HR=Croatia

Croatia started out alittle rough with us being sick, and the first place we rented was like a cold steam room, but with each place we went, things got better. We left Rovinj in a rental car and took a winding road along the ocean and through many tunnels to Zadar-a walled city with a sea organ and many churches.  The apartment there was recently remodeled, and felt much more homey than Rovinj.  The owner brought S some chocolate and I saved it rationing small pieces to him not knowing that all older people in Croatia use chocolate as their best used tool with kids. Everywhere we go I turn away for a minute only to look back and see S with chocolate. He happily tells me "that lady/man gave me chocolate."  What can ya do? Our little H usually gets in on it too. J and I laugh that S didn't know what candy was until he was over 2, but not this girl. We've eaten our share of pizza since we've been over here, and I can't seem to get over the observation that all the locals put ketchup on their pizza.  Zadar was nice but it rained and not much was open except churches. We hit the parks and just let the kids get wet.  Just fyi-I loved swiss air, they were great with the kids, their food wasn't bad, and you get swiss chocolate on your way off the plane. The sun was bright the day we left Zadar and the bus ride to Split was hard, because whatever bug we had was getting worse not better. I could hardly pull a wheeled bag and carry H. Split was so different than any other town we had been in Croatia,  there were Attractive people...I don't know how many times we approached someone to ask directions thinking we were asking a man only to get face to face with a woman. Haha. Split was full of young people with kids and babies. H loves babies right now, so as we walked she keeps saying "baby!" H and I rested for 2 days before I felt like I could walk much. We walked some beaches, watched excavators, checked out some churches and museums. J and S climbed the bell tower in the Diocletian palace. S was scared to come down because he thought the bells were going to ring right next to him. H has been putting everything in her mouth, which makes us cringe, but I can't carry her all the time.  It's nice to hear bells every half hour, most of them stopped after 9 pm, except here in Kotor, Montenegro.  We thought Split was our favorite until we got to Dubrovnik. It's another walled city, but so incredible-the history, buildings, bays, museums, people. We saw our first live starfish, walked the walls, S met a friend named Mary, from Nottingham, and we hiked 506 steps home to our apartment. The best place we stayed, the owners served us fresh lemonade fromher lemons in her garden, her son takes care of the apartments and was ever so helpful to get us whatever we needed. He offered to have his mom do our laundry, and she gave us some homemade candied lemon peels to take when we left.  They spoke just a little English but enough to know they didn't want to talk about certain parts of the war-their house was hit and he showed us where there was still shrapnel embedded in some of his walls he planned to fix.  We had a magnificent view of the ocean from our room and of the city. I haven't figured out how to do pictures fromhere yet, so be patient, I'll keep trying.  Oh, and H got bit by a dog in Dubrovnik,  she is fine, the police made a report and wanted to take care of us but the officer didn't speak English,  so we had an interpreter.  We are so blessed, it could have been much worse. I'm thankful it looks like a scratch, even though it's on her nose. We came to Montenegro 2 days ago and hiked a mountain to a castle/fort yesterday after it had hailed hard in the morning,  some places there were 3 inches of accumulated hail.  The beauty of this place reminds me of home. As I've traveled, I keep thinking "this is neat, or this is beautiful, but it's just not as good or as beautiful, or as wild, as Idaho. I love my home and could be content to never leave my familiar things again.