Blog

This was the destination. Wherever else we got to we had to make it to Venice.

We left Croatia and whizzed through Slovenia, crossing the border we knew we needed a vignette, with heavy penalties for not getting one but we were only in the country for about 30 minutes and reached the border to Italy before we saw a shop – oops. Slovenia is dubbed the green country and you can see why, it’s really lush, so guess it must get a bit of rain but not today, scorching temperature!

Italy was definitely the destination we were all excited about, I’m not sure why, football has something to do with it for one person, for another maybe it’s the lasagne & pizza, for another it’s the crazy driving and horn blaring and for another it’s perhaps the glamour and beautiful people. I’ll let you work out which is which!

So a bit of a trek for this leg but we figured as Venice & Tuscany were the main event we may as well get on with it.

We’d found a perfect site within walking distance of a ferry port to Venice so seemed ideal, we’d get set up and then first thing head into Venice with no drama. It was odd that the journey seemed to take longer than expected and we passed Venice when I could have sworn we’d opted for north of Venice. All explained when we checked in and were told we were at the wrong Miramar. Why would you have 2 campsites with the same name in the same city? It was too much faff to head back north so we stayed put. This Miramar was a slightly different experience, more holiday camp than we’d planned but the boys were happy so all good. I had a night off, hanging out in the van reading a book whilst the boys headed to a foam party on the beach with DJ and fireworks.

Finally the day for Venice arrived. We were about an hour away and had worked out the local bus would take us straight to Piazzale Roma. It was a great bus, we really are sold short with our public transport!

Venice was just fabulous, everything about it was as you see in all the books & films. It surpassed all expectations. I think I’ve found my all time favourite place.

We took so many pictures to try to capture the overwhelming beauty of the place but they won’t do it justice. Somehow Venice just captures an age and moment in time that inspires your imagination and you get a feel for what it would have been like living in the time of the great artists and poets, wandering through the streets and canals.

A few things we covered:

A boat – loads of options, we debated gondola or taxi & opted for the James Bond version. Has to be done.

St Mark’s Square, obviously, can’t do Venice without this one. We did the Camponile de St Marco, gearing ourselves up for a massive climb and were almost disappointed when it was a lift to the top. The views were just stunning!

Coffee, ice cream, pasta – everyone says it’s crazy expensive but we didn’t think so. I’m sure if you park yourself in the cafes around St Marks outside the Armani shop then it will be pretty pricey but we had lunch for 4, couple of drinks each (including rose) and ice cream for the boys for less than £40.

Exploring the side streets is a must, it would be easy to stick to the standard tourist trail and follow the crowds but every little alleyway and side street has something fascinating to see.

After a few hours wandering around we decided to head back. The image below is the bus timetable. The tiny little gap on the bottom row is showing that despite it being a great service, every half hour, like clockwork there is one day in the year where the bus to our campsite doesn’t run that far for about 3 hours & yes of course we managed to find that sweet spot!

After a few very confusing conversations with bus drivers & passengers with a bit of a grasp of English trying to help we managed to find a bus that would take us to the next village & we’d figure it out from there. I did hope the reason for the bus not running was some kind of spectacular local carnival that we’d happily walk with to get back to base, but no such luck. That was a long walk home!!

A relaxing night and a tiny stroll along the beach with Bobs to see the big red moon before an early night on easily one of my best days of the holiday, if not ever. Onto plans for the next day..

The drive south through Croatia was just stunning. Most countries you see beautiful vistas mixed in with a bit of industry and less than spectacular views but not Croatia. You are just treated to mile after mile of stunning scenery from towering mountains, quaint villages to breathtaking sea views.

We arrived at our next stop and were greeted by the splendid entrance to the belvedere holiday camp. It certainly felt luxurious and the type of place you’d want to hang out for a few days. We had 4 nights by the sea booked with a perfect view of the bay.

The site was great, a lovely pool, a small pebble beach, playground, swimming pool, water park, plenty of places to eat, a deli and some evening entertainment but more the live band gently playing than the usual holiday camp fare, so generally a great place to relax.

We pottered around the park, alternating between the sea and the pool, chilling & relaxing. One excursion to the famous blue lagoon. Bit of communication error, Si & Tom claimed to have booked a morning boat trip with 3 stops to explore a lagoon, a little village and a secret beach. Sounded perfect and perfectly suited to our non existent attention spans. So it was a bit of a surprise when at the first stop the boat pilot said ‘see you at 2.00’, oh 3 hours on one beach? We could have done that back at base but hey it was a nice beach and the boys loved the boat ride.

We ended up staying an extra night so we could fit in split, seemed crazy to come this far down Croatia and not take in the beautiful split.

So glad we did, it’s unbelievably beautiful, so unusual and the way the city has weaved its way into the old structure is fabulous. Mysterious little alleyways open out into grand squares with sneaky peeks of the brilliant blue med.

It was seriously hot so we didn’t hang around too long, easily 40 degrees.

A load of pics that try to capture how fab it all is. Spot the GOT money shot and which boy is having good luck for touching big Ninski’s toe…

After the heat of split we decided to head up into the mountains to Kliss fortress to cool down. Another location for Game of Thrones but it’s hard to avoid that from what we could gather. Stunning view regardless of the GOT ref. It was cash only to get into the fortress & we’ve been a bit useless with having cash so we enjoyed the view, which was incredible enough to make the drive worth it.

