Postcards from Croatia (Part 3)

At a guidebook recommended fish restaurant I am slightly disconcerted that my fish still has its head and tail intact. The fish looks at me from the plate, as if to say; 'I was swimming earlier and enjoying myself, just like you. Now you're going to eat me'. He doesn't even taste that great. According to the guide book the service is spot on and they make a fuss of you. The waitress treats us with a mixture of bemusement and disdain.

The best restaurant in town (that we found) was Sesame, and fed up of fish by this time, we head there for the meat dishes. (The cow I am eating has had the decency to leave his head in the kitchen). We sit on a balcony with grapes growing on vines climbing the walls next to us. It's the perfect place to sit as the evening cools. It's so good, we go a second time. The waiter looks at us as he hands us the menus and then says: ' You were here already?'

On Friday we walk the city walls, peering at a woman as she hangs out her washing, another as she sows, sitting outside the front of her house. Elsewhere tourists rest around the old fountain. But it is time for us to leave. We leave the local kids playing football by the port, the same kid being sent to swim - fishlike- to retrieve the ball every time it ends up in the water. We walk up the winding steps to collect our suitcases and coats, and to take off our shorts and shades and to put on our civilian costumes, passing a strange car on the way that is covered up to protect its paintwork and its wheels from getting a suntan.