Michael: "The headquarters from which we took the aforementioned day trip and basically lived in for a week was a nice little villa in Slano, Croatia. It was a really nice find by my mother-- it had beautiful views and generally was just a very comfortable place. However, the first thing that struck us as we were driving there was that the road was getting narrower and narrower. Soon enough it became clear to us that these roads were not designed for the Zeets family. It took some serious driving from my father and many held breaths from the passengers for us to finally reach our destination. Pictures can only begin to depict the fear that the narrow road causes.
We settled in very quickly at the new place, purchasing an internet stick that only gave us 1GB a day and quickly blowing through it as we Skyped, searched, and blogged to our content. There were three bedrooms for the six of us, a nice living room, and a patio--everything we could ask for. It also helps that we were closer to the sea than we were to the car, so we had ample opportunity to swim as well.
Keep in mind that while we took day trips from this location, they were often only about a half day or so and we usually still had evenings and morning to find things to do. This free time happened to be spent on things such as renting a boat and lazily driving around the bay. After a good ride around as a family, us kids anchored it out in the middle and snorkeled around the bay. And another day we picked up a jet ski. It was pretty expensive but it went about 40 mph, a terrifying speed to us newbies.
Swimming and boating certainly works up an appetite. Luckily, that never lasted long. About a 20-30 minute walk and we were in the town of Slano proper. We stocked up at the grocery store, and usually ate out there for dinner. Our favorite in particular was an unassuming restaurant called Maestral. We went there once on a whim and loved it-- the prices were great and the food was fantastic, earning its place as my favorite restaurant of the entire trip.
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| Danielle: "Incredible dessert we found at the market. Easy way to try eight different flavors." |
Nearing the end of our stay, we still had a handful of groceries left, so Matt and I cooked up a vegetarian meal to finish them off. I was quite impressed with how it turned out. We had a lot of potatoes, so we made fries and a twice baked potatoes and then we finished off the bread and tomatoes with some brochette. Excellently decent if I do say so myself.
Also one night we happened to find out about a folk festival that was going on while we were staying there (Note: If you are confused about the date, know that it is day.month.year in Croatia). It was interesting to see a bunch of traditional folk dances and hear traditional songs, but tough to follow along since we couldn't understand too much. The bad part was that the names of them were all on the tip of my tongues since I'd learned a lot of them from my Croatian classes, but I just couldn't quite remember them. Regardless, it was an interesting thing to see and a nice coincidence of timing.
On the final night in Slano we made use of Danielle's painting equipment that she brought and all painted the landscape outside our villa. I don't think I've painting that long or quite that patiently since I was a kid. As to be expected, Danielle's painting was leagues above the rest of ours. Whose was second best will forever remain a point of contention.
That's basically it for Slano. There are some miscellaneous photos of all of the guys with our Croatia jerseys on, some good shots of the sunset in the bay, but otherwise just some general group photos. Overall, we had a great time in Slano-- aside from the terrifying road, it was a great place to stay and we had a blast.
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