The bus conveniently dropped us off at the mini-market so we were able to stock up on beer and wine before returning to the hotel for a short rest and to tackle Kim’s headache with some tablets while I waited on the terrace. Although the sun was shining it was slightly diffused through a layer of thin high cloud which robbed the sky of its razor blue sharpness and managed to keep the heat trapped inside which sent the humidity levels soaring and on the tiled terrace I sat in pizza oven temperatures and drank some cold beer.
After Kim had shaken off her headache it was time to go to the beach and although I am not generally a beach person I was glad of that because the mid afternoon temperature was much too hot for me.
The pine fringed white shingle beach was even busier today (school must have finished early) and we had to squeeze ourselves in on a vacant patch right at the sea’s edge. This was a beach of stones all carefully graduated by size as though someone had carefully arranged it that way. At the back of the beach there were rocks, then stones giving way to pebbles and finally shingle disappearing into the sea.
We sat on the pebbly bit and prepared to go into the water. Once again it was delightfully warm and we swam for twenty minutes or so until we were completely cooled down and we were fully relaxed when we retreated to the water’s edge and sat in the shingle and the gentle lapping waves.
It was here that Kim made a new friend when a three year old boy started to try and attract her attention. He spoke to her in Croatian and when he realised that he was making no communication progress he surprised us with a question in perfect English – ‘What’s your name?’ he enquired and took the answer back to his mother and then returned with another enquiry – ‘How old are you?’. His name was Marco and his English skills embarrassed us because we know not a single word in Croatian except of course for pivo (beer).
After an hour the little signal in my head went off to tell me that I had been there long enough so we gathered our belongings and walked along the beach as far as we could towards Mlini to check out restaurants in preparation for evening meal. We returned to one that Kim had picked out earlier and ran through the menu and agreed this would do nicely when we would come back later. It was still very hot so we walked in the shade of the trees and then selected a bar on the water’s edge and sat under the umbrellas and watched the boats on the Adriatic slipping in and out of Cavtat just around the bay.
This had been a day of contrasts, a busy morning in Dubrovnik competing for pavement space with the people of the cruise ships and then a relaxing afternoon in Mlini which we finished with a game of cards and a bottle of Croatian red wine on the terrace before getting ready to go out in the evening.
We returned as planned to the chosen restaurant and had a really super meal with an excellent fish platter at a very reasonable price and we both instinctively knew that we had found our favourite restaurant and that it was a certainty that we would be returning.
Another Bag, More Travel 
Looks wonderful