Boats and Islands.

The coastline here is pretty much sprinkled with small islands, so when it comes to the "What to do around Dubrovnik" tips you find in books and on the internet, it usually involves boats.

We booked a small boattrip around Lokrum. On Lokrum, there´s almost nothing, except for pine trees, lots of pine trees, and a small monastry.

This is a text from 1151, from a bishop about the ownership of the island, and I loved to be in the same room as a piece of script that´s almost 1000 years old.

And there are caves, and people jumping off cliffs.

I liked how the boat looked.


And I liked how my girls looked:


They also rent pedal boats with a slide on top over here, and we used it to bribe our kids into not fighting when cleaning the table, so we´d rent one if they behaved nicely.


It gave me nightmares, though. The idea is - you pedal out really far, and then slide off into the water. My girls are superb swimmers, and I let them do whatever they want when it comes to water, because not only can they swim, but they are responsible judges of their own abilities. I can trust them to be save.

Which can not be said about my boys. They can swim... sort of.
 

And they always believe they can swim to... yeah, that island is not really far away, is it?


See those two small dots?

That´s Tim and Miro. Tim swam with him, but it still made me nervous.

Also, I was scared the whole time one would end up under the boat while I was watching the other, so I guess I spoiled their super cool slidey-boat trip for them. But I felt a lot better when I had them back on solid ground. And the girls enjoyed it, at least.

 

Music: 

Late last night, I heard some music through my window. I silently tapped on Eva´s door, we quickly threw on our dresses and snuck out the door. The house we´re staying in is close to the local fire brigade, and the people from this village use the house for their Thursday night dancing gatherings. They did, actually, practice traditional folk dancing. Not with costumes, the touristy stuff, but for fun, the youngest dancers being around Eva´s age, the oldest with grey hair. And the music I had heard (and thought it came from a tape) came from a Lijerica, a traditional croation instrument with three strings. The guy who played it told me the strings were made from a tennis racket :) So I thought I´d give you an example of the Lijerica for today :)