There truly is no better feeling than the first exotic drink of a holiday, sitting outside in balmy heat, wondering why a 34% blueberry liqueur called something you can’t pronounce isn’t more popular globally and simultaneously feeling you have unlocked the great meaning of life.

The disadvantage of packing light with just one pair of sandals is that it quite literally all falls apart when those sandals collapse (did not survive rocky Croatian coastline). Emergency hobble to secure new shoes. View was ok though.

Regular readers know I love an old church on holiday. Though this one had the most macabre stations of the cross I’ve come across (and I’ve seen a lot). Couldn’t tell if the inspiration was The Scream painting or the Scream movie, that 90s classic.

Testing the panorama function on camera to the limits

At 43 I’ve realised I will never be one of those people who joins in the group volleyball in the baking heat, and I am OK with that.

Quick trip to Ston, including old city walls snaking up the mountainside, and a giant salt works - one of those strange entities that is guaranteed to appear at some point on a holiday.

Beautiful Korcula

Things named after me: the Technical Provisions actuarial funding basis, and a “Passenger vessel operator offering fast and reliable transportation services in the Croatian part of the Adriatic” according to their (my) website.

Can we have a side order of Covid with the smallpox? Inventive Croatian cuisine

Dreamy day despite the boat trip going a bit wrong. Please explain to me why these stalls hold the same thrilling appeal to me in my 40s as they did in my teens. GIVE ME ALL THE TATTY BRACELETS.

One of the best holiday sounds. Off to Bosnia for the day, passport at the ready for the inevitable wait at the border.

More adventures in European cuisine. Spotted in an ice cream freezer in Mostar - how about a nice tub of iced slag to cool you off?

Returned from Bosnia to lie exhausted on hotel bed with a Fanta Limon. Only English TV station shows back to back Miss Marple reruns and I’m not sad about that.

Very cute birthday surprise from the hotel (chocolates have melted though)

Why on earth is this Croatian pear brandy not more famous? Tastes like pear drops, makes you feel immortal. Eve Keith #LiqueurAbroad

Back on a boat

“We should climb the walls of the old town!” “Forty Euros please” Ok let’s just take pictures of people walking the walls

Can’t escape the seagulls even in a Dubrovnik museum