Hvar Sober Hen do & Holiday
I have been rubbish at updating my blog lately, so here’s a quick update on things worth noting before I jetted off on my Croatian Adventure.
I went to a creative Lean in Circle event. A group of us ladies have been meeting since January and have become good friends and a support network to each other. We welcomed some new faces to this particular session as well which was nice. Eunice from ‘Te Amor’ hosted the event with a tea tasting at her new shop on Waterloo Street. She talked to us about the different hot and cold teas available (I never knew there were so many different kinds). I love learning about artisan products like this, it reminds me of my time at the brewery, so much passion and love in every product. At the end of the session, Eunice kindly offered everyone a glass of wine, miraculously, everyone kindly declined the offer, content and happy with their sober experience together!
I liked the cold tea so much from the tasting that I went back to buy it the next day. I hadn’t realised that it takes 4 hours to brew before you can drink it… totally worth waiting for though!
I followed the event with a delicious meal out at Hugo’s with Mr F. They have a great alcohol free mocktail menu and the salads are to die for. The service was great too, perfect date night - TICK!
* WARNING The image below may make your mouth water
This leads me on to another fun date night! The hubbie surprised me with tickets to Human League (Yes the 80s synth pop band!) With classics like ‘Don’t you want me baby’ it was easy to get lost in the music and dance the night away; we bumped into some friendly faces which we haven’t seen in a while and if I hadn’t told them that I was drinking alcohol free beer, I don’t think they would have known. The only thing I regretted about the night was the inappropriate footwear that I wore - no amount of alcohol would have numbed the pain in my feet from killer heels. I think my heel wearing days are well and truly over. At the end of a fantastic evening, I was pleased to get in my car and to drive home to my warm comfy house and bed. Oh how things have changed.
Now on to the biggest challenge this year so far…. HOLIDAY TIME! My best friend Lauren (Aka Muchi) and I joked about how I am cursed on holiday with the weather; I have been on a number of hot holidays, where it has rained. As the holiday crept closer, the weather forecast seemed to get worse, on the journey to the airport, the weather in Croatia all of a sudden looked like it would be the least of our troubles! The fog was thick pea soup in Jersey. As more and more flights turned to cancelled, my desire for a giant glass of gin and tonic increased. I watched Muchi drink hers with intent as I nursed my herbal tea. When our flight finally cancelled 4 hours after we first arrived, the reality of us missing our connecting flight the next morning sunk in. We went home re-booked everything and prepared ourselves and the hen party for a 24 hour delay. They would have to start the hen do games without us. Little did we know that there would be further delays to our journey the next day.
The next day, we sat on the run way only to be told that there was a ‘technical issue’ with the plane. GRRRRRRR. We huffed and puffed and explained to the lady next to us that we’d already experienced delays, before this flight and so to excuse our ‘fed up’ noises, which without explanation made us look like spoilt brats. We got chatting to Nicky about everything and anything to pass the time - little did we know that she would become our Croatian holiday romance. Nicky was off on a girls trip and introduced us to the beautiful Hannah across the isle from us, who had been asleep during our initial meet and greet. As we arrived in Croatia it was obvious that we’d made a lovely connection, keen to find out how far our hotels were away from each other, so that we could try and meet up during our time there. We were pleased to discover that we would be at the same hotel! What a nice gift from the Universe.
We then missed our boat to Hvar due to the delays and had to rebook, getting the last 2 tickets on the next boat. When we arrived in Hvar our hens were there to meet us, whooping and waving to us. It was such a relief to get there. The hens had enjoyed a day of sunshine and were in good spirits, keen for a night out.
What do you do when you’re knackered and feeling like a big bag of poop, but have to go out and pretend you are on form? Roll yourself in glitter, of course. Glitter has a super power of making everything look better, an instant mood lifter. That and the can of Red Bull which did give me wings, gave me the energy to be and feel part of the party. Mel our very special friend from University, who we were all there to celebrate with, looked absolutely stunning and it was nice to see so many sparkly faces there all for the same reason.
We partied at Carpe Diem, which had a nice vibe, good music and made for interesting people watching. Especially if you are in to Made in Chelsea (I have no idea, but others on the trip had their Z list celeb spotting radars out in full force.) There was a boat taking people over to a little party island, which some of the girls did, dancing until sun rise, but I opted out about 12 o’clock for a comfy bed, looking forward to what the next day would bring.
The next day bought rain and lots of it. Determined to discover our new destination we all ventured out in our rain macs. One obligatory gelato holiday photo coming up…
That evening we went out for Dinner. I’d been looking forward to this all day. A night which was about eating (not just getting drunk) and quality time together. I enjoyed Mozzarella and Tomato to start and Lobster Linguine for main washed down with a local alcohol free beer. Bliss. THIS is what holidays are all about and this is my new indulgence. I’ve said before, in the past, the meal would have been something I would have rushed through to get to the fun at the other side, an inconvenience, using phrases like ‘eating is cheating’. I had no idea how much I was actually cheating myself out of the real experiences, the REAL connections with the people.
