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Do you know who is it, Mr Armstrong?

Dubrovnik turned out to be the absolute highlight of our trip, although we barely left the old town for the whole time we were there. On one of the evenings, we walked the city walls at sunset, which provided some stunning views, and partially explains the sheer volume of photographs we took (sample comment from someone who saw our photos: “Did you guys do anything else but take photographs while you were there?”). We also found time to stop for drinks while enjoying “The Most Beautiful View“, and ate some amazing fish during a lovely meal out on our last night (leaving my name earlier on in the day to reserve a table out on the terrace, the maitre’d said to me: “do you know who is it, Mr Armstrong?” “er, me?” “Like in the moon…”).

And, we even found time to watch some of the Olympics, which was always an amusing experience when any Croatians were involved–for example, we watched an Australian bloke win a men’s swimming race, but as the camera zoomed in on the winner, the commentator started yelling and shouting and generally going a bit crazy (imagine that classic bit of Norwegian commentary when they beat England in the early 80s–“Lord Nelson! Lord Beaverbrook! Sir Winston Churchill! Sir Anthony Eden! Clement Attlee! Henry Cooper! Lady Diana! Maggie Thatcher–can you hear me, Maggie Thatcher! Your boys took one hell of a beating”–but in Croatian). Of course it turned out that the Croatian had come in second for the silver medal. We also saw an amazing bronze-medal doubles tennis match that the Croatians eventually took by 16 games to 14 in the final set. And I lost count of the times I saw the replay of the Croatian men’s coxless pairs silver medal-winning rowing performance. A couple of days after the race, as the triumphant pair were being interviewed in the studio, I caught the briefest of brief glimpses of the British men’s coxless fours inching their way towards Matthew Pinsent’s fourth gold medal before they went back to talking to their two sporting heroes.

After that amazing fish dinner on our final night, we stopped in a bar for a quick drink with our friends from Hvar (who had themselves arrived in Dubrovnik by this point) in a small yellow bar that reminded me a little of Amsterdam (or perhaps that was just because of the naked woman painted onto the toilet door). As they tend to do, a quick drink quickly turned into 4 or 5, and even the barman bought us all one at one point (although maybe he was just happy to still have paying customers after the local police had been by to ask him to turn down the music and close his doors). We eventually stumbled up the steep steps of the old town and home to our appartment some time after 2, and decided it might be an idea to get some sleep considering we were starting the long journey home the next morning.