Croatia Online - NATO in Croatia

Kaštela’s fishermen seem oblivious to NATO’s presence behind them. Not so Croatia’s military chiefs who, for the next 12 days, are playing host to perhaps the largest and most significant international military manoeuvre in Croatia’s recent history.

From 1st to 12th October, some 9,000 soldiers, 50 warships, an aircraft carrier, amphibious vehicles, frigates, cruisers, submarines and 60 aircraft will stage the largest NATO military exercise of the year in the northern and central Adriatic Sea.

The Noble Midas Exercise 07 is Croatia’s most challenging test yet before it accedes to full membership of NATO. Exceptionally, NATO has established a significant precedent by staging such an exercise in a none member country which may perhaps signify Croatia’s strategic and other importance to NATO.

The logistics ships arrived early and Kaštela bay has been the base for one over the last week. Today’s photo shows it looking protectively towards the mainland, from between Split and Čiovo Island, with the island of Brač in the background.

Croatia Online – Coming Soon! The Croatia Cruising Companion

Regular readers will have noticed that Croatia Online’s productivity has dropped somewhat over the past few weeks, for which we apologise. Similarly our friends have hopefully noticed that we’ve disappeared off the social radar.

That should all change soon as the finishing touches are put to our Croatia Cruising Companion. It’s been quite an epic project but it’s now in the final stages of completion. As you can see from today’s picture, we now have a front cover, and are just waiting for a final schedule from the publishers in order to be able to announce the publication date.

In over 250 pages of text, photos and charts, The Croatia Cruising Companion explores the Dalmatian Coast and Islands – on sea and on land. Dalmatia is undoubtedly one of the best cruising grounds in the world and we’ve covered pretty well ever inch of it, in some cases many times over, during the five years we’ve lived here. In writing The Croatia Cruising Companion, we have endeavoured to pass on that insiders’ knowledge so that others can explore the area, safely and to the full, at sea and onshore. We hope and believe it will prove to be the most up to date, comprehensive and user friendly book of its kind.

We’ll let you know as soon as we have final publication details and will be resuming our regular postings just as soon as we can. There’s plenty of news to catch on but we’re in need of a short break after burning a little too much midnight oil over the last few weeks.

For an independent view of the Dalmatian Islands as a World Class destination, link to our earlier posting - Dalmatian Islands in World Top Ten Island Destinations

More Parisian Chic for Fall/Winter 2007

Although I'm a big fan of the Paul & Joe line, I have to say the Fall/Winter 2007 pieces from its younger counterpart collection, Paul & Joe Sister, offer all the must-have Fall pieces from a modern little black dress to over-sized sweater dresses and cropped pants with suspenders. How to top of this tres chic look? With a darling beret of course... although I'm more enamored with those faux knot booties. I'm searching furiously for them everywhere!