Hurray We Have Arrived in Croatia

After some wonderful time in France, great fun in Paris with the Taymacs
Lunch at Musee D'Or

Then onto Le Mans, where we stayed in a picturesque Cottage owned by our friend Annie
So beautiful

After a big last night at La Rochelle, our start to the boat trip was first….a mad dash to Le Mans for Le TGV. (It seemed that we were so slow to get ready) and then poor Annie our fabulous Chauffeur and Hostess, had to drive like the clappers to get us there…it worked, there was plenty of time.
The French are very efficient and it is very easy to find your coach. The TGV’s are very long and you don’t want to be at the wrong end, as happened to us in Amsterdam.

So, you find your coach number on the electronic board, and there you stay.
Sure enough the train pulls up right there. This time it was easy to find room for the luggage and off to CDG Aerogare.
A few hassles with our tickets but sorted reasonably quickly, and we finally got to our aircraft with only just enough time.
Forgot how many people have to pass through immigration and then security…first class, or not…too bad.
Dale, of course, thinks he is special and tries to get to front of queues leaving me to go around the snake. I suppose someone has to do it and it seems to be me. Dale in his haziness had forgotten to empty his water bottle….and there was no receptacle for liquids, so he was getting pretty stressed by the time we found our gate. We made it.
Flight to Zagreb about 1 hour 50, they served a light meal and wine etc. Not too bad. Off and through Customs and change money. Kuna is the currency there is some Euro use but most like the local dolla!
Hey found a white elephant… There is a Diners Club Lounge in Zagreb. I didn’t think anyone used Diners anymore. I was going to take a shot, but by the time I had been to the toilet, changed money etc… my traveling companion was getting grumpier by the minute. Not helped I think by the large amount of wine he had consumed with Brian the previous night (more about that in another post).
So I left that and we went to board.
It was sunny and warm only a 30 minutes fight to Split
and a nice Taxi Driver and finally Domus Maritima, our little hotel in Trogir.
n.b. had my first stinky garlic breath and BO during this trip, but there has been no more thank God.
Laurian and Geoff greeted us. She had organised the accommodation and we are much pleased.

 

Right on the waterfront which is a Marina, 100 metre walk to the bridge and straight into the old town. So pretty. Full of restaurants and bars all in meandering streets, just one charming alley after another, you can see how people got lost in the old days. A Maze.

Trogir across to the Old Town...If you squint it could almost be Gulf Harbour!!!

Our hotel had a lovely Cabana, for the guests to utilize, so we unpacked and joined Geoff & Laurian for a nice cold beer, whilst we set out our plan for the night.

We wandered into town, most places have their menus outside. Same food everywhere. Italian based.
Laurian and I had scampi and the boys Spag Bol., all washed down with House rough red. Even though we were stuffed we drank another bottle of red in the cabana before retiring. I was having mad dreams and woke at 1am took a sleeping pill and slept thru till 7.30.Of course now I have Le Coff and it is driving me and everyone else mad.
Well we may have lost Mr Grumpy as Mary H said “he has smelt the sea and it worked.” Hooray.
He got early and got us a hire car.
We had a nice little breakfast, juice, ham cheese and bread, scrambled eggs, coffee, all for 7E each not bad.
So we drove into Split, like most European cities, great mixture of old and new.
Loved this boadwalk

In this case Split is very old. Charming. The driving was interesting from mon mari…this developed a very front seat, back street driver (moi). It was scary. I gasped and complained a lot as we narrowly escaped hitting parked vehicles on my side of the car in fact the wing mirror did nab one.
Poor G & L, would have been rolling their eyes in wonderment at this nagging slattern, if they were able to keep them open, but I think they were tightly closed from sheer fright. But we made it.
Had lunch, salad, fresh but not brilliant.
Found the VIP Vodafone shop and got me a pre-paid Vodem stick for local use.
So back to Hotel, got the emails, changed, then joined the others for a wine in the Cabana, before dining.
Went to a restaurant that had taken our fancy the night before. Got a sweet little waiter, G always trying the get us a discount. Waiter a little confused but laughing.

Food was good. I had Pizza, D lasagne. L Risotto and G steak and frites. All enjoyed our food. We finally got a freebie, the staff asked if we would move to fit in some other people and recompensed us with Grappa for the boys and some kinda banana liqueur for the ladies.

