Days 1 through 3

I have completely lost track of time. The calendar says it’s been three days but I’m a little cloudy on the details… Here’s what I remember:

Friday: A Traveler’s Worst Nightmare

Boy, were we on it on Friday. Sandwiches were packed, we were only eight minutes late getting on the road (a big step for us) and we were at the airport with plenty of time to spare. We only hit one minor glitch: every single “carry-on” had to be checked. Whatever, we walked it off.

Liv and I won the airport security race.

Plane was delayed due to "technical reasons" ten minutes before we were supposed to board. These technical issues apparently blossomed in the following three hours until it was finally determined that the plane was not fit for travel.

Frustration and emotional anguish ensued. Every single passenger was then put on a flight scheduled to depart 20 hours later. My mother found herself an arch nemesis. (I am desperately jealous as is to be expected).

Saturday: Plane, Sleep, Run, Plane…

We arrive at the airport and board plane number two without incident.

I take a melatonin pill, thinking it was Ambien… needless to say I was not only disappointed, but my sleepiness at 3pm was not positively affected in any way. However, this is not to say that my sleep wasn’t affected negatively!  I had the pleasure of being seated in front of two girls under the ages of 6 whose father not only dismissed their need to sleep (we would be landing at 4am local time), but he was encouraging their laughter and seat-kicking with his equally inhuman, piercing voice. The man all but had them on a constant IV of sugar, it was a painful 8 hours to say the least.

Saturday: Wait, how is it already Saturday??

We landed at approximately 4:15, an inhuman hour even if you haven’t been travelling for 16 hours. However, due to the aforementioned 20 hour delay, we lost our first day of vacation. This was intentional because it was intended to be a buffer: we do nothing all day, become acclimated to the time zone, etc. Instead, we had to book it to our flight to Dubrovnik. This included baggage claim, customs and a whole new round of baggage checking and airport security.

MINOR PROBLEM: the tiny plane couldn’t fit my giant suitcase, it was scheduled to board at 6:15am, and the baggage storage facility didn’t open until 6:30. Thank goodness for this series of events or else I would have lost valuable father/daughter bonding time brought on by SPRINTING airport hallways for 20 minutes getting to the airport’s hotel (for storage) and then back to our terminal. (Important side note: thankfully, we had anticipated this complication and I had packed everything I would need for Croatia in my smaller bag while my big bag was packed with what I would need in Parma).

Spark Notes Time: we caught out plane, landed safely in Dubrovnik, and drove to our rental house. As it was only 10am by the time we got there, we decided to spend the day in the neighboring town of Cavtat where we swam and ate lunch. More details and pictures to come :)