Venezia -> Mali Lošinj, Croatia

We actually managed to get the early start we were aiming for, which I think is pretty good, considering we're shepherding five children among us.  And since the hotel had given us a huge breakfast, it seemed  reasonable to drive straight through to the ferry stop for the island of Cres, in Croatia.  From there we'd be driving to the island of Lošinj, where we'll be staying this week, at a resort in the Kinderhotel family, the Hotel Vespra.

We stayed in a Kinderhotel once before, in February, when we took our skiing vacation in Austria. And, indeed, most of these extraordinarily child-friendly hotels are located in the Austrian alps, but, just recently, it seems, they're starting to expand to warmer locations, with an eye on summer vacation spots.  For our summer vacation, we wanted time on the beach, and, since this was the only Kinderhotel that was on the Mediterranean, it's where we decided to go. It was worth the long drive, we decided, for some sunshine and easy meals and optional free child care....Dennis and I wanted a vacation too, you see.

Miraculously, the drive didn't actually take much longer than Google predicted, although, by all rights,  we should have gotten horribly lost.  The directions that Dennis had so carefully printed out in advance of our trip listed only roadway numbers, but when we crossed into Slovenia, it became increasingly hard to find a single route number on the road signs.  Rather, the sign posts only listed what towns laid on each route.  And since the Slavic town names were sort of a mad jumble of consonants, and I was trying to read them at highway speed, navigation became increasingly frustrating.  And the smallness an narrowness of some the roads did nothing to reassure us: some of our path seemed rarely trod, and it didn't seem likely that it could possibly be our route.

But it was, and, in the end, we made only one wrong turn, one which only took us only about twenty minutes out of our way.  Brie's and Geoff's car came equipped with a GPS, which should have made the driving trivial, but they said the navigation system flew into a panic every time we entered a tunnel (and there were many of these).  Apparently, the system believed that, somehow they had driven their car into the sea.

But things were simplified greatly when, after our mistake, we started using the GPS on Dennis's phone.  In my relief, I became such an enthusiastic navigator at that point that I started getting some mockery from the driver's side of the car.  Especially when I started warning Dennis about impending forks in the road that turned out to be long residential driveways.

And so we made our way into Croatia: since we were leaving the European Union, we had to go through a couple of stern-faced passport checks. But then they welcomed us with several large, shiny, tourist booklets and maps (all in Italian, sadly) along with a nine-language guide book of driving laws in Croatia.  It informed us, among other things, that a seatbelt is "an absolute must-have on Croatian roads. With this accessory you simply cannot miss. It fits equally well with the evening combinations and light, airy summer clothes."  So we learned not only that seatbelts are compulsory, but also that Croatians seem to have a sense of humor.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the queue for the ferry, with lunch long overdue, there really wasn't wasn't much on offer. We'd read that we should expect a 90-minute wait for the ferry, and where there are wait times like that, we reasoned, there is also, usually, food for sale.  But not so much.

That's Cres, behind me, and our ferry boat

Luckily, the kids were pretty happy with their steady diet of granola bars and Garfield cartoons.  Interestingly, to buy our ferry passage, we had to abandon our car in line and walk down to a ticket booth.  But I'll forgive them that inconvenience since they allowed us to pay our passages in Euros instead of Croatian kunas, of which we had none.  But now we have a few, and we learned that the two-kuna coin features a picture of a tuna.  The tuna kuna.

The ferries reportedly ran less than once an hour, but when we failed to get on the first one, we realized it wasn't such a bad luck. The posted time table didn't seem important at all: they were running the two ferries back and forth just as quickly as they could load and unload them on either end of the twenty-five minute passage.

While waiting for the ferry, I
entertained myself with watching
a dung beetle roll his little ball of poo
back to his house. Awesome, right?

Still, Dennis and Brie and Geoff had time to walk down to the dock to see if there was any sort lunch to be had: Dennis returned with a gas station mystery-meat sandwich, half of which Joey joyfully consumed.  For the rest of supplemented our diets with ice cream on the ferry boat.  It is vacation, after all.

As I waited with the kids by the car, looking down the cliff at the Adriatic, it seemed as though this vacation was shaping up nicely: the water was clear, as rocky seas tend to be.  But from his closer viewpoint, down by the docks, Dennis found the view somewhat more menacing. There, swimming just a few feet from the three-year-olds who were splashing in the shallows, was a man in a full camouflage dive suit, swimming with a harpoon gun.

The ferry boat that we took would seemingly have been much better suited for a different passage route: although there wasn't much room for cars--it seemed that they boarded fifty cars, at most--there were at least twenty times as many seats as passengers.  We made ourselves very comfortable in the air conditioned cabin with treats and coffee and Uno and legos beforee bundling, all too quickly, back into the car.

Once we were on Cres, we had to drive the length of the island, before we reached the bridge to Lošinj, meaning ninety minutes of narrow roads, bumpy, and somewhat washed out roads.  The landscape on the island was completely insane. It was all barren, rocky terrain, with a few scrub bushes in amongst  the periodic spindly pine trees.  It reminded me more of the American west than anything else.

Except that the desolate landscape was broken up by a completely nonsensical maze of loose rock walls.  What they were dividing or demarcating, I couldn't begin to guess.  They branched out at all angles, with no farm houses or ranches in amongst them.  And, although the roads signs kept warning us to watch for cows and sheep, we saw a total of two ewes grazing, roadside, on the entire trip. They, along with my friend the dung beetle, represented the sum total of animal life that we'd seen in Croatia.


