Vrbnik

This week, we drove to the town of Vrbnik, on the island Krk off the coast of Croatia.  Vrbnik was built somewhere around 1200 and was originally designed to protect Krk from pirates.  It's now a remote village of about 900 people.

Talk about a cool town, especially from a kid's perspective.  The village inside the original town wall is a bunch of narrow, winding walkways between old stone buildings, with a lot of archways, steps, dead-ends, and “mini-doors,” as the kids called them.  There is even one street Vrbnik claims to be the world’s narrowest at 42 centimeters wide (see below).  Every single building is unique.  Luckily, the town is so small that when you get lost (there is no chance of finding your way using your sense of direction) it only takes a few minutes of walking before you end up at the town square or another village exit.  Vrbnik is also small enough and remote enough that it isn’t touristy at all, so it still has the feel of an 800-year-old town.

The house where we stayed was inside the wall, at the top of the hill near the church (which means we awoke to the 6:45am bells each morning), and about as old as they come.  We haven’t seen many houses like it:  it was about 12’ x 12’ square and four stories.  You can picture what that means for the stairwells…even Chantelle cracked her head a few times on the ceiling.  The cellar was a kitchen, the main floor was a living room, and the top two floors were bedrooms.  There wasn’t a whole lot of room to maneuver, but, of course, the kiddos loved it because it presented all sorts of new opportunities.

Whatever the house lacked in amenities, it made up for with its rooftop deck and the rockstar view of the Adriatic during the day and a bazillion stars at night.  From the deck, you could also see how close together the buildings in the town were:  you could literally walk across town on the rooftops if you fancied.

Most importantly, though, we all had a blast at the beach.  It certainly didn’t bother the kids that it was small and rocky, or that the sea was rough the last day (again, new challenges).  We swam ourselves ragged enough to have early, early bedtimes each night.  In fact, the last day, Celia was so tired by early afternoon that she declared, “I think I’m finished swimming,” and went and sat on a beach chair.  We capped off each beach day with a “Pinocchio” ice cream…big hit!