Since I was running out of Schengen Area days, I hot-footed it back to Croatia, where over winter you can stay fairly cheap, the food and wine are good, people are nice, and there are plenty of opportunities for hikes.

Here’s having a bit of a look around in Zadar. (Easy flight from Brussels, which is why I went there). That hotel, the Maraska, I took a pic of it back in 2013, it was unoccupied then, and still was in 2017. It’s odd because it’s right off the old town, so I can only imagine that the cost of revitalizing it is prohibitive. Just found an article that in 2023 Hyatt started a renovation and it’s now a shiny new hotel.

The stature of the man with the shell- that’s Spiro Brusina. He was a natural sciences expert and founder of ornithology in Croatia, among other things. The last photo is just a representative of a charming side street with things for tourists.