 After the 2nd Grappa it was home time.

 Ladies went straight to bed. Chaps The Cabana. And it is just as well they did. As they sat there, some pissed men arrived and one was having difficulties…he fell. Old Sir Galahad Geoff went to help and picked him up and helped him onto his boat.
According to Dale the guy was a very pissed German who was obviously gay and was trying to procure G onto the boat, full of other mad, gay, Czech people…this was a dastardly plan to sail off with Geoff. But G escaped and then Dale went to bed.
This is the story I was told by Dale on his very loud return to our room.
In the morning I gathered, that the only true bit , was the German was pissed and fell over and G assisted.
But Geoff did stay up and get ensconced with 2 spies 1 UK and 1 French.
Yeah right!!! They talked till 3am.
Do we really leave these two together for too long?

Saturday morning
Boys unwell - earlyish start, market shopping for girls, and take the baggage to the boat for the boys. We got lots of lovely fruit and vege. Then Supermarche. Interestingly enough Croatia is not part of the EU, so there is not a lot of recognisable products, as you would get in France etc.
Took us a bit of time to buy the goods we needed. We did well.

Back to the boat, the Good Ship Viktoria, had a beer, so hot. Meanwhile the storm clouds were gathering, not to be deterred, the boys were releasing the lines when one of the Charter people came down. “Stop you must not go out. Big storm coming.”
It had been so sunny and hot just 30 minutes previously. So reluctantly
They tied up again. Just in time. It blew big time.
Good news, was it gave us time to find out problems on the boat.
There were a few. Battery rapidly draining. Shore power not working, couldn’t get electric head to flush…couldn’t get oven to work, no matches, just a few things, but fairly important. The Charter people are very helpful unlike “The Moorings” in Tonga and our problems were all fixed. So it was lucky, we could first, have been stuck in major storm and second, with fairly important parts not operating.
So gave us time to catch up with Larry, who with Debbie and Ashley have arrived for their summer sojourn, on their boat kept permanently here, in Split Kastella Marina. It was wine time. Lots of good info from Larry and Debbie
Had steak and vege dinner then bed.
It was really raining hard, we thought we might even be stuck for several days.
Morning came, rain went, sun came out. It’s gorgeous. We shopped for extras that we had forgotten the day before, and back to boat, stowed and off we went. A great 16 knot breeze, eased sheets, gently sailing off to who knows where, wine in hand.
Pretty good, so far By the way Dale has the language sussed.

Thank you - Hvala pronounced Gwala...Dale says Koala, so there ya go. Never have any problems in a strange and foreign land with Dale around

Fleetwood Mac - 2009 Bash for the Bewildered - Images of Taranaki

Beautiful Mt Taranaki, a wonderful setting to Welcome Fleetwood Mac, back to New Zealand.

What a difference a few decades makes.
In 1977 Fleetwood Mac came to Auckland to perform at Western Springs.
As it turns out it was just 2 months after we moved to live in Auckland.
Fleetwood Mac were at their Peak having not long before that released the sensational "Rumours: Album.
As it turns out we were also at our peak. Early 30's young and stunning really.
We organised for a few of our equally stunning friends, to come from all over New Zealand, to join us at this great event.
A couple of buses were booked and complete with wine, beer, lots of fab food, picnic blankets sunscreen, hats...off we went. Like this year, the summer was slow to start but Auckland really turned on a superb day. We had the best time. The men treated the scene like a cricket match while we waited for the show to begin....all the gorgeous young girls who walked past, were scored on a 1 to 10 score particularly for the breasts...mmm I know, but it was 1977 after all...and it was the days of no bras for everyone...no matter what size or state of droopiness. We drank lots of wine in the sun, one of friends brought platters of smoked marlin from Whakatane. Hello Sailor were the openers and then on came Fleetwood Mac...gypsyish, whimsical Stevie Nicks. along with her then partner Lindsay Buckingham,...John and Christine McVie were still together. Mad old Mick Fleetwood bashing away at his drums. It was just wonderful.
You can understand how excited we were... to be going 32 years on.
New Plymouth is situated on the Western Arm of the North Island. It's jewel is Mount Taranaki...probably one of the most beautiful and truly symmetrical volcanic cones globally.
All of this was awaiting us as we prepared to take off on Saturday morning.