After a lazy few days and some great little trips we headed north. Making up for the mess up with Plitvic we headed for Krka national park and wow, so glad we did. Beats any other park we’ve been to, just unbelievably beautiful. Apparently Plitvic is quite rigid about where you can walk and you definitely can’t swim in the lakes. Krka is pretty relaxed and although there are wooden paths to follow you can go where you like. I imagine that will change, it can’t be good for the place to have 000’s of tourists trampling all over it every day.

You could easily spend a day or more exploring different areas of the park, there’s so much to see and do. We had someone with tired little legs so stayed on the gentle tourist trail, though that was a bit taxing in parts, again 40+ degrees so dripping with sweat!

A picture paints a thousand words so here’s some…

One more night in Croatia in a lovely little site, near the Slovenia border. Even here at a random stop we discover we’re staying in the hometown of Croatia’s Beatrix Potter, Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, and had a view of Mount Klek which inspired her stories of mythical creatures.

(And no we didn’t pinch that corn from the field next door, as tempting as that may be!)

Finally the temperature dropped as we moved north and even a bit of rain before heading off to Italy.

The next leg of our journey took us past Zagreb so we couldn’t miss the opportunity to visit the capital.

In our minds this would be a coffee drinking adventure, slowly meandering from one street cafe to another, chatting to locals and soaking up the atmosphere. Obviously the reality was a little different.

One of the additional challenges we have with finding city centre parking is a trailer with 4 bikes making the van very long, and pretty tricky to squeeze in to on street parking and it’s also just too high for most car parks which seem to have height barriers around here. So after what felt like an hour of searching we found a space that worked outside the police station.

Zagreb is impressive and definitely worth spending more than a couple of hours exploring.

We did manage to make it for coffee, though Ollie announced he needed lasagne and as it had been a few days since he’d eaten anything other than cereal and jam sandwiches it seemed like a good idea. Tom of course had to join in with pizza so a quick coffee stop turned into a full lunch stop.

And yes that is a gravy boat with ketchup.

We managed to do a bit of sightseeing, the market was usual bags, scarves & flip flops (I know someone that would suit very well 😉 JD). The cathedral is massive, the tallest building in Croatia.

Another tram trip back to the van (we are accomplished tram travellers now) and we’re on our way again.

Plitvic lakes national parks next stop, our campsite was something else. Part of the national park it was stunning. Lagoons and wooden bridges between the different areas of the site.

Crazy golf for the boys

A giant hammock over the lagoon to just lie on and study the water underneath or the forest canopy above.

And open air cinema to complete the chilled out bliss of this site. If we’d known how special it was we’d have done more than a stopover!

Early start the next day. Throwing everything in the van to get to Plitvic lakes. You really need to book 2 days in advance with one hour time slots but we hadn’t planned that far ahead, live availability was showing a few hundred tickets available at 9.00 so off we sped. It turns out a few hundred tickets isn’t enough so we gave up on Plitvic and headed south!

Hi it’s Tom There was a gigantic water park at the first campsite which apparently was one of the biggest water parks in Croatia which I don’t believe even though it was really quite big. By the way I did go on those really big slides but we filmed it on the go pro not the phone.

D- it was full but not too busy that you couldn’t get on a ride in a few minutes.

M-I thought it was very clean and every one was really kind and there was a really good view behind the water park. It was really luxurious and it was a nice place to stay there was even a horizon bar.

Back to NK – after a couple of nights chilling here and about 15 attempts to do some washing (a family had bagged every washer for 2 days to wash everything in 3 caravans including curtains & rugs – reckon they’d found a way to use washer for nowt 😁). We headed off further into Croatia.

What did you think of Austria?

T – good, fat (that’s a new way of saying good apparently).

What did you like best?

O – the boats on the lake, the train & the tram.

That’s all I can get out of them. Tom has promised to take over the blog from Croatia onwards – we’ll see!

We decided to try our skills at navigating a train into Vienna instead of packing the van up & finding parking etc.

There was a little train station a few minutes walk from the site, so off we trot. Not a great start with Ollie moaning about how far he’s had to walk after about 1 minute but the idea of a train ride kept him going.

Google maps really have been massively helpful, I can’t imagine getting where we’ve got to using fold out maps and travel guides! So according to our trusty google the train would come at 33 minutes past the hour, we’d change after 4 stops with 10 mins in between to figure out the platform we needed & then 30 mins into Vienna central.

After a slight hiccup of getting on the wrong train (but it says 10:33 and it’s only 10:25 so I don’t think this is the right train 🙄) we managed to jump off the wrong train and onto the right one after one stop without too much yelling.

‘Yes Ollie that’s the station we were at a few minutes ago’.

Very impressive how well kept the old train was, commuters in Austria are clearly better behaved than in the UK.

We changed trains and much to everyone’s delight jumped on to a DOUBLE DECKER TRAIN.

Into Vienna, even Tom was moaning about walking now. I had assumed we’d be spoilt for choice with pavement cafes galore but nothing to be found. After about 40 minutes walking to the centre (turns out central station isn’t very central) we ended up at the old faithful, not really what I had in mind but did the job.

We then worked out that the trams were hop on, hop off & the ticket we’d got for the train covered us for tram travel so managed to cover a few streets in comfort without any moaning.

Hopped off at Mozart’s monument where Tom announced he felt sick (at least explained all the whinging!)

Managed to persuade him to sit in the garden whilst I pretended to be a tourist for about 4 minutes, quickly taking photos of random buildings that looked impressive before finally admitting defeat and doing the journey in reverse.

Back to base for early afternoon, turns out he had a temp of about 102 and slept until the next day. Sorry Tom, he’s fine now!