Rainy Croatia

June 1st--We left our Venice apartment at 7:00 a.m. to cross the many bridges (with 4 suitcases) in order to get to the vaporetto stop by 7:30. We boarded the 45 minute vaporetto to the Marco Polo airport in Venice. Once arriving at the airport, we checked our luggage, turned in our tax refund forms, and got some breakfast before our flight. We boarded our flight via the tarmac. We took a bus from the terminal to the plane and when we stepped off the bus and I saw that the plane was small and had propellers, I thought I was going to stroke out. While my fear of flying has improved, it has by no means gone away. It was a small plane that took us to Budapest, Hungary, but we arrived safely and early too. We had about an hour before our next flight so we ate lunch. We then boarded another plane again in the same fashion as before except this time the plane was a little bigger. Still not big enough for me though. Anyway, we sat on the plane for a while before taking off. It started raining in Budapest and then when we landed in Split, Croatia, it was raining pretty heavily. The owner of the apartment we had rented, Denis, was waiting for us at the airport. He drove us to the apartment and was very helpful. He provided us with some drinks, maps, and told us where a local grocery store was located. The apartment is great because it sits right on the water (with awesome views) and has a swimming pool. It is a larger house that has been divided into about 6 apartments that all share the pool and water front. After settling in and realizing the rain was not going to let up, we all decided to walk to the grocery store because we had nothing to eat. The apartment is located in a small village area that has a nearby campsite and therefore a very small grocery store that is about .5 miles from the apartment. About 3/4 of the way to the market, the kids and I decided to head back to the apartment. It was raining so hard we were having a hard time making it and knew that it would be even harder to walk back with groceries. So, Mike just headed to the store. By the time, the kids and I got back to the apartment, our pants were soaked up to our knees and we could pour the water out of our shoes. Mike arrived back with some groceries right about the time the rain was letting up a little bit. It finally stopped raining long enough that the kids played outside for a little bit before dinner. We ate dinner and early to bed. As we were going to bed, it had started raining again and pretty much stormed all throughout the night.

June 2nd--We woke up to more rain and clouds this morning. We just hung out in the apartment in the morning until Denis stopped by about 11:30 letting us know that he would be heading into town (Trogir) about 1:00 and we could go with him. He said he would be there about an hour and we figured that we could find some food for lunch and maybe a larger grocery store. Also, since the weather was so wet, we had thought that we might need to rent a car to go exploring in case we weren't able to enjoy the pool and beach this week. We asked Denis if he could take us to the Split airport and he mentioned that there were many rental car agencies in Trogir. So when Denis picked us up, he mentioned that he needed to stop off for an errand in Trogir. That was fine with us since he was the one driving, although we wondered why he wasn’t just letting us off in the town. When Denis got back in the car, he drove us back to the airport. It was funny though because with a language barrier we weren't exactly sure where he was taking us. We thought we were just going into town until we arrived at the airport. He basically dropped us off there and said "have a good day!" Mike and I looked at each like "hope they have a car to rent" because we certainly hadn't called ahead to check. Luckily, Hertz did have a car to rent and off we went back into Trogir. It turned out great because we could go exploring on our own time. By this point the rain had stopped and it was just cool and cloudy. We went into the town of Trogir and ate a wonderful lunch around the fruit/vegetable market area. Mike and I had Kabasica (a Serbian sausage) in pita bread. It was a nice change from the Italian food over the last 6 weeks. We then walked into the old town of Trogir...saw a lot of boats, a castle, and church. Then, we went to the bigger grocery store in Trogir to stock up for the week. We are hoping for better weather tomorrow...it’s supposed to be sunny. The apartment has a huge outdoor wood burning oven and a German couple who are also staying here were grilling on it tonight. It smelled great!! We bought some food for grilling and are looking forward to grilling out.