Travel weekend

First things first: Travel weekends will probably never be fun. That said, it has to be done if you want to see a lot of different things in the world.

Either way, we did pretty well packing most everything on Friday and loading it in the trailer, leaving just essentials like bathroom stuff for Saturday morning.

Since Venice was directly on the way to Italy, we planned to say goodbye to Croatia at 5am. Now, if you know us you’ll know that we are ALWAYS late. Like not in a crazy, rude way of being 2 hours late, but mostly 20 or 30 minutes or so. It just seems like no matter what we do we end up getting everybody out of the door 30 minutes too late. Now, why don’t we just start 30 minutes earlier then? Been there and tried that, doesn’t work.

So you can imagine my surprise when we actually were ready and good to go at 4.30am! Wow, we would have extra time in Venice, yay!

So we started our trip and said bye to Croatia – only to be stopped at the ONLY bridge leaving the island like 15 minutes later. Due to the heavy north wind called “Bora”, the bridge was on total lockdown for all cars with trailers in fear of them being blown off of the bridge.

Great. So much for our head start. After a bunch of calls with authorities we found out that while the “Bora” being so strong that the bridge has to close is a very, very rare thing, the wind does what it wants, appears and disappears within seconds, and can last anywhere from a day to a week. So our chances of the bridge opening again were slim at best.

We checked with Airbnb about what to do now and while still in the middle of that, the bridge actually opened back up at 9am – this is now 4 hours later than our planned leaving time – and Chris decided to risk it.

Now, I have been scared in my life. I mean I have a phobia of flying, we have 3 kids, they get sick, things in life happen, etc. I’ve been scared. On several occasions a lot.

But I have rarely been scared as much as I was on that bridge. I was 100% convinced the wind would blow us off that bridge right against a cliff or straight into the ocean, neither of which seemed to be a great option. The trailer was being pushed and pulled by that wind like you wouldn’t believe. And after the bridge followed – more bridges! And the wind wasn’t even constant but came in those weird waves that just caught you off guard. I have no idea how in the world all three kids were as calm as a bug just playing on the switch or watching movies. I was the only one hyperventilating, crying, and screaming. That was not something I ever want to do again. Crazy scary. So people – if the Krk bridge should ever lockdown on you, stay a while. Get cozy. Enjoy the island for a while longer.

After my severe panic attack, we were on our way to Italy, obviously 4 hours behind schedule. We still tried to squeeze Venice in, but because it was a beautiful day finding parking was a disaster, and – long story short – we wouldn’t have made it to our next Airbnb house in time. So sadly we had to leave without seeing it. We hope we can find a free weekend day to try again.

Italy though is awesome. Sommer is still going on here in November and all the tourists are gone. Yes, they are hanging up Christmas lights all around the city, but you wouldn’t know looking at the kids jumping around in the ocean waves in their swimsuits. We are all actually catching a tan! In November! Ha! Did I mention yet how much I love this?

So now to a week of school, some sights, and planning what we want to see and do here in the next three weeks.

Ciao Italia! E bello rivederti!