The three of us - our first vacation

Not too far, not too expensive, not too many days, not too many tourists. These were our objectives when we were looking to book our first family trip.

Choosing the destination

Off-season September or early October covered two of our four expectations.

• Not too expensive
• Not too many tourists

To cross the next expectation off the list, we needed to be close to home if we would have trouble adapting to a new environment or our daughter would get sick.

• Not too far

For the last expectation, our vacation shouldn't take too many days, as Anastasiya and I probably won't be relaxing much without our home, well-practised baby-care routine - lots of unknowns to be relaxed.

• Not too many days

Location

In our quest for the perfect family vacation spot, we have considered Slovenian, Italian and Croatian coasts as suitable destinations for our much-anticipated getaway.

Guided by now fatherly experienced friend Rok's recommendation, we first explored a few family-friendly hotels in Croatia. These establishments, thoughtfully designed to cater to the diverse needs of parents with small children, promised a haven of convenience and comfort. However, we concluded that our daughter Mija was still too little for the three of us to enjoy the experience fully.

What options remained? Booking.com listed quite a few available apartments on the Slovenian coast, but the prices weren't much different from their prices in high season.

In the end, the saviours emerged - the grandparents. They told us about company-owned apartments on the Croatian coast for the price of two pizzas and a beer per day.

Getting there

As Mija is still not 100% comfortable with the rear-facing car seat, she is on her best behaviour while she sleeps in the car. :)

Taking into consideration that she sleeps twice per day, late morning and in the afternoon, our best bet was departing after a late breakfast so that along the way, she would be able to sleep.

Memorable moments

To avoid this becoming a timestamped report of when we were waking up, going to sleep, and everything in between, I will just outline a few of the things we will happily remember in the years to come.

Cheap food

Being on vacation, we tried to limit cooking to the minimum. To our surprise, all of the top-rated restaurants were quite affordable. Meat, seafood, burgers, pizza, everything was reasonably priced.

Butter

Our little apartment complex had a family-run store, where if you aren't too picky, you could find anything you need. Even with the markup small stores need to apply in order to survive, the food was relatively cheap compared to Slovenia.

There was a butter that needs a special mention, as it was one of the best kinds of butter we have ever tasted.

Coffee

If you don't count latte macchiato as a coffee, I almost never drank it. Well, Špina might have changed that for good. Domačica Dark biscuits we bought at the small store were pretty mediocre. Pairing them with coffee made a huge difference.

Two-second swimming

The three of us were in the sea, different lengths of time. Anastasiya for a nice swim, Mija for the whole two seconds before she started crying (the water was cold), and me zero, if you don't count the standing in the water while I was filming Mija.

Midnight strolls and car lullabies

This is something that almost made us come home after a single night, but in the end, it pushed us to do something that changed our baby-caring life for good forever.

At that time, at home, we still had a crib at our bedside, and if Mija woke up during the night, she would sleep in our bed. We couldn't take the crib with us, so Mija had to sleep in the middle of a double bed. This didn't go so well.

The first night, she woke up at 2 AM and was crying for two hours straight. Dead tired, we went for a supper chilly stroll by the sea, but that didn't work. Mija just couldn't fall asleep. It left us with no choice but to put her in the car and drive up and down the Istrian coastline so that she could sleep.

In the morning, we were so tired that we promised ourselves that if the next night would be the same, we would cut the vacation short and return home.

Luckily, the next night wasn't that bad, but! It made us decide that as soon as we get home, Mija will undergo a Ferber sleep training programme. BEST DECISION EVER!

After a few stressful training nights, Mija now falls asleep on her own. She sleeps through the whole night, 10-11 hours on average, and from 8 months on, she sleeps alone in HER ROOM! No tipi-toeing, so whispering, no muted keyboard clacking, no dimmed lights, nothing. Each night, we have 2-3 hours of uninterrupted us-time.

A few photos

Will we return? Maybe. Will we remember it forever? Surely.