A few years had gone by since we had our last proper beach vacation. We all felt the buzz of anticipation for our trip to Croatia. When there’s a stereotype associated with a place, we wonder what it’s like to experience it in reality. Is it really like that? The general stereotype we’ve been exposed to of Croatia is people laying in pristine white bathing suits with a sunhat lounging on yachts or knowing it as “the place where they shot Game of Thrones.”
I can tell you we saw a lot of yachts. Out of all the yachts peppering the shoreline, I can’t help but wonder which one has its adaptation of Goldie Hawn’s Overboard going on. More people chose no suits of any kind rather than white bikini tops. We saw lots of Game of Thrones tours. Yet we experienced far more depth than the photo shopped images we all see on the internet. Our first stop of our wear-everything-in-white Croatian adventure was Dubrovnik. Golly gee, did it not disappoint.
Arriving in Dubrovnik
I need to preface our journey with a moment to pump up the suspense. Knowing it was our first time traveling to a country that didn’t have a common language like Italian, German, or English accounted for a lot of our anticipation. Would it be easy, difficult, overwhelming, confusing? We felt like, “this is it, we’re really traveling Europe now!” All be told, it felt pretty painless and anticlimactic in that sense. Because the Croatian language is rarely spoken, most popular towns had English proactively spoken. We still tried to say hi and thank you in Croatian!
Things got crazy once we landed in Dubrovnik. In theory, we understood that getting from the airport to the historic center is easy. You get in line for the shuttle bus and it has only two stops. So simple. You know nothing John Snow [Game of Thrones reference – when in Croatia ;)]. Once we got to the front of the line, the bus maxed its capacity. We had to wait 40 minutes for the next one. Keeping our spot in line and the kids entertained about maxed my capacity. If you ever traveled internationally, you’ll likely have had your own crazy line/queue experiences with people from some cultures.
When the new bus came, we boarded. Have you traveled to a country with the “coach bus” experience before? If not, let me set the scene. These are like retro 90s coach bus vibes. You have the fat TVs hanging from the wall, the curtains, the fabric designs. It’s like the super analog experience of bus rides. Naturally, we stared at Google Maps the whole time to track our journey. Have you all ever gotten that travel anxiety? Like, “I know I have four miles to go but I need to check my phone again in 30 seconds to make sure that we’re not about to reach our stop.” Repeat.
The Jason Bourne Bus Experience
Everything we read online said the bus makes two stops. When we got to our first stop (if you don’t count an impromptu one made before the real first one), the bus driver just stopped the bus. He didn’t announce anything, there wasn’t a clear sign that this was destination A. We weren’t sure if we had stopped or if he was taking a break from driving. Nobody got up. I was thinking, “Statistically we can’t be the only people getting off at Pile Gate. Maybe this isn’t a stop. Blah blah. But girl if you don’t figure this out you might realize this was the stop and then you’re going to be traveling back to this stop for who knows how long. With two kids. The women will always ask for directions – get it done!”
So, we asked a few other people if they knew if this was the Pile Gate stop. It was hard for us all to tell from Google Maps. No one knew. I go up and ask the bus driver. Everyone is still sitting on the bus. He doesn’t speak English (contrary to what I wrote above). He says something I don’t understand. We decide to get off because we felt like even if it wasn’t our stop, it would be close enough compared to the second official stop which was much farther away. As soon as we get off the bus, shit gets crazier.
Kevin realizes he left his phone on the bus. He starts sprinting after the bus and just yells back, “I left my phone on the bus, wait here.” I can’t tell you how many thoughts ran through my head in that matter of seconds, and also that scene in the original Jurassic Park where Lex (the blonde girl) freaks out and just keeps screaming, “He left us, HE LEFT US!” Kevin’s a great dad and partner – I never once thought he’d abandon us – the intensity of that moment of stepping off the bus to a country we just arrived in and having that happen, just blindsided me. But I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom and I made a plan.
After some time, I don’t know maybe 15 minutes, I decided to call his phone. He doesn’t answer. Shit! Shortly after though, Kevin called and told me he was in a taxi on his way back. I had so many questions! However, I couldn’t wait anymore and knew I needed something to do to preoccupy me and the kids. Everyone feels better with a purpose! I told Kevin we’d meet him at the rental. Dubrovnik historic center is incredibly safe and no cars are allowed in it, so it wasn’t anything I felt uncomfortable doing.
Once we met up, he told me he sprinted after the bus for a long time. Eventually he hailed a taxi. If you know Kevin well, I know you’re shaken right now realizing his athletic prowess has these limits. I was too. We can’t all be Jason Bourne. Anyways, once he got in the taxi, he said, “follow that bus!” Dang! He got to live out everyone’s dream of a heist and high-speed chase. The rest is history and I’m sure after paying for the taxi ride, we could’ve saved money and gotten a private transfer from the airport, life’s funny that way. Mom – if you’re reading this after your Capri bus experience, hopefully, you feel some solidarity here.
Touring Dubrovnik
Things settled down slightly for the rest of the trip. We splurged and stayed in the historic center of Dubrovnik. Our main reason for doing so was to reduce our commute time with the kids every day and let us savor the area. We did a guided walking tour which was informative and the kids did surprisingly well. We learned about the war with Yugoslavia in the 90s and how they restored parts of the damaged City and the areas they intentionally didn’t. Hearing about a relatively recent war (historically speaking) that took place in an area you are standing is sobering and I thought a lot about Ukraine.
