The next leg of our quest is three spots in Croatia – Split, Zargreb and Zadar. The most swooningly beautiful buildings and gloroius blonde coloured stone ever admired by man.

See what I mean.

Beautiful, off the beaten track villages and islands. What a great, peaceful place to retreat to.

And what to eat when you are there? Crunchy fishy things like these spelt. Like giant whitebait.

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Or something more elaborate – tuna, anchovies, sardines and shrimp.

This is stone soup. It was served to me in a very nice restaurant on the seafront (see pic below). It was made by the people when things were tough and there was little food. They would take a stone from the sea, algae and all and use it as the basis of a soup. Anything else available was added but the sea stone provided some flavour and minerals. Mine had some tiny ravioli in it.

The Adriatic

Plitvice Lakes National Park with its water just like Eden and its trout showing off because they know its forbidden for them to be caught. Sadly, none for dinner that night. It seemed right somehow that they were free and I should eat stone soup.

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Or something more like this – a ‘tartare’ of mushrooms with a lime and avocado sorbet. Very amusing, as the sorbet was slightly sweet and happily melted into the mushoom creation.

This is not Croatia but the gin hut in Africa at the venue we are considering for a retreat. The photo just arrived from my wildlife photographer friend who has sent some glorious pictures of how a retreat would look there – albeit, mostly animals. Sundowners are a tradition in Africa as that’s the time the animals come out to play.

Next stop on our quest for the finest retreat spot on the planet is Italy and some Islands in the south.