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Our two weeks in Croatia have been an amazing contradiction of beauty and destruction. The people and the natural sights here are top notch, but the Serbian-Croatian war is not too far in the past and the remnants are visible everywhere. Our time at the Plitvice Lakes was breathtaking. We hiked for 3 straight days. The blue green of the lakes was amazing and the water was crystal clear.
Many families in the area have taken to rebuilding their homes following the war and converting them into guest houses. The owner of the guest house we stayed in, House Tina, told us her own family's story of evacuating during the war years and waiting to return to reopen the family B&B that her parents ran during her childhood. The parts of the country that were the most surprising were the ones that seemed to have leapfrogged over the past few decades and into 2012. We walked into a Plodine, a local supermarket, that I would have gladly taken over our neighborhood King Soopers, coffee bar and all. Right next to the grocery store though there was absolute devastation from fighting.
We moved seaside to the most amazingly quaint villages. We stayed in Split, but along the way stopped in beautiful Zadar meeting our new friends Alda and Nado. Add daytrips to Brac and Trogir to the list and all in all we hit enough towns along the coast to get the idea that they were all breathtaking. From sitting in a plaza on a Sunday afternoon dining and watching the locals come from mass to enjoy time with their families to walking along the rocky beaches of the Adriatic in unusually warm weather it was heaven. We had heard so much about the island, Hvar, but due to the offseason only a few ferries were running. We missed the last one of the day by minutes and took one instead to Brac, which didn't disappoint. We wandered to a beach where the girls caught snails all afternoon and Anthony and I napped. As an added bonus I don't think anyone will ever forget the ferry ride back to Split where we sat next to the Tony Soprano of Croatia and his young thing.
Amy
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