On The Way...
Joe: "We were really anxious to start our trip. Matt had a slightly different flight schedule through Atlanta and met up with us in Paris. Deanne, Danielle, and I went from KC to Detroit to Paris to Zagreb. Once in Zagreb, we picked up our monstrous van that seats nine and made our way to Zadar. We were ecstatic to see the very tan Mikey. It was fun to drink wine and fumble through some conversation with his host family. In true Croatian fashion, she kept offering more wine. Once at the hotel we continued the drinking since we didn't get to celebrate his 21st birthday in the states."
Tour of Zadar - Courtesy of Mikey...
Michael: "Once my family had slept off the full day and night of traveling, I had the opportunity to give them a tour of the city that I had lived in for the past six weeks. It's the height of tourist season, so there was plenty going on in Stari Grad and more than I could possibly show them in just one day. We walked around, seeing street vendors, performers, churches, and all the other good jazz that I had grown used to."
Michael: "One thing that I made sure that we did was to climb the Church of St. Donat and get an awesome aerial view of the city. Danielle's camera has a panoramic setting, so we got a really cool sweeping panoramic view of the entire city. I'm still not a big fan of heights, but it was worth it to climb that tower to show it all to my family. Half of me almost forgot that most people aren't used to constantly living by the ocean."
Michael: "Speaking of the ocean, we spent a good amount of time just walking along the coast and enjoying the sea air. I showed them Zadar's sea organs, which was a great place to just sit down and rest our legs. We took plenty of pictures, so many that Matt just stopped turning towards the camera."
Michael: "However, somewhere along the way my mom realized that she lost one of her real gold earrings. We had been walking around so much that we had no idea where it might have gone. The only real hope that we had is that it fell off when she bought a hat and tried it on. As we were walking out of the city we took a run by the shops. My mother and I walked through the stalls and didn't see anything. We weren't too surprised-- it had been over two hours since it would have been lost. But just as we lost hope and were about to leave, Matt came up and held it up to her. Apparently it had fallen in some crack and stayed there for that entire time. It was a vacation miracle! To celebrate we had lunch where my family tried my beloved bureks and other pastries from different stalls."
Michael: "We stopped back at the hotel for some rest, as 12 hour plane rides tend to make people tired, but around dinner time we made our way back to Stari Grad. We went to a restaurant that one of my professors recommended but I never personally had the chance to go. It was a really good meal, but it was also just good to be eating with family again. We enjoyed some fine Dalmatian wine, some chicken, some pasta, some mussels, and good company."
Michael: "Afterwards I showed my family to the cool sights in Zadar at night, in particular the Pozdrav Sunce (directly translated to "Greetings to the Sun"). It's basically a panel that absorbs sunlight all throughout the day and then displays cool colors and patterns throughout the night. I never captured very good pictures of it, but Danielle managed to snag one at the perfect time."
Michael: "All in all, it was a very full day. My mother's and sister's pedometers were reading step counts upward of 22,000! All of us were beat by the end of it, but it was great to show everyone around and to begin my family vacation properly."
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