We are working hard on visiting all of New Zealand. We had been there before but a long time ago,

so it was like a new experience. Down the other side of the North island for a change.

Otorohanga, loved this store. Oto.Foodmarket... dot com perhaps?

next stop Te Kuiti we had lunch but I won't bother mentioning it, not the best lunch we have had but a bonus was this cute billboard across the road.

 

Escapees

 

Poor old Mum left at home with the kids.

 

Our first glimpse of that wild West Coast. Wonderful sight.

 

We found a little settlement called The Three Sisters. We imagined that there would some rocks or bumps or something. We got to a dead end, but what a superb Kiwiana Bach Area.

There was the shoe wall

 

This bach is so old that it has its own history. Printed for all to see.

 

This was on the right hand side of the bach. I guess this is idyllic in the summer. Right on the waterfront.

 

So typical New Zealand

 

Old letterboxes taker my fancy. I would have more but my friend (the driver) doesn't always want to stop.

 

Finally we arrive at our destination. Our friend Gay managed to talk one of her friends Julie, into moving out for a couple of nights and renting her house to us.

Once again we have landed on our feet. Look at these beautiful grounds.

 

Plenty or room for Mary, Heinzie, Dale and Myself...we could have played Musical Beds (I don't mean that in a grubby way) and had a different bed each night.

Unfortunately it was too chilly to use the pool.

 

Gay also booked us into "The Nice" Hotel for Dinner.

 

Dale and Heinzie who seem to have trouble finding something that they like on the menu, finally decided on a soup each which they shared.

 

Next this tasting platter.

 

Meanwhile the Mary and I were delighted with sweetbreads with a beautiful sauce and then

we both had the stuffed chicken breast.

Don't know what they were looking at here in the carport... but it was the beginning of the Bewildered.

The very Start of the Old Farts Tour.

 

It seems that opening the door is not an easy exercise. Oh dear

The next day  TOFs went to visit Gay at her fabulous property.

This lady does this wonderful garden all by herself. I am so impressed. We can barely keep our small courtyard in trim.

 

 

 

She rents out this paddock to a neighbour who is feeding this calf up. The poor little thing has only just left his Mum...he has a couple of sheep for company but they are pretty boring I would have thought.

 

We then went to Gay's local Cafe Lahar in Okato

 

Great breakfast menu, we were very impressed with the choice and the delivery.

 

One of the nicest breakfast we have had for a while. Dale and I had Eggs Benedict. Heinzie worked his way through a stuffed croissant.

 

Mary and Gay had huge plates of scrambled eggs and bacon with sour dough toast.

We even bought a couple of delicious muffins to take home for afters.

 

We were missing 2 tickets and I had to go and collect them, here is the entrance at 2pm.

The calm before the storm. Unfortunately our tickets were arriving till later in the day.

 

 So I staggered back down the road...home for a rest before the big night.

 

The Bowl of Brooklands is such a beautiful park and a wonderful natural amphitheater. Perfect for a concert. They filled it to the Max 17,500 both nights.

When we picked the tickets up finally, they were for 2 xVIP seats. Without further ado the Driver strode off for his seat, we graciously sent Mr Heinz to join him.

The three women went to find our standing position.

As far as the concert was concerned, we picked the wrong place...Our view was OK but somehow the sound didn't envelope us. It was hard to be really involved.

Our major mistake was the lack of stimulant. They sold wine there but it was a hassle to buy and as people walked past with their plastic glasses, it had the air of Chateau Weasels Piss.

Unfortunately it was cold...so even though the Band were fabulous...the girls shivered and just wished were sitting in the  car in the warm.

I know, Wimpy, but if we had maybe imbibed a little more we may have had a better time.

We need alcohol with our concerts...Sad but true.

Dale and Mr Heinz were up here at the front.

Old Lyndsay looking pretty good

They are still a Super group.

One of the bonuses of small amounts of alcohol. All feeling very chipper in the morning.

Bye Heinzies, we had a great time. (Yet again)

Thanks Gaye and Julie great hosts.