Back from a lovely break

Croatia was amazing – exactly the holiday I needed. I won’t go through our full itinerary day by day, but there were some highlights… Split was ok, not overly exciting, but I enjoyed the art gallery, and we did see the statue of Gregory of Nin (recognised to be one of the fathers of the Croatian language) who apparently brings good luck if  you touch his big toe (not so sure about that!). There was also a hill which was also home to a zoo, with some cute bunnies and some rather sad looking bears

Hvar Island was beautiful, with amazing sea views, and the fort on top of the hill (and a lovely bar/restaurant part way up serving lovely homemade wine) From Hvar we hired a boat for the day, which was great fun, and Mark got to swim around looking at lots of fishes (whilst I lazed about reading a book and working on my tan!)

 

There was a rather unpleasant 5 hour coach journey to get to Dubrovnik, in a very hot bus with no air conditioning, but we were entertained by listening in to the conversation between the American couple, and the Japanese woman travelling with her daughter who lives in London – they were fascinating people, and we learnt all sorts of things about them, about living in Oregon, and about the history of Croatia and what happened to the former Yugoslavia!

Dubrovnik was also lovely, although exhausting – there were a lot of steps to climb up and down! The ‘old town’ is all contained within the city walls,  and it was great walking around the tops of the walls – there were some fantastic views.

We looked round a number of the assorted churches, and some of them had some beautiful artwork – there was a particularly beautiful series of textured paintings in the Cathedral, but unfortunately I couldn’t get a photo of them.

We went on a half day kayak excursion to one of the islands, which is home to an old monastery, and a beautiful olive grove where we had a mini picnic of wine, bread and olives.

The food was very Italian, with a lot of pizza and ice cream (burnt off by all the stairs and the kayaking, obviously!) and also a lot of sea food. My top discoveries of the trip were  peanut butter flavour wotsits called Kroki Kroket and Rio Mare tuna spread (which I had the last time I came to Croatia with Mum, so had to bring some back!) We ate well, but all in all, the scenery, and also being able to spend time together just the two of us were the highlights of the trip, rather than the food.

Since returning, a lot has already happened – I have a new housemate, Helen, and a new job, which I started today, but I’ll post about those things later!