Thank heaven, all our summer visitors, friends and relatives have left again, hopefully impressed by Dalmatia's beauty.
We had many great moments with everybody, some staying for a short while, others just passing by for a hello, a drink (or more), a chat, a joined meal or a trip to all marvelous spots around us.
Before you think this will be a negative story, it won't !
But for the first time this summer me and my wife are together, without people visiting.
And slowly our lists of things to do and building plans (as our house is still pretty small) come back on the table.
Filling stocks of beer, wine, mineral water and lemonades again, and checking what came in.
Most shopping we do in Croatian stores like Lidl and Kaufland :-). still however we remain typical Dutch with our typical food and drinking habits.
Our coffee for instance we make with coffee pads that fit in what's called a Senseo machine.
Unfortunately that coffee is not on the market in Croatia (yet ??), so whenever friends let us know they want to visit us, we ask them to bring some stock with them.
And than there are some typical Dutch treats like "drop" (licorice), a salty black little sweet that hardly anybody in the world seems to like, but us Dutch eat about five kilo's per person per year.
(With me as a typical big spender !).
That, and a couple of other things from Holland, come with every Dutch sun seeker that plans to visit us in our hidden valley.
Stocks in shape again, it's getting time to harvest our potatoes, cook home made tomato sauce for winter pizza's, and to start to think about buying wood for our fire places to heat both house and garden house on cold winter days (yes it can be cold here).
And, as many trips have been made with friends to show them all those many magnificent unknown places, we now can return to our nearby places to swim the summer heat away.
Our salty favorite still is the beach at restaurant Zvizdan (from Omis towards Makarska, after a couple of minutes turn right at the sign Brzet and drive on till you see the restaurant and beach on your right).
Not to crowded, perfectly clearblue seawater, enough shade and a terrace about five meters from our (or your) feet.
Nothing really special on the menu, as goes for most restaurants here, however.....Neno the cook always makes something special from what's common here (grilled fish, meat, pizza's and pasta), and the service is very friendly and relaxed.
Good food for fair prices, and a most enjoyable place it is !
Should we just want to cool down a bit before we have our "siesta", we quickly drive down our mountain road in about five minutes and jump into the Cetina river.
Again, perfectly clear water, not salty this time, and a variety of spots along the canyon road to dive in for an hour or so in water that truly refreshes with it's 19 degrees Celsius.
After this or that we drive up our mountain again, to enjoy our silent paradise, hidden away from the summer crowds in and around Omis.
To all who visited us I want to say thanks for visiting, hope you enjoyed our magnificent surroundings, it was great to see you all again, and we had a great time together.
Our life here continues, being extremely lucky to live here, as this IS paradise, but also in paradise some work has to be done
August still to start, .. and September, .. and October, so winter is still far away, but it will be less hot, and there may fall some snow.
So first our "to do list" needs some attention again,
now the "crowds" have gone.
As between this and next summer there is always autumn, winter and spring, so it's back to basics again.
Enjoy your summer, life's great.
To write me:
see my email address, top right in the header of this blog.
