Croatia: Part 4

If you thought the last post looked incomplete, that's because it was. I've been having problems with this account not saving my posts or other such issues. You're supposed to be able to click on each photo to see a larger version, but that isn't working for some reason. When I looked at the HTML, I found the reason it wasn't working, but when I changed it, the website wouldn't allow me to save the change. Hopefully the geniuses at Google will fix these problems soon.

I meant to tell you all about a couple of ways in which Croatian beaches are different than American beaches (besides being able to park your motorcycle pretty much anywhere you want). First, although Croatian beaches are theoretically divided into clothing-optional beaches and regular beaches where people keep their swimsuits on, it doesn't work that way in practice.

When we arrived at the beach we quickly picked out a spot that looked good to us, but then we noticed a woman sunbathing topless. We moved on to a different spot only to see a fat, hairy old man singing Freebird (and I'm not talking Lynyrd Skynyrd) and his equally corpulent, wrinkled wife about to join in the duet. They looked like a couple of giant German raisins. Everywhere we went it was the same thing; a few people chose to pretend it was a nude beach, which it wasn't. We ended up going back to the first spot we picked, since it was the best.

Many would argue that people have a right to dress or undress however they want at the beach. I'd argue that I have the right to take my family to the beach without my daughters being subjected to the sight of a fat, hairy old fart's penis. Both lines of argument could potentially go on for ever, but the solution is simple. Designate some beaches as clothing-optional so people who want to go nude can do so, and designate other beaches as swimsuit-mandatory so people who don't want to go nude or don't want their children to witness adult nudity can enjoy the beach without having to put up with others' nudity. Simple, right? Yes, it is. It's also a good compromise, which is necessary for a free society to remain free. It's also how things are officially supposed to work in Croatia, but this is Europe so things don't actually work that way. So, you can either put up with it or you can stay home and never go anywhere.

Incidentally, although girls and women of all ages went topless, only old men went speedo-less. On the one hand I wonder why that is, and on the other I fear that I really don't want to know. Also, what does one do if ones penis becomes sun burned? The conundrum continues.

Be warned, that's the way it is in Europe, and keep that in mind if you ever take a European beach vacation.

Back to the story; the day after that first day on the beach, Aimee wanted to make a quick stop at the market again, but we didn't want to unload the kids and pay for parking, so I dropped her off near the market and went for a short drive with the kids planning to return and pick Aimee up in about 15 minutes. While driving with the kids, I spotted what looked like a very nice beach and stopped to snap this picture.
I went back to pick Aimee up and told her about this new beach the kids and I found and we decided to go there instead of going back to the one we visited first. I turned out to be a great place to swim and the kids loved it, so we kept going back to that beach the rest of our time in Rovinj.

The family lounging at "Rocky Beach"

This beach is covered in natural gravel, whereas the other one was kind of muddy, so the water was much clearer here. Also, it dropped off much more steeply into the deep, so there were more waves, but it wasn't so steep that the kids couldn't enjoy it. In fact, they had a great time.

Abi took to the water right away. She wasn't afraid at all, unlike the other kids. I'm standing in chest-deep water in this picture, and at other times I swam out with her where the water was too deep for me to stand. It took a while for the other kids to agree to float out like that in their water toys, but Abi loved it from the start. Here she is hanging loose!


The scenery sure was great!


We brought a bunch of water toys, but the kids naturally settled for one or two each that became "their" toy.


After a full day of playing on the beach we stopped at another restaurant for dinner, and found...
Another pig on a spit! Pretty much every restaurant had one. The kids were still fascinated by them. This time we all had pizza.


The kids had ice cream after their pizza, and we headed back to the apartment. At the restaurant parking lot, however, we had one of several experiences in which some crazy Italian lady started gushing, "bella (beautiful) picola (little one)!" and picked up Abi and started kissing her. Seriously, that happened at least three times with three different Italian ladies in three different places in Rovinj. Aimee and I joked that we had to be careful or some Italian lady was going to kidnap Abi and take her home! We're accustomed to being a freak show here in Germany, but at least Germans just point and stare, Italians get downright personal!

Like I said before, we returned to that beach every day the rest of our time in Rovinj, so I'll add more pictures and continue the story later.