Bring out the candles!

Today we took it slow. We packed the van up late, and had a nice chat with our Swedish van-dwelling neighbor, while we laughed at two German bikini girls that thought getting an early morning dip in the cold sea was a good idea – until their toes touched the water.

We had run out of Kuna cash this morning, and, for the first time in three weeks, there was no ATM within 50 meters (or 5 kilometers). We hadn’t paid for the campsite yet, and this always feels lame. Heike asked if we could pay by card, and the owner asked if we seriously didn’t have ten euros with us? We actually did. And that’s when we also ran out of Euro cash. We were also running out of everything else. Therefore, the rest of this already slow day was spent shopping, drinking coffee, and with a quick visit to Ucke NP.

Ucke NP is located on the northeast of the Istrian peninsula, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than that thus far all Croatian national parks have been excellent. We zigzagged our way up through a beech forest, to park at the visitor center. We had (great) cappuccinos, and embarked on a hiking adventure that turned out to be quite short-lived. Let’s say the kids weren’t in the mood, but we weren’t pushing for it either. The forest and landscape was cool, but due to higher altitude and mostly beech around us, the place was still quite grey and brown. This place will be amazing in a month or so, when the fresh green of young beech leaves filtering the sunlight creates this beautiful atmosphere you only find in beech forest and at a certain time of the year. (It makes me think of the beech forest road to my old experimental field sites, where this was my favorite time of the year).

I snapped one shot today, to show that we were actually there!

We had a bit of a quest to find a campsite, but we found ourselves a pleasant one at Kamp Romantik, a place we share with a pair of cyclists that are on a one-year cycling journey. Brings back good memories from the past. I expect a pleasant night. I don’t know what else to expect with such a wonderful name. Now bring out the goddamn candles!