For our last two days in Split my Mum choose the place we stayed at ( a huge challenge in releasing control for me). The place chosen was from one of the hundreds of leaflets my Mother insists on picking up everywhere we go to add to the mountains we have stashed away back home, all unread. It was advertised as a 'Boutique Hostel' my mum reads Boutique I just see Hostel, to me I have no idea why you would want to move from a hotel to something cunningly disguised as a youth hostel.
As we enter the reception area my Mum is gleeful at the reasonably 'trendy' interior declaring that she's always wanted to stay in one of these 'cool' places, they have even named it 'Golly and Bossy' whatever that means. I hate to break it to her but it just looks like a youth hostel with white walls and a minimilistic reception desk. Our room on the third floor (we skip past the lower floor dormitories of course) is quirky I'll admit with a nice view. The walls are all white and the decoration very modern with sharp edges and cute touches. One bed is in a corner with windows enclosing it in a rooftop view of Split while the other bed is tucked away on another level (reached by a very scary ladder). I already hate the fact that I have to basically climb a vertical wall to reach my bed, while being up high is also very hot, and the sharp edges everywhere are cutting my feet. And don't even get me started on 'wet rooms', why would you want a shower that is meant to spray water all over the room soaking everything. Oh and the tiled floor smashed my MAC foundation. I do realise that I sound like a pensioner here but after the fire alarm went off one night I am allowed to complain.
Escaping the room, on our final day we decided to visit another one of Croatia’s islands (the joke over there right now is that Greece has to sell islands to gain capital and hence Croatia can then claim to have the most islands) but for now there are not. Brac (pronounced very confusingly more like Brache, if you say you want a ferry ticket to Brac you get a very blank look) was our island of choice and involved another ferry journey with a Lost like ensemble of people and a nap for me. It turns out that Brac is something of the Costa Del Sol of Croatia with tourist packed beaches greeting us to our shock (where in the world do you have to go to get PEACE I wonder). Advantages of this were we somehow managed to sneak onto two Thomas Cook sun loungers for free (SCORE) and have a day not with the yuppies but the jet skiing, water sliding families. We got out our guide to Brac at this point and it turns out there is a lot to do on this wee island, including monasteries, one of the best beaches in the world (honest), and some old bridge; we couldn’t be bothered with any of this though and resorting back to falling asleep on sun loungers. After a nap the Croatian winds picked up again (honestly there is more wind on their coastline than the East coast of Britain) so we managed a wee amble round the cute wee harbour before deciding we had better get the ferry back for another nap.
My mum was also very keen to get back to ensure she had bought every souvenir Split had to offer (she has decided that fridge magnets are her new collectible piece in an attempt to be ‘kitsch’) and I bought my brother a very tasteless postcard to her great embarrassment. We then of course had one last ice cream; where it turns out even Royal fever has hit with the creation of a ‘Wills and Kate’ flavour! Whatever next!
And of course it rained our last night, so while reports were coming through from Glasgow of beautiful sunshine we were being raining on in the Mediterranean! Luckily packing everything does mean that I was of course prepared for every eventuality so could whip out my school waterproof for that holiday in the sun look.
Note my Mum's brilliant photography skillz..
And finally getting home, a very stressful experience for my poor mother - part of me doesn’t understand why she goes on holiday when the travelling part clearly ages her so much. Our journey involved a 7am bus ride to Split airport, a flight to London Gatwick where we had to check out then check back in for our flight to Glasgow, before a final taxi ride home. This as you can probably guess is a long journey, the whole duration of which my mum is so stressed you cannot talk to her – GREAT. I was just so excited for London Gatwick I barely minded, after a month away the thought of M & S food was making me potentially a bit too excitable. By the time we were on British soil I already had my whole meal planned out meaning I was able to rip open the packaging almost immediately after sighting the British food haven (and can I just say now it was totally worth the wait and hype!)
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