It’s Sunday, family day, and the church bells started at 8 this morning. I got up and headed for a walk (not to church) and felt very conspicuous in my shorts and runners – firstly I wasn’t going to church, and secondly, I look different. I’m trying hard to avoid being the freak, but you never know when you are breaking the social mores. I resisted stopping for coffee (kava s mlijekom) dressed like that, as every instinct told me it would   be wrong, wrong, wrong. I went for a long walk trying to find the track to Tucepi (it’s about an hour from here walking through the tracks around the cliff face). I walked for 45 mins but had taken a wrong turn which took me to a nudist beach (apparently), a beautiful secluded  bay. There were others walking up there in the woods, rugged up in jackets (it is early Spring for the locals after all..) picking sparoga (that s is a sh sound) which is wild and thin and has a one  month season. It always grows near a plant that looks to all intents like the asparagus fern in NZ (imagine that) and is called sparogina (again with the sh sound) and you boil it in water, cut it into smaller pieces and eat it with olive oil and slices of boiled eggs… what a treat – asparagus without the strong urine thing! This afternoon I’m going to pick sparoga with the lady who owns my apartment (Branka). I have to watch out for snakes…

 At the moment I’m sitting on the deck outside my apartment. It’s hot – too hot to be long in the sun, roasting even. And that’s not the only thing roasting. A lot of the houses have little house- like shaped bbqs outside them, with a chimney, and this is where you cook your cevapcici – those cs are ch’s. The air has a delicious smoky smell as meals are cooked for  families – no shops are open, people are promenading along the plaza – that z is  hard like the s in pleasure- in their Sunday clothes – they stop for kava or sladoled (icecream), but not too much so as to ruin their appetite.

Yesterday I went for a long walk (my very own  first promenade) with Branka and she took me to the Biokovo Rowing Club – and arranged for me to go for a row on Tuesday morning at 8. It is about 5 minutes walk from here. Croatia is strong in rowing internationally and the trener there was a gold medalist -  for all that though, our boat shed  at home seems ridiculously full – they have about 5 skiffs, a few doubles and one 8 which he said was not a good one. And no women rowers, and only a few male masters.  We will see. We also went to a lovely church called Sveti Petar on a promontory, which is where the people sick with the plague were left to die – the grounds are a large grave.

I’ve found the supermarket (you need to look carefully for these things as they are not obvious) and bought yoghurt, milk and tea. I found med (honey) in the green market with the apples and suha smokva (my favourite – dried figs). Now I’m set for a cup of tea and some study!