• Hidden Gem: San Marko Konoba Restaurant Review

    During our stay in Croatia we also visited Pasman island by bike. This bike tour was one of the most bike friendly we did with some dirt road sections and fewer pedestrians to navigate. We had some luck while following the coast to find a place for a swim that had chairs under trees that belonged to an apartment but were not occupied. We opted to go for a swim instead of sticking to the complete bike route. We had enough exercise in the heat with a few steep climbs when the road had to leave the coast and go…

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  • Hotel Villa Donat in Sveti Filip and Vanilla Beach & Grill Bar in Sveti Petar, Croatia

    While in Croatia this summer we stayed in Zadar for a few days and then moved to Sveti Filip I JaKov to the Hotel Villa Donat. The hotel is a short walk to the beach but if you prefer you can also swim in the outdoor pool. Rooms are quite modern but the hotel does have a bit of a former Eastern bloc atmosphere to it. This is most obvious in the restaurant which is a buffet with the bar being in the next room and requring guests to go over to get drinks while having dinner. The restaurant and…

  • My Strava 2025 Running Summary: Achievements and Goals

    This week I got my annual Strava summary for 2025. Of course I already knew that compared to the past 2025 was a good year in terms of activity as it was the first time I reached the 500k running target. But seeing the statistics compared to the previous years it puts it in another perspective. To begin, since I joined Strava somewhