying loudly, frequently laying on the ground in full tantrum form. We were getting so many looks from all the other tourists. Some of them were really nice. One sweet lady offered Olivia a mint. That distracted her very briefly but then she started crying again while she was eating the liquidy mint, causing it to drip out of her mouth and get all over her face and clothes, requiring clean-up that she didn't want and resulting in her crying even more loudly. One man came up to her while she was crying and started taking her picture. Not sure what that was about. Hopefully he's not going to take her picture home to his family and tell them the story about the loud little girl that disrupted his pleasant vacation. We had several people tell us we were brave for traveling with small children, but we have to wonder if they were secretly thinking "stupid" instead of brave. To even further complicate matters, the wall path contained numerous stairs to climb up and down. Olivia was in no condition to willingly climb them so Geoff was having to carry her, frequently with her kicking her legs. At one point, I just looked at Geoff and told him I didn't know what to do. The only consolation was that Ashton was sleeping during this whole ordeal so thankfully we didn't have to deal with two crying girls. The wall path consisted of just the path. There weren't shops, restaurants or other touristy things up there. However, we did come upon to a little indoor juice stand there and it was a life saver. We were able to get Olivia out of the sun, drink some juice and eat her banana. That did the trick, our sweet daughter returned to us and the rest of our afternoon was enjoyable!
The views from everywhere on the walls were amazing. The city, surrounded by the bluest water and islands off in the distance, was simply beautiful.
And finally she fell asleep for a much needed snooze
After our adventure along the city walls, we didn't have much time left to explore the actual city. I don't feel like we really got to experience the Croatian culture in our short trip, especially given we stuck to our resort for two of the three days. However, I've just accepted that our vacations and trips with small children aren't going to look like the vacations and trips that Geoff and I took when it was just the two of us. We've had to modify our level of activity and say no to certain things he and I would enjoy doing. And put with the occasional public tantrum.
Happy girls
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