Camping Croatia

In July we went down to Aviano, Italy to visit some friends who used to live here in Germany with us. It was fun to just relax and visit our friends, but we did take advantage of their location as well. My friend Carrie and I got to go shopping in Nove where they make dinnerware for Lenox, Tiffany's, etc. and found some super fun dishes for a mere fraction of what they cost in the states! Tyler is scoffing at me even as I'm typing. His view is that I have still spent money I wouldn't have spent otherwise, but he doesn't understand the thrill of the hunt! It's a glorious thing to find such deals and then to have pretty dishes besides. I got a cake stand for 10 euro that I found later online for $180 dollars! It seriously warms my heart to think of it!

We also drove through Slovenia to Croatia for a couple of days of camping at a resort on the beach. The weather was perfect for the beach, but a little warm for camping. Some air conditioning would have been nice and the humidity was pretty fierce, but we had to travel economically so that I could buy my dishes! The above photo we took in a town called Pula on the tip of the Istrian peninsula. We aren't sure where Porter got the gangsta signs from.

This was Sawyer's first big trip and he was a good sport, although it didn't make for a real relaxing beach getaway or for good sleeping on the air mattress. He did love splashing in the pool though and it was warm enough that no little old ladies gave us a hard time for not having shoes on him.

Here are the kids after a rough day of playing on the beach and at the pool. The ocean is in the background at the end of this walkway.

As you can see the beach was fairly rocky. A bit of a shame for Porter, but Sophie and Briggs had fun swimming in the ocean. Sophie actually dove down and plucked a hermit crab off of a rock several feet under the water.

European camping is really quite nice. The campgrounds are not very private, but you usually camp on grass and they have nice facilities. This was a resort, so they had swimming pools, restaurants, gift shops, etc. But there seemed to be very few actual Croatians so it wasn't a real cultural trip to Croatia. We were mostly surrounded by Italians on vacation .