This Week

Well it's Sunday, so it's time for the weekly round up. This may be a little bit holiday focused. Ah, who am I trying to kid? It's ALL about my holiday. You have been warned.

Visiting:

Dubrovnik! Oh my gosh, what a wonderful place. If you haven't been then you must go. Immediately. I will lend you my suntan lotion, or a brolly (more on that later). It's utterly beautiful, very welcoming to tourists and has the perfect mixture of things to do and places to loaf round in. We did lots of sightseeing but equal amounts of sitting and people watching.

A ceiling inside the Rector's Palace. I would dearly love something like this in my house.

Detail from a statue of St Blaise, the patron saint of Dubrovnik. He's always pictured holding a model of the city.

The view from a wonderful bar reached by going through a little gate in the city walls

A slightly psychotic owl and a mural at the Natural History Museum where we had much fun trying to decipher the Croatian labels. Some boring so-and-so had written in the visitor's book that it would be much better if the labels were all in English. Firstly, insular much? Go to English museums if you want English labels. And really, isn't it much more intriguing to play "guess the skull"?

Eating:

In quite an array of really good and inexpensive restaurants. I always feel odd taking photos of my food so here are some details from a couple of the places instead.

Sunbathing:

On the island of Lokrum. I haven't lazed around on a beach since about 2002. It's quite fun isn't it? I couldn't do a whole holiday of it without being bored out of my mind but I did very much enjoy a lazy day on the rocks with several dips in the Adriatic. My feet are now very slightly browner than they appear in this photo. The rest of me has just gone freckly.


The island also has a wonderful abandoned monastery. Apparently Archduke Franz Ferdinand was due to go there on his summer holidays in 1914 - if you remember any of your WW1 history, you'll know he got assassinated instead, poor man.

Listening:

To the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra. We were wandering around one night after dinner and stumbled across the concert being held in the atrium of the Rector's Palace. Tickets were only £15 and it seemed like a perfect discovery, so we went in. We liked it so much we went back two nights later!

No photographic evidence of it unfortunately, but one of the trumpet players was the absolute spitting image of Sylvester Stallone. Spooky!

Getting:

Drenched on the last day. I don't think I've ever been so wet in my entire life. It rained all day and we were coping ok with waterproofs and brollies but then about 6pm, whilst we were stuck outside in it, the heavens absolutely opened. The water was running practically knee high through the streets at one point.

6pm on the main street. It's not a blurry photo, it really was raining that hard. For purposes of contrast, here's the same road taken at roughly the same time the day before.

Buying:

A new hat. Green, obviously. A somewhat random purchase but I rather love it.

Drinking:

Prosek, a local dessert wine. Mmmmm, it's delicious! Also quite a lot of coffee and white wine. I was on holiday...

Reading:

This little lot. I have a couple of hundred pages of the London book left to go but otherwise they've all been read and enjoyed.

Finally:
I am a little cross about the fact that I only went and won VIP tickets to London Fashion Week and then couldn't bloody go because I was on holiday!! Probably a blessing in disguise though as I would have felt like an unfashionable fraud every moment of the time there had I ended up going. I wouldn't have missed a moment of my holiday for the world though.