Croatia – Hotel Astarea in Mlini

Photo of some bright red pomegranates growing on a leafy veranda in front of a local person's home

Oh I forgot to say, the hotel originally put us in 2 single beds, and Leon went and asked if they had a double. Super proud. He would not have done that a few years ago! So I wake up not wonderfully refreshed, feeling like I’d slept on a bag of bones. The bed is not very padded & has lots of springs that are ready to dig into your shoulders and hips. It’s about 6pm and am a bit hangry. So I wake Leon up as I think that he won’t sleep tonight otherwise. And then start unpacking stuff from our bags, apparently a bit frantically. When I’m a bit stressed, I do things at a super speed pace and it can make others a bit uneasy, but hey, it’s my coping mechanism. Diner is at 7pm so I have now killed enough time for us to eat. We go to the ‘piano bar’ and I have a cheeky glass of prosecco, & Leon has a brazen Long Island ice tea that is 3/4 alcohol. The food is a large buffet, featuring some delicious seafood risotto, and potato salad crossed with coleslaw, and peas, plus a plethora of unidentified meats. Leon eats like someone starved and it’s like feeding time at the zoo! I can’t believe how much that man can pack away and not put on an ounce of fat. We then had some veg soup and some fresh bread. The bread was divine, all crusty on the outside and soft and cosy inside mmm. We round up some little cakes and fruit salad to wash it all down with, and then head upstairs to plan our week. We watch a few mini programmes on YouTube on the split of Yugoslavia and what places are the sites to see, including of course the game of thrones filming locations. I begin to feel a tad weird about this for the first time. All this history and brutality, and I want to know where a fictional fantasy series is filmed? It’s leaving me a bit hollow. I don’t want this holiday to be centred around game of thrones and I’m keen to learn the real battles the people here have fought.

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