After the restaurant we headed to a bar for a drink, passing what I thought seemed like a nice live music venue to go to what can only be described as a hole. Promotional guys lured passes by in with the promise of free shots - ALARM bells should have rang at this point, any place that needs to give something away to get you in, isn’t going to be good. A DJ stood in the corner of the hole, pretending to DJ. Just because you wear head phones, does not mean you are a dj btw. He stopped between songs, trying to work out which of his other terrible songs he might play next. At this point I lost the will to live, full of linguine and unable to take my rain mac off, I felt like a party pooper. I realised that if I’d been drunk, i wouldn’t have cared and could have just ‘got into it’ finding the whole thing hilarious rather than uncomfortable. At this point, if I wasn’t doing this challenge, I would have caved in and thought F*** it. If you can’t beat them join them. However, I AM doing this challenge and luckily our hotel was not far from here, so I left them to it, choosing to get an early night. I felt pretty rubbish that evening and went to bed feeling lonely and sorry for myself.
IMAGINE THE SMALLEST VIOLIN PLAYING A SONG
The next day was booze cruise boat trip day and the sun was trying its hardest to come out from behind the clouds. Our skipper Mario was celebrating his birthday, announcing to the boat that he’d had a BIG night and not much sleep (just what you want to hear when you are about to embark on a sea adventure). We sailed around the caves and to different islands stopping off long enough for a glimmer of sunshine and sea swim before heading to the next location. I am so pleased that we chose a private boat and didn’t go on a big group booze cruise. Our boat was fun and nice and chilled, no need for mindless small talk. We’d all got to know each other by now and so it felt like a day out with friends. The sun came out for the last stop on our boat trip and we went to a really nice beach club. I have no idea what it was called, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also want to mention how thoughtful the group were when it came to bill splitting, always allowing me to just pay for what I’d had + tip, not just expecting me to split.
That evening we went to a bar called Hula Hula to watch the sun go down. Croatia really is beautiful. We bumped into a stag do that the group had met previously on a night out. One of them came over to me as he’d not seen me the night before (fresh meat - nice), I explained to him about my challenge and tried to paint a picture of what I used to be like after having a few drinks… loud, attention seeking and quite selfish. He said he couldn’t imagine me like that. I took that as a compliment, shedding the person that I once was and accepting the new person that I was becoming. I once again left the group to it, rewarding myself when I got back to my room with a face mask and some Sunday night telly.
The next morning the broken hen and party left to make the trip home to the UK. Muchi and i were meant to be travelling to the lakes, which is a 4 hour journey, but the weather forecasted there was thunder and lightning, so we cut our loses and stayed put.
The sun came out from behind the clouds and we arranged to meet with the girls that we’d initially met on the plane for a walk and talk. it was so nice to get to know them, they were genuinely lovely people (with the most amazing smiles and engaging eyes) and all very interested by my sober story.
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Muchi and I went for a lovely romantic dinner at a local restaurant, we shared moules and muchi had a steak and I had a tuna steak. There was so much food! We rolled ourselves back to our room to pack our cases ahead of our split to Split.
We arrived at our hotel in Split and stretched our legs with a walk to discover the area. Our hotel was about a 40 minutes stroll around the coast to the main town. We visited the Temple of Jupiter, in awe of the architecture and detail at every corner. I have no photos of this, as I was focused on taking this in, not on creating something ‘blog worthy’.
The people in Croatia are so friendly and helpful, with one lady going out of her way to show us where Zara was and another local (the fabulous Ivan) stopping to speak to us in the street to invite us on his tour, only to escort us to a bar we’d been trying to locate. Muchi, Ivan and I even got to see a famous Croatian rapper ‘doing his thing’ down one of the many lanes that make up the town centre. Ivan was such an interesting character and I will never forget him and the stories that he told us during our short time hanging out together.
The rest of our trip was spent eating, sunbathing and book reading - please read this book if you were someone who used to rush home from school to log on to MSN messenger, I couldn’t put it down! It bought back such vivid memories of being that age and the friendships that I kept. Her unhealthy relationship with alcohol also resonated with me.
I’m conscious that I have been writing this for ages and most of you have probably dropped off, one last thing I need to mention, I would go back to Croatia in a heart beat. I’d probably skip the party island and do more of a culture trip next time. I really enjoyed my time with Muchi in Split. I would definitely revisit our favourite restaurant, Corto Maltese. We went twice as the food was so good. The lamb Raggu and Gnocci were AMAZING. I’ll leave you with some food porn pics to drool over and one last thing to think about.
1st SOBER Holiday - Tick!