Bunnygoespop in Croatia

Ivo is a Croat bunny and a dear friend, whose parents happen to have a holiday home on an island in Croatia. So we decided to pop there. This is how we popped!

We sat in lvo’s car in Zürich, Ivo drove, and approximately 11 hours and 4 countries later, the rest of us woke up in Vir, a pretty island next to Zadar, Croatia.

Day 1: Trip to Zadar

We slept a bit more, then drove an hour to get to Zadar’s old town. After having a month of rain in Switzerland, Croatia with its blue skies and sun seemed like an alien beautiful world.

We had lunch at a hole in a wall in the old city- an unpretentious restaurant with great food and service (yes, ultra touristic places have them too).

Then a stroll through the old city, looking at some Roman ruins, getting some “meh” Croatian icecream and thirsting for some shade already, we made our way back to Vir, to the beach! Of course we bought an umbrella on the way. Sun, beautiful, what?

Day 2: Beach morning!

While American bunny and Croat bunny roasted in the sun to get some colour, Swiss bunny and Indian bunny huddled under the umbrella, played cards, made ugly sketches, flew the camera, took kickass pictures, and got out only to take some cool dips in the sea and bathroom breaks. OK the last two activities almost always coincided. We came back home to realize Archie, the corgi, had chewed up the blinds in frustration. The afternoon was full of fierce Braendi-dogging (a Swiss board game), the evening was a nice restaurant dinner and walk to another beach for a pretty sunset.

Day 3: more beach

The next day we set out to Zaton holiday resort, which has a very long strand of sand beach. We swam in the clear clear water, danced to a super loud aqua-aerobics class going on about a kilometer away from us, and saw fire planes pick up sea water to extinguish a rather large fire (it was very hot and dry). It was a nice day.

Day 4: Krka national park

We drove to a picturesque town called Skradin, and then took a ferry to the Krka national park. It is very much like Plitvice national park, just smaller, but much easier to access from Split or Zadar.

Day 5: Exploring Vir

The next day Swiss bunny and I walked all the way to the edge of the island, through forests full of wild blueberry and blackberry bushes and olive trees to end up at a nice castle and a much quieter beach than we had been hanging out at.

Shark seemed popular on all the menus we saw. It made me very very sad.

Day 6: “Sailing”!

We were going to go sailing to some islands from Zadar! It was all very exciting but as soon as we got on the sailboat, I had PTSD from our sailing trip in Greece (7 days of seasickness). But the sea was very calm and our boat pilot very lazy. So we were on motor almost the whole time and I didn’t feel sick at all. We swam in bays that were accessible only by boat, walked around the little island of Ošljak, and had dinner at an island called Ugljan, which seemed quite touristic, but everything was very pretty.

Day 7: Goodbye

Some work, some chores, a quick dip in the sea, and it was already time to say goodbye.

Final remarks: It was very beautiful- the mountains on the way, the sea, the colour of the water. But the place lacked soul. All menus were in English, everyone spoke English, and there was nothing really unique about the place. And yet it was a very nice holiday because its not the just the place that defines the holiday, its the people that one shares the experience with.

Our friends couldn’t be less like us. They made us take things slow and we pushed them to be more active (by the end we all knew what type of holiday we truly preferred) but the games we played were played with equal fierceness and the food we ate was enjoyed with equal gusto. Plus there was Archie, the corgi. It is impossible not to have a good time with him around.

A holiday isn’t just about what you do, its also about what you do not do. I feel incredibly lucky to have found a perfect partner for holidays, diving, and life and no, I am not talking about Archie, the corgi. Archie is perfect otherwise but not a great swimmer.

People maketh the holiday, not just the place.