Banana Split

Wednesday 9th October:

We awoke in the morning to a glorious day and was presented with 4 delicious bread buns from the owner at Camping Lika. What a lovely gesture! He was so nice and told us we could stay or leave whenever we liked and there was no rush. He knew we wanted to leave that day but it was still so nice of him to be relaxed about the timing of our departure. The only downside I found (and I mean it’s only a small thing and never bothered me or my husband) was that there was a cockroach on the table in the shower block. Thankfully it stayed on the table and never entered my cubicle otherwise I think this would have been an entirely different comment! There was also a huge spider in the other block, right in the corner of the door so I stayed away from there seeing as I have terrible arachnophobia.

We said our goodbyes and carried on our route towards Split. The drive was epic as we had no idea just had varied the Croatian landscape was until now. We could see miles and miles of plains and hills that made us feel we were Africa. The hills turned into mountains and we were just amazed by the sheer beauty of it all. This was not how we had envisioned Croatia at all; of course we knew it was supposed to be stunning but we had only ever heard of the coastline being so beautiful. However, it seems the majority of Croatia is breathtaking too so if you’re ever there, don’t hesitate to venture in land to see the diversity of it.

We stopped in a campsite just outside of Split’s centre called Camping Strobec. The campsite was big and beautiful with all the facilities you needed including a playground, shop, bar, leisure centre and restaurant. It even had its own stony beach! I don’t usually like stony beaches but this was beautiful and our little girl loved having it right on our doorstep.

You could easily get into the centre of Split via the bus too so it was perfect. The showers however, seemed a little odd at first as you only had 7mins of shower time BUT you could have 7 showers a day. Bizarre I know, but it turned out to be just enough time even with my long hair! I would have needed to go out and press my cubicle button for a second time though if I needed to shave as well but I left my ‘shaving days’ for when I didn’t need to wash my hair therefore I never needed to get out.

We went and put a wash load on before going to the restaurant to have some dinner. I was immediately thrown back into my childhood when I saw they had banana split on the menu and so of course I had to order one after having eaten my pizza. It was huge with lots of squirty cream piled on top and the little ones shared great delight in helping me to eat it all, choosing their favourite bits. We went to get our clothes from the dryer only to find that the clothes were still wet! “Here we go again” I thought but we decided to go to reception and complain after seeing that the same thing had happened to someone else. The receptionist was helpful though and gave us a free dry again so this time I stayed with it to watch what was happening. It turns out that the drying time starts at 50% and it goes down very very quickly. So quickly in fact that the dryer finished after the space of 10 minutes as opposed to the 45 mins that the receptionist told us we would have. Luckily our clothes only needed 10 more minutes it seemed.

The next day (10th) we caught the bus into Split and headed straight into the markets where we bought some more fruit; it was all so cheap and I just love the atmosphere of markets. You have to love helping the local community too don’t you- I prefer to buy my produce without all that packaging and chemicals on it but markets seem to be far and few between these days in the U.K. which is a shame. We walked through some of the old town and out towards the coast line where we followed it around to a park. Of course! There was going to be a park somewhere wasn’t there! We were all in love with the place and absolutely loved walking around the old town with its narrow streets and old architecture.

We walked back towards it after the kids had finished their play session and weaved our way around when we got to a rude bunch of people trying to have their photograph taken on the stairway entrance. It held a lot of people up and it was slow going trying to get past especially when you have a pushchair and then to make matters worse they kept yelling at people to go around because they/we were in the way of their photo taking! My husband grew very angry at this and decided to go and photobomb their picture! It was absolutely hilarious watching him stand at the back of them (he’s a tall man) and smiling, totally oblivious to the people in the group and the photographer. And then!! And then, to top that off he then walks right through the middle of them before jumping down just as the photographer took his shot! A chorus of moaning filled the air but here I was laughing at the audacity of my husband.

We walked back towards the coast and bought ourselves some ice cream which was absolutely amazing; mine was apple and reminded me of the sour apple sweets I used to eat as a child. Mmm, delicious.

It then came to our attention that our son had exploded in his nappy and the contents of which had now seeped through his shorts and onto the pushchair. It was time to go back. We bought our little girl the fishing net she had her eyes on when we first stepped off the bus and then went to go and wait for the bus. It seems we had just missed one and had to wait for 30/40mins or so. Great! I could see the contents of our son’s nappy through his shorts and I was just praying it would not ooze out completely. We debated on going to find a toilet in which to change him but we didn’t want to miss another bus and so we waited. Luckily the bus turned up and we managed to get on even though it was packed. Again, I prayed no one could smell him but as my husband rightly told me, so what if they could, there was nothing we could do about it. A lovely lady, (who at first looked like we had just done something vulgar) then did the most lovely gesture of all by picking up our little girl and placing her on her lap. It was a very kind thing to do and even managed to make the lady smile, just a little. The doors were bloody scary though as they opened rapidly and slammed just as quick that you would soon know about it if you were too close to them. The bus driver was also very nice and helped my husband when he couldn’t remember the name of our campsite and even told us when to get off. She even waved and smiled lots at our little ones before driving on.

We got off the bus and walked back to the campsite so we could wash our son clean and have him smelling lovely once again. Unfortunately the baby bath itself was full of poo from whomever had previously done the same thing. We didn’t want to use it so instead we washed him in the sink all whilst he screamed his little head off. All fresh once again we started to make our way back to our van when the same flying creature I saw earlier caught my eye. I had no idea what it was previously as it flew so fast but this time we managed to watch it properly. It looked like a miniature hummingbird and it was super fast as it flew from flower to flower making it very difficult for me to snap a picture of it so instead I did my best to record it. I looked it up on google once we were back in the van and it happens to be a ‘hummingbird hawk moth’ so in essence we were sort of right about the hummingbird. It was a beautiful little insect and we couldn’t help but watch it do it’s duties every time we saw one. If you’ve never seen one then do look them up or watch the video below- they are fascinating things and believed to be a good omen as a small swarm of them was seen crossing the Channel on D-Day in 1944. I then managed to take the pushchair cover off and go and hand wash it which took forever as I couldn’t for the life of me get the washing detergent fully out of it BUT it was clean and no longer smelt like poo! Hooray.