Day 9 Ivan Dolac

Woke up at 4 am (not unusual) and went outside on balcony. The sky was intermittently (around 2 seconds) being lit up by lightning. We could see no lightning, just the sky being lit up and it was silent – no thunder. It is called cloud to cloud lightning and it lights up the sky for miles. At 11 it was drizzling and we went for a walk and got caught in a down pour. It will probably rain all day. At 4:45 we set out to go to the only market in town, really a mini mart called Mini Mart 2 (but there is no Mini Mart 1). Hours are 8 to 11 am and 5 to 8 pm. Then we walked past the only restaurant around, Slavinka. We ate there 3 days ago and it was excellent. At lunch time when we hid there to escape the downpour, there was a group of Germans there eating big portions of good looking and aromatic food so were planning to have dinner there again in the evening. Walking back from the shop we decided to check their dinner hours. To our shock, a big sign in the window said “CLOSED -- see you next summer”. Fortunately, Bo’s friends had invited us for dinner which we had turned down. We knocked on their door and reinvited ourselves. We drank a lot of wine with dinner. Every 100 ft there is a house selling wine. There are 3 kinds of alcohol here: wine (both white and red, only one kind of each. The white is fairly light and not fruity, and the red is very dark and thick), rakija, and prošek. Prošek is a dessert wine. Since this may be confused with proseco, a sparkling wine from Italy, the EU decided that for Croatia to join the EU they had to stop using the term prošek. The locals here still call it prošek.