Having been less than thrilled with our restaurant options in touristy Dubrovnik, I planned to make dinner Thursday night.

I got up early and went to the market at Gruz harbor, where fish are brought in from the morning’s catch daily.

STRESS!

I got there around 8 and had to elbow my way through all the other late-comers, picking through the last of the selection!

I had to calculate the kuna conversion every time (150 kuna = 20 Euro)

One of the fishermen spoke to me in German (and someone explained that he only knows Croatian and German, presumably due to the high amount of German tourists everywhere).Most of the rest of the vendors only spoke Croatian.

Somehow I managed to come away with a half kilo of shrimp, a half kilo of mussels, a sea bass and a tuna. I also got tomatoes, basil, olive oil (in an old Gatorade bottle, which signified to me how this came straight from the farm), greens, figs, almonds.

And I managed to work them all down on the price (proud!).

At this point, I was like the Pied Piper of cats; the temperature was already rapidly rising, and I was rushing around a ten pound bag of seafood through the streets.

I had to hurry to the patisserie, up a never ending flight of stairs, to get dessert (kremsnite – custard-filled phyllo pastry) and bread.

Adding this to our sheep and goat cheese, and Posip and Malvasia wine, I was salivating over the promise of dinner later tonight.

The rest of the day was lazy to make up for the morning rush.

We went to our usual rock on the sea, but growing tired of rock-lying all week, we went to the nearby Cafe More for drinks and snacks in lounge chairs.

We planned to try our best to get into the Hotel Kompass pool tomorrow.

After our afternoon drinks and nap, we made our dinner, and it did not disappoint. It was one of the best meals we had all week (and costed less). Although we did have high hopes for our last night at a local farm-to-table restaurant in the Konavle hills.

Around 11 we headed to Club Revelin, an electronica club in the fort of Dubrovnik. We went to see a famous German DJ, Paul van Dyk. I am so far removed from this scene, but even I had heard of him before, so he must be really famous.

This is my “It’s past my bedtime” face.

The show was great, the club was pretty fun, but the best part of the night was having the usually packed streets of Dubrovnik to ourselves.

I did something similar and Florence and it’s one of my favorite things to do (while also keeping safety as a first priority, mom and dad). It really makes you feel like the city is yours.