Learning LOTS

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I learnt a very lot today....
First off I learnt what the Croatian for 'sour cream' is. Sadly it was only after having bought two pots of it at the shop yesterday, put a load on my cereal and eaten a bit that I thought that checking the translation would be good as it wasn't really like yoghurt! In all fairness it was really nice but I'm guessing not particularly healthy!
I also learnt that health and safety is not even an afterthought for Croatians. Given the limited time spent at Slovenia's number one dinopark, we decided to forego the beach in the heat and try Croatia's number one dinopark. Oh my.......

In all fairness the dinosaurs weren't bad, no noise so Seth was happy, and lots of them all dotted around but the rides.... The rides.....

So when we got there there was a show on it the big top. We elected not to go in and Seth elected to run to the train ride. Getting to it we saw a stop and go button and the ride. Here, the rides are operated by literally anyone. Ash crammed himself on with Seth, I pressed go and they were off on Thomas the Tank's scarier, mental faced cousin. After three goes round Ash was being me to press stop and Seth was begging me to go on with him. With my crazy length legs, this was not only difficult but actually impossible so i perched on the back and with no one to stop me despite a later tunnel, off we went. (fortunately I was looking the right way at the tunnel so was able to duck! The whole place was full of crazy rides. The pirate ship seemed to be the only thing operated by an actual person (Jack Sparrow as it turned out). Ash and Seth went on a flintstones ride (everyone knows dinosaurs and cavemen definitely coexisted right?!?) which ground to a half on the first corner then shot off like a rocket, Ash having to move to one side to stop the car from tipping (the 4 broken carriages just lying in the middle of the ride should have given us a clue about this one!). With Ash pale and begging for the end, I stopped the ride and we walked past the random petting zoo (donkeys, goats and nothing else) a few more dinos and into McDinos in the big top. What we were faced with was perhaps the most surreal moment of, certainly this holiday, if not all holidays. In the packed arena was captain Jack Sparrow (turned out the exact same guy ran the pirate ship!) cracking a whip to tell a man dressed as a velociraptor what to do with a ringmaster whipping the crowd up. Add to this a small child being thrown around by a clown and you've got what I imagine an lSD trip might be like. True to form Seth loved it so we stayed, eating our McDinos chicken dinosaurs and chips. Back outside it was more ride time, oh yay! The edited highlights were an ex coin operated ride with bits missing and a ramp on the slant with no barrier to hold on to, a merry go round with no barriers, paintball guns free for anyone to pick up and use and a foot long iron pole sticking out of a wall! As we left both the mythical rollercoaster we'd not been able to find and the flintstones rides had stopped with people stuck surrounded by fake dinosaurs, the first from little shop of horrors and the odd grinning train. Regardless, Seth had a great time and we doubled our number of dinoparks ever visited! I'm fairly sure that in the UK Disney and McDonalds alone would have issues with this place let alone the HSE!

We headed back to the house for a swim via a supermarket for actual yoghurt (yay!). One very chilly swim, one warm jacuzzi bath and several insect bites later and we all headed out for (very good) pizza. The evening was spent looking at the milky way in the non light polluted sky and researching home made mozzie traps!

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