Although there's hope that we'll see more: the Lošinj archipelago, apparently, is home to gecko lizards and hosts over hundred dolphins in its surrounding waters.  And I was glad to read that, hostile though the terrain seemed at first glance, there are no poisonous reptiles on these islands.

Although the driving for Dennis and Brie was tedious and draining, Geoff and I had a pleasant break of it: with only one main road stretching across the island, there was no way to get lost. And, every once in a while, we'd round a bend and have a really extraordinary view.

I think this is the town of Veli Lošinj, which means "Big Village," located a little north of our Mali Lošinj, which
means "Small Village." A misnomer: Mali Lošinj grew to be quite a bit larger than its northern neighbor.

The tourist bureau on Mali Lošinj makes a big deal about the fragrances of the island. ("Let yourself go! See what it's like to be pampered by nature that has given Lošinj 1018 plant species - 939 are autochthonous and 230 are herbs...") Apparently "August is the month of oleander, loquat, and fig."  But all I smelled when we pulled into the parking lot was gorgeous, fragrant pine, from the needles crushed by our car tires. Indeed, the hotel is located in something of a pine forest. Mmmm...

But the trees were the last thing on the kids' mind as we unloaded our bags. Ella and Alex both remember very well all of the playgrounds and soft play areas that our last Kinderhotel had.  They were bouncing in place with anticipation as we took our glacial time unpacking the car.  But as soon as we burst into the lobby, Ella spied a mat with some oversized building blocks. "OKAY!" She said to herself, as in, Right! Let's get down to Business.  And in she dove, making a kid-sized castle by the time we'd received our room keys.

After extracting the young ones, we found our rooms.  I should say that this hotel is considerably larger than the last hotel that we visited, which could hold about 40 families, maximum.  I think this hotel has well over 500 rooms. And I should also say that our last hotel had ranked a full four smileys on the highly prestigious smiley rating system for Kinderhotels, and this hotel has only managed to scrape together a mere three smileys.

The reason for that became clear quite quickly. Ella was eager to find the Pino Club. Our last hotel had Smiley, a large yellow smily-face man, as its mascot; the Hotel Vespra, has Pino the pine tree holding court over the children's play area.  But, when we found Pino's club, it was clear that it was a set of recently converted conference room. Not a twisty slide or jungle gym in sight.  Awww....poor kids.

But the transparent disappointment that registered on the kids faces quickly turned back to anticipation as they found a ball pit and a counselor in one corner working on a painting project with the kids.  And, even better, all of the counselors spoke English quite well.  Alex (who seems to have designated himself Keeper of the Small Folk) and Joey and Kael disappeared into the balls, while Ella curled up with a paint brush.  Happy as they seemed, we decided to leave them for the half-hour before dinner while we continued our walk around the hotel grounds.

Surprisingly, especially since this is a child-based hotel, dinner doesn't start until 7:00, or, as I like to call it, bedtime.  So I guess we'll be trying something a little new this week.  Until then, Brie and Geoff and Dennis and I enjoyed our newfound freedom on the terrace, with a drink apiece and this lovely view of the sea.

Also, between the hotel and the sea, was a large playground, a mini-golf
course, several sport courts, and an enormous outdoor pool.
I think we'll be just fine.

Kael, when we came to fetch him.  Maybe
we should rethink the wisdom of
abandoning our children in foreign countries?
Naw.

The kids were all very happy when we went to pick them up.  The counselor invited us to join them after dinner for a kids' carnival-themed party: some of the children had made costumes this afternoon, apparently, but the counselors had made spares that our kids could wear.  I signed Ella up: something about that glint in her eye told me that trying to get her to bed on time would be futile, anyway.

Dinner was...overwhelming.  Not to press the point to much, but Dennis and I sort of missed our Kinderhotel of yore, where we had an assigned table in a quiet dining room, and our food was brought to us by a waitress who, each night, earnestly asked "and would you like the cream soup?"

We wanted the cream soup tonight; instead, we were faced with the largest buffet that I'd seen in a long time. I actually liked a lot of the food, once we managed to find the things that each of us wanted to eat.  Happily for some of us, it seems that plain noodles and chicken nuggets are always an option.  But Croatian food seems to feature large joints of meat and some interesting seafood.  Octopus and squid feature heavily.

After eating, the boys seemed to be ready for bed, and Ella, too, overstimulated as she was, started getting a little snappish.  But in the end Dennis and I decided that giving her some time away from the boys might be good for her, so I took her downstairs for the kiddie carnival.

Ella as Rapunzel

The counselors gave Ella a Rapunzel wig made out of streamers, and they whisked her away with the other excited children, while I settled in to watch.

Pino the Pine and St. Nicholas: our unlikely hosts for Carnival

Some cute costumes

It turned out that each child had to walk a catwalk in his costume in front of the audience. I have to say, this is the sort of thing that would have thrown me into cold sweats when I was eight, but Ella handled herself really well, throwing in a little skip as she took her place in line.  From there, they herded all of the kids into a dance party, where they did Croatian versions of Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes, the Macarena, and on and on.

It soon became clear that Ella still considered herself on stage, performing for all of the adults: she followed along as best as she could with all of the grace that she could muster.  At about 9:00, when I tapped her on her shoulder, she almost collapsed into my arms. "Mom! They've been making me dance all this time for all of these people! Do you think it's okay if I take a break?"

Since Ella was treating the evening as a performance, I shall, as well: I present to you, dutifully, recorded, ninety seconds of Pino's Mini Carnival and Disco.