Day 9 - Goodbye Italia, Hello Croatia!

Today was our last day in Italy! We got up fairly early in the morning and packed our bags and made sure the house was in order.

Ali quickly whipped out to find a dress she had seen but it didn’t exist anymore so she gave up. We did some last minute souvenir shopping.

We waited for our transfer back to the airport.

We had a phone call saying that our airport transfer was running 20-30 minutes late, so we stayed inside a bit longer. We then lugged all our luggage down to the ground floor where we waited. We were getting a bit nervous because we have realised on this trip that everything takes a lot longer with kids, and we were flying with Vueling which according to google seems to be crappy like JetStar and very strict about being late.

Eventually Auke called the lady again and she said the driver was just two minutes away so we waited a bit longer. Another ten minutes later Ali called the lady asking where on earth the driver was. Finally he arrived 42 minutes late!!

We had an uneventful trip to the airport. We arrived at the Vueling airport counter and immediately Ali spotted a girl crying and her mother waving her airline ticket at the staff and yelling and frantically making phone calls. She then reluctantly pulled out her credit card and re-booked a flight. This just added to the anxiety around flying with Vueling.

Thankfully, we had no dramas at all. We managed to skip massive lines of queues as we had priority check in due to having a family. We checked in the luggage, went through security and headed upstairs where we tried Italian Macdonalds. In the girl’s Happy Meal boxes, it comes with a little Parmigan cheese piece which gave it a very Italian feel. Auke also got his last piece of Italian pizza.

We actually had plenty of time to spare, so we took our time eating lunch. A local woman who worked at the airport joined our table for lunch, and asked what we thought of Italy. We said we thought it was really nice that everyone was so friendly to kids - giving up metro seats, letting us use staff exits and priority lanes etc. She said they are very good for children, but also it is because we have 3 kids. She said she also had 3 kids but everyone else only has 1 or sometimes 2.

Eventually we decided to head to our gate. Turns out it was the furtherest gate away possible - and what we thought was security that we had gone through was only one part of it. We made the giant trek to the opposite end of the airport and went through security (again). By this stage we were arriving at our plane way past boarding time, but they were running late. Our flight ended up leaving 40 minutes late!

On the flight, Titus was a bit cranky which kept Ali on her toes. Finally he fell asleep and Ali had some time to appreciate the pretty views coming into Split, Croatia.

The landing was so incredibly fast that someone screamed. Ali thought it was nothing worse than what she had already experienced, until she realised we were quickly running out of run way. At that moment the pilot must have also realised and slammed on the brakes throwing everyone back into their seats. It was definitely memorable!

Once in Split, we found our driver to take us to Zadar. We decided not to stay in the super touristy parts of Croatia, but instead opted for some more child-friendly places. We loaded our luggage in and off we went. Despite landing really late due to the plane leaving late, we arrived at our accommodation at the same time as expected because the driver decided to take the toll roads instead of the road that follows the sea. He seemed nice, and could speak English really well (neither of our Italian drivers could speak English). He said people in italy and France generally don’t try to learn English, but the rest of Europe do try!

At our accommodation, we dropped off our suitcases and then headed out to get some groceries. It was here Auke found some Negro lollies (which by the way are disgusting and taste like cough lollies). We also found that they sell a Lindt chocolate spread like Nutella but we didn’t try it. Their watermelons are giant here but it doesn’t show up on the picture very well.

We headed home and had 2 minute noodles/pasta for dinner (healthy!) and got the kids to bed as it was really late at this stage (nearly 10pm). Our new apartment was nice but the air conditioner looked like it was from the dark ages and didn’t seem to be doing much at all. We have since learnt that if you keep it on 24/7 that it does make a difference - it just didn’t help much for our first night! We crashed into our beds which were super comfy and went to sleep.