We have now been aboard Aigle D'or for over a week and have already formed a few patterns and routines in behaviour. The most predictable is without a doubt the super witching hour which we experience daily between approx 7- 9pm when the boys absolutely lose control because they are either too tired or too hungry or simply just because they are Tom and Seb! By that point Mike and I are also at a low point usually because we are hungry, tired and in need of a glass of wine... Last Monday at exactly this witching hour we were expecting our first guests aboard Aigle D'or. Darek and Anja arrived at 8pm but within 10 minutes of their arrival all hell broke loose! I was in the galley preparing some starters when Seb came to help me but in his usual style he opted not to walk down but to swing down... He missed the step and fell into the cabin on his back. He got totally winded and wouldn't stand up. He was evidently in pain so thanks to Darek and Ivan we rushed him to the nearest emergency room in Mali Losinj (25 mins away) The doctor there wanted to do an x ray just to double check that his back was ok since he was in a lot of pain. The radiographer who was on call did not answer his phone so we were literally packed into an ambulance and shipped over to the next hospital in Rijeka by ambulance. 2 ½ hours of driving, one ferry ride, 2 ambulances, many winding turns and three islands later we reached the paediatric hospital on mainland Croatia. We arrived at the dead of night so everything looked just that little bit worse... We were met in the ambulance by Doran who ushered us in to the pitch black reception area, switching on a couple of lights as we went. We got to the registration cubicle and again Doran was there to get us into the system. He then stepped back into the corridor as our porter and wheeled Seb who at that point was still strapped to a stretcher into a lift which had to be closed manually and we squeaked our way to the 2nd floor where Doran again became the radiology nurse and helped the radiologist get the necessary images... to cut a very long and tedious story short Seb was unscathed by his fall and the main thing he was suffering from was shock and by that point exhaustion! The surgeon who finally saw us admitted us for the night since by that point we must have looked like homeless vagabonds... Seb in underpants and a t-shirt with no shoes and myself wearing shorts, flip flops and a paramedic's jumper since the extremely kind paramedic on our first ambulance lent me her top when she saw that I was freezing and green with carsickness and worry! Whilst we were being attended to in hospital Michael had hired a car and was retracing our footsteps. The only problem is that he missed the 11pm ferry which is the one we caught with the ambulance and therefore had to sleep in the car so as to catch the 5am ferry. The following day was a waiting game... Seb needed to have an ultra sound done and it took practically the whole day to do it. We finally got back to Nerezine in yet another massive storm at 7pm!