A swim in the Adriatic Sea

The lady who greeted us at our villa recommended a 'beach' to us that she likes to go to herself. A place that is quiet and where not too many people go to. When she gave us her rough directions to get there, she mentioned that you need to go past an abandoned, shelled hotel - from the war in the 90's. This quickly got our attention since we grew up in a country that has very little history of war. Sure, we were involved in the World Wars and the more recent Afganistan and Iraq wars but Australia itself wasn't affected significantly compared to other countries involved. We've never had to drive past war torn buildings and landscape with tell-tale signs of battle in our country so we were all quite keen to go to this beach just so we could have a good gander at the buildings she mentioned.

It wasn't very hard to find the beach since the town is very small and her rough directions weren't all that rough - rather straightforward really. It wasn't all that long before we were jumping out of the car, gathering up our towels and other beach-goer things and taking a short stroll down the stairs. What we found at the bottom of the stairs was a place that didn't really resemble a beach in the eyes of these Aussie kids who are used to the white, glowing beaches of Queensland. I'm not meaning to sound like I'm whinging but the word 'beach' is a very subjective word. Don't get me wrong, it was very beautiful! Queensland might have the beautiful sand but Croatia has the alluring, crystal clear waters of the Adriatic Sea. Perfect for a refreshing dip on a hot day. We just had to scramble over the sharp rocks and shells to get into it.

We finished paddling around, dried off and jumped back into the car so we could go and explore the abandoned hotel. It was quite eerie walking around in an empty, destroyed building. I guess we just avoid abandoned buildings in Australia because we expect them to be filled with squatters, drug addicts or remnants of both but our curiosity got the better of us and we explored inside the hotel - avoiding higher levels in case the building was structurally unsound (had to put that last bit in to reassure our Mum's and Dad's).

Another empty hotel

There's something nice about seeing mother nature claiming back space that was taken over by man.

It was quite exciting exploring this place. It's hard to imagine what went on here to cause such devastation because we have it so lucky in Australia. Most recent disasters in Australia have happened through mother nature which we can't help. It would be very different if the same devastation was caused by man.