August 3, 2025
This morning, Kyle ran out to get us coffee and Ollie turned down the opportunity to go for a walk. The boys came in bed with me and watched the Somebody Feed Phil episode where he goes to Croatia. He starts in Split and went to the bakery where we went on our first day in town. He had a chocolate pastry on the show we didn’t see when we were there so Len is VERY keen to go back and get one. His and Ollie’s favorite part, though, was when he got pricked by the sea urchin off the island of Korčula.
Ollie and I went on an errand down the steps to grab more groceries. It was an uneventful trip save for the hike back up the steps where I lugged 9 liters of water in addition to most of the groceries. We took a Pokemon break halfway up the stairs and Ollie was only in charge of carrying the chips so he seemed happy with how the errand trip went.
In need of a slow Sunday, we did homeschool and then lounged around the apartment for the afternoon. I took a nap, Kyle worked on a blog post and the boys enjoyed some iPad time. The boys were SO excited to see their friends and repeatedly asked for an hourly countdown. “Are they on the plane yet?” “Have they landed?” “Are they in the taxi?” “Are they tired or do they want to meet up?’
We booked a kids’ tour of Split via Airbnb experiences for the afternoon. Another family with two preteens joined us on the tour and the tour guide, Ivica, did a great job speaking to all of the kids’ learning levels. The tour focused on Diocletian’s palace and the surrounding area so Kyle and I were thrilled to check this off of our Split to do list while having an expert to point out the highlights. The boys’ favorite part was probably learning that the basement we were standing in had huge holes above it where ancient toilets used to sit (so the basement really used to act as a sewage system at one point.) They loved being grossed out by this. Len struggled to stay still and quiet while Ivica was talking so he took to running wind sprints for a bit which worked out well for everyone. Some old sour candies unearthed from the bottom of the backpack served as bribes but we had to break into a bag of pretzels, too. Len found his confidence to ask adults questions and repeatedly called out, “Excuse me I have a question!” often when Ivica was midsentence.
Towards the end of the tour, Len was desperate to ask if we were nearly done but Kyle and I kept grabbing him before he could pose his rude question. The tour ended at the Gregory of Nin statue and we all rubbed his toe for good luck. Ivica also gifted the boys with marzipan rubber ducks that had cookies inside of them which both promptly ate.
The Bonk family had landed by this point and the boys hounded us incessantly for minute by minute updates. Since they had taken a red eye from the states with a layover, we tried to warn the kids that they may need to rest tonight rather than hang out with us. Kyle was in contact with Jeff who said they were indeed up for a hang, so we made our way to their Airbnb to welcome them to Split. After a brief reunion on their balcony, we left with Jeff to head to the market for him to pick up some basics while we grabbed snacks for our big boat outing tomorrow. We parted ways with plans to meet later that evening for dinner.
The weather did not cooperate for our planned al fresco dinner with the Bonks. We saw lightning in the distance and were counting how long until we heard the thunder. At first, the time was increasing so we felt the storm was moving away, but then the thunder count decreased again. Ollie is the one who asked, “What if there are multiple lightning storms?” He was right. For the next hour or so, we saw more lightning than we have ever seen in our lives. The torrential rain soon followed and the steps outside our balcony looked more like a running stream. We unfortunately had to cancel our dinner plans which left the Bonks to have a dinner of meat sticks and popcorn at their apartment while we scrounged together a buttered noodle dinner at ours. We’re hopeful our boat excursion tomorrow will make up for tonight!
The picture on the left is the normal night sky while the one on the right shows one of the many lightning strikes lighting up the sky.