We found the history of Dubrovnik’s republic fascinating. They value freedom above all else and would play in the favor of different competing trading powers in the same era to maintain their independence. They were one of the first countries to banish slavery in the 1400s. Fun fact, for the longest time, when their mayor was elected, the mayor could only hold office for one month. The idea was that it was just enough time to have them provide true service where it couldn’t benefit them or foster corruption. To top it off they weren’t allowed to leave the building where they stayed for their one-month term. It worked well according to the guide. Isn’t that crazy? One month terms!
One of the favorite things for the kids was filling our water bottles up at this massive fountain, and just wandering inside of the city walls.
Kayaking at Sunset
We scheduled a sunset kayak weeks before our trip. We showed up at the time listed in our email confirmation and they had left without us! First the phone on the bus and then the kayak fiasco – I was like what weird travel vortex did we get into? What happened was we booked our kayak earlier on in the summer (when sunset is later). They used the departure time they were using at the time we booked. However, weeks had gone by and sunset was now earlier so departure time was earlier. The system didn’t know to send us an update with a different arrival time if that makes sense. They were incredibly nice about it though. We could come back the next day for the sunset kayak and waived the cost of our excursion!
It’s still tough for a little kid to understand these complexities. So the day we missed the excursion, Lil Fox was upset and didn’t understand how it wasn’t our fault. Eventually, we worked through it and took them to a beach just outside the historic part of the city. They got to swim and play on the pebbly beach while the sun set. It made everyone happy. With that, we didn’t quite have time for a proper dinner so we fed the kids some leftover food we had from the day. After they went to bed, the real party started Kevin ran to get some highly-reviewed and cheap takeaway pizza for us adults to eat in bed.
Volunteering While Traveling
While planning the trip, I stumbled across Green Sea Safari non-profit. It basically allows you to volunteer and pick up trash along different islands around Dubrovnik. After collecting trash for a couple of hours, they boat you to a beach and then a blue grotto for some play. If you’ve read some of our other blog posts, you’ll know our kids love picking up trash and this felt like the perfect opportunity to do some good while being a tourist. It was really sad to see all the different types of trash in some of these island nooks. Cleaning it up felt good. Some people in our group found a message in a bottle, ha! The most fun was making a line of people to pass trash bags along the water to get them in the boat!
We think it would be amazing to have more experiences like this for tourists. We were a bit nervous if it would be manageable with young kids, and while we were the youngest family, it worked out okay. It was a pretty noncommercial experience and made us feel more connected to this beautiful place we visited.
Walking the Walls & City of Dubrovnik
One of the days we walked around the Walls of Dubrovnik. They were built in the 13th century, so surreal! It gave gorgeous views of the terracotta-looking roofs which were recently redone, making them pop even more. You could see people going on different Game of Thrones tours (a lot of the series was shot in Dubrovnik). We had never been to a place that had such history and no extreme signs of dilapidated aging. You can see this in some European cities. The walkways were white stone, the buildings were white. It looked very clean. Dubrovnik is probably one of the only places I haven’t gotten too disgusted by what is happening when Hedgehog chooses to just call it for the day.
As we walked through the old town one day, we witnessed a Croatian wedding. It was confusing at first because there was a crowd outside a church and people were waving flares and shouting. We didn’t know if some new global current events happened. Then we saw two people come out of the church waving Croatian and American flags, and shortly after that a couple in wedding attire. Very unique!
Another highlight of Dubrovnik was the honey brandy, called medovača. One of our traditions while exploring new places is picking something local to try, whether it’s cuisine or drink. This honey brandy is supposed to aid in digestion and tasted pretty good. I asked the lady in the store if I was supposed to drink it with anything since it’s higher alcohol content and she said to drink it straight. So we bought a bottle and rationed it for the few days we were there.
Another unique food we tried was an octopus burger, from Barba. Our Airbnb host recommended it as a great “healthy” fast food alternative. It’s mainly seafood based. The burger bun was huge, like twice as big as our patty! We didn’t know what to expect but it tasted good. The kids loved playing with the onion rings obviously.
We also visited the world’s first pharmacy. This was actually pretty beautiful inside the grounds. Lil Fox loves taking pictures and actually captured one of the sweetest pictures of Kevin and I below. It’s probably the nicest one we’ve taken since we’ve (I’ve) birthed children. It’s actually us making silly faces at each other, but is passable for romance and all that jazz.
Whew ~ it was a whirlwind first few days in Dubrovnik! After a few days in Dubrovnik we packed up and hit the water – on our ferry, no yacht for us – to head to Hvar where we had THE BEST kebab sandwich. Hope to send more pictures and stories of that soon!
On that note, we try to share the stressful, dramatic bits along with the highs of our experience abroad. We still want to feel relatable to you, and will be the first to admit we do not have it all figured out. A family value of ours is to have us all feel a little less lonely in being vulnerable. Life can be hard! In today’s world of social media, it can get easy to glamorize everything in life.
We are aware it might sound like we just make light of trials and tribulations (if only!), eat gelato, and are always enthralled with every minute of the day. Never a dull moment with the Swashbucklers! Wink, eye roll. You know nothing John Snow (had to bring it full circle)! The following picture hopefully shows no matter where you are in the world, letting kids be kids can still be occasionally boring for adults AND make us adults realize how excited we are for bedtime (ours haha).
Love to you all, until next time!
