We never did make it to Dubrovnik, but a one hour wait for the ferry from Split allowed us a little glimpse of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian in Split. Marble magic.

Yes folks it's Croatia time. Dim the lights, close the curtains, insert the stick in your mouth and bite hard coz it's holiday slideshow time. Hilda - the lights...


OK then - here's charming downtown Bol, on the island of Brac. That's our hotel, the Kastil, behind the big tree. It was simple, clean and charming with a lovely terrace for breakfast. All this eating outside was fantastic. I think we ate every meal outdoors bar one when the wind was really blowing and that really is a treat. Those funny sunshade things are from the outdoor cocktail bar. At £3.50 for champagne cocktails even I'm going to celebrate holiday and a new job like a grown up.


Above is the mystical Zlatni Rat beach. For some crazy reason it defies the laws of physics, the sea and the local golf club and sticks out at 90 degrees to the coast. Thats the kind of performance that guarantees a beach prime postion on EVERY t-shirt, post-card, beach-towel, brochure in town. It's shingle but a nice rounded shingle so its not to brutal on my tender city feet. Round the far side there's nudey bathing - Cath was keen as mustard but I'm afraid I turned my nose up at it. I know we are all very European now but good old-fashioned English repression has got me this far. If it ain't broke....


Bol is big on it's watersports, above and below the waves. It's big on tennis too and Cath and I had a couple of games on the excellent clay courts. We were both keen to try Scuba diving and the good folks at Big Blue Sport let us try out the breathing equipment for free in a hotel pool. We both loved it and I think Cath (above) has found a real new passion. We ended up doing a 3 day course that has left us as PADI certified Scuba Divers. We now need to do another 3 dives + theory to get the full "open water" qualification. We did all our training dives in the sea rather than a swimming pool, with two other Brits, Heather and Vicky, and our redoubtable instructor Cesar. Cesar was lovely and just inspired confidence. In our dives we would kneel on the sea-floor 3 or 4 metres down and watch him as he demonstrated the key skills of clearing your mask and finding your air supply if for any reason it came out. He would remove his breathing tube (Regulator!) and nonchalantly toss it over his shoulder, exhaling gently and then calmly fish it back with his right arm and resume breathing again.

One thing I noticed is that divers seem to be generally nice people not infected with that cooler-than-thou attitude which does seem to strike surfers, snowboarders, windsurfers in particular and, OK, skiers too. I went for a windsurfing lesson and the dude at the beach just seemed to be barely there as he was telling me what to do. I think it's probably because you can't show off as a diver. The better you get at it, the safer you get, not the more gnarly. Having spent evenings in a South African surfing hostel with some mind-numbingly boring surfers I did apreciate it!


Finally here's one of us. We had a great time on our first holiday together. We didn't argue or fight so that's got to be a result, right? My only regret is that we never got the chance to Do the Dudek in a Euro-disco. We hiked up the hill to Faces Discotecque to find it resolutely closed the first time and then nearly deserted the next time we turned up. It was half past midnight but apparently it didnt get going till 2. 2! Duuuuuude. I would have been tempted to stay but the insipid RnB soundtrack was driving me nuts. And you can't have it all.

The most surprising statistic of the holiday was this:
Visibile pictures of Goran Ivanisevic: 2 (only)
- 1 billboard endorsement in Split
- 1 demo of a seaside portait painter's talent (the other on display was Harry Potter!)