I had wanted to visit Croatia about 15 years ago. I remember going into the travel agents when I was 18 and the lady had no clue what I was on about and had never heard of it, so after that I ended up in Cyprus.
After my diagnosis and thinking of places I would really like to see whilst my vision was still good enough, I got on the internet and started looking up beautiful places. Croatia came up and my memories of how desperate I had been to go, all came back to me. It was only a two-hour flight too, so we booked it.
Croatia was a visual delight! The landscape was so pretty, and the water was crystal clear and blue, you could stand deep in the sea and still be able to watch the fish swimming at the bottom. We hired a car one day and my husband drove me to Rovinj, an amazing town in Croatia, it reminded me of Malcesine in Lake Garda, it was stunning. It had quirky little shops on cobbled streets with amazing colourful buildings that were sat right on the sea. We also hired a little boat on another day and drove all around the coast and into the little coves, it was stunning.
When we got home, and I was looking at all our memories in pictures, I noticed one from the day of our boat trip where I am swimming in the sea. I noticed that it was a completely genuine and happy smile, I haven’t seen that smile much, if at all in pictures over the last year after I found out about my Stargardts, and although I felt sad about that, I was so grateful that I had that moment in Croatia and for a while all my fears and worries had disappeared, even for a few seconds 💙 that’s what holidays are for after all. x
