Sretan rodendan
A full team showing only minutes before midday would usually precede a moderate amount of self loathing and shame on my part that I'd wasted a whole morning; but then I quickly found solace given this is something I could now mentally rationalise by swiftly passing such travel crime onto my 3 day companions, Nick and Will, and I immediately found peace again. We were lying in because of them, not me. Of my course we were. Crisis averted and the day could continue. I knew there was an excellent reason for them being here.
We did a decent amount of dissecting of the night before it became readily apparent just how matrimonial a city this is. We had firstly walked in on a wedding by mistake before the evening had really got going only to bump into another prospective couple scoping the joint out for theirs; we then passed by several couples having their photos taken in wedding gear only to finish the night at the fairly slimey beach club bar, East West, with the now inhibitionless groom and inebriated bride from the very first wedding we crashed. As three bachelors, it had taken us a while but we had found the secret to marriage; just come to Dubronvik and hang around, you can't stay here that long without someone marrying you.
Not being able to sit still for too long into the day I volunteered to go grocery shopping and zipped down the hill to the supermarket. Here's another rule I will impart your way and about as specific as I will ever get. When buying nuts in a Croatian supermarket, do not mix them. With a reasonably long queue of people, I had reached the front with the scanning going smoothly so far. The last item was a bag of nuts I'd mixed myself from the self-selection area. The lady did not look happy, and neither did the line behind me. She sped off to talk to management; a few loud speakers announcements later and the queue was now long enough not to know which direction to increase in, that sort of length of queue. As if I wasn't as popular as the lurgy already, she went to the nuts area and started counting out the nuts to reprise them individually. This was becoming ugly fast. I just begged for her to charge me the maximum amount so I could run away and crawl into a dark room. That's pretty much what I did. People, don't mix nuts in Croatia. It drives everyone, well, let's not go there today.
Dubronvik Old Town / Games of Thrones
It was early afternoon as we headed down towards the beach but the beach club we arrived at had about as much beach in it as a kangaroo court has kangaroos. It was a fraction rocky and a fraction busy but we struggled to put our fingers on just why we couldn't see ourselves spending the afternoon there until music agent Will just put it best, 'this doesn't have the right vibe, lads." I love how efficient business meetings much be in the music world, and we moved on.
We spied a stone veranda which clearly belonged to part of a hotel, but we all know the deal here. As you walk confidently into the pool / restaurant area you pick up a couple of towels on the side and no questions get asked. It worked and we sat down for a spot of lunch. Now, I don't know about you but I like to tell everyone it's my birthday; for no other reason that you're not dead, people spend the day treating you like you've momentarily achieved greatness and there's no harm done so why not. As we begun our now daily critical assessment of where the three of us are in our lives, Nick pulls out the Donald of all Trump cards and announces today is his birthday. Sretan Rodendan, the waiters cry (Happy Birthday in Croatian). It should come as no surprise to readers that he does this so late because announcing prior to the event it meant he might have had to do something like organize a party but, like an experienced responsibility avoider, he waits until we've started one and then comes out with the news so we now irritatingly have to treat him kindly and pay for his lunch. Slick Chapman.
Over lunch we decided, obviously, to shoot a short film of me, even more obviously, jumping into the ocean for the short movie of this trip and rehearsing a little more than was necessary caught the attention of several onlookers, notably Wendy and Mario. We loved Wendy and Mario; they were so American in a brilliant way. Wendy just strolled up with nonchalant confidence and asked 'when are we going to do this thing already?!' Almost no other nationality would do it, and I do love the yanks for it. Wendy and Mario told us all about themselves with Wendy's father having been an Olympic swimmer in the 1952 Olympics and Mario's father a pioneer of IT coding pre internet. They held nothing back, and we lapped it up like the sunshine around us. They were a power couple from Mexico City and imparted with gems about life, but mainly that retiring in Philidephia is a great idea. I'll look into that Wendy.
Nick, Mario, Wendy and I fighting for airtime as attempt to cover each of our lives sub 25 minutes
George Bernard Shaw once said that those wishing to find paradise should come to Dubrovnik and find it. As we walked the old city walls at sunset, a must for any tourist, there wasn't one of us who could disagree with old George. The 30 meter drop from the ancient stone walls into the crystal blue water looks like something out of Game of Thrones, which makes perfect sense in fact; this is exactly where they filmed it. Finding a hidden bar through a tight doorway we bought 3 beers and moved to the edge to watch the sun go down. It wasn't long before I saw the opportunity to attract attention and asked Nick to hold my beer while I jumped. As the crowd gathered so diminished my chance to opt out, and more than that a very keen photographer called Cory wanted to shoot the whole event and ran off to find a better vantage point. Watch the pictures here.
It was when Cory said that he was a professional photographer that I knew I couldn't not jump and get the photo.
Powerless against Nick's birthday omnipotence, it was all up to him to plan dinner which then inevitably didn't happen until very late. I think we were all glad actually as we were exhausted from a complete success of a day and we slumped toward our fabulous villa. As I went to sleep though, I could feel that something wasn't quite right.....