The Laundry of Rovinj

From Slavenka Drakulić's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed ~

By looking at the clotheslines I can tell who is a good housekeeper, whose laundry is white enough and properly hung, how big the family is, who lives alone. My grandma taught me all that, and how to hang a man's shirts, trousers, or pullovers. She taught me that you could tell a lot, even the character of people, just by looking at clothes. Laundry was like an open book to her.

'That woman over there, she is playing the lady. Look how many nylons she's hung out!' Or, 'The one from the first floor, she must be stingy, she doesn't use bleach at all.'

Croatia ~ Istria Peninsula

Part two of our Croatia/Slovenia/Austria vacation. Part one on the Plitvice Lakes can be found here.

Monday ~ Senj and Rovinj/Rovigno

We left the Plitvice Lakes and wound our way west to Senj on the Adriatic Sea.

Ben, Karl and Garrett brace themselves against the gusts.

Our first view of the Adriatic was from the very windy pass at Vratnik. This pit stop also provided us the opportunity to teach the boys not to pee into the wind.

Nehaj, the Uskok fortress at Senj, built in 1558.

The Uskoks -- known as Croatian freedom fighters to locals, but mere pirates and hoodlums to Venetians and Ottoman Turks -- used Senj as a base from which they attacked and raided ships (often Venetian) traveling the narrow Adriatic passage. Venetians had a saying in the 1500s, "May God preserve us from the hands of Senj."

Kate and Karl at Nehaj

Even though we'd descended more than 750m/2500ft from the pass, we didn't escape the wind down at the coast!

Croatia ~ Plitvice Lakes

The inside back cover of National Geographic Traveler magazine always shows a single beautiful picture of breathtaking scenery, usually from some remote place in the world. We had an issue in our magazine rack back home for several years (go ahead, mock my housekeeping skills -- I can take it) that featured a lush forested area with waterfalls cascading into ethereal aquamarine lakes. Plitvička jezera. The Plitvice Lakes. Croatia.

"Well, that looks lovely," I thought. "If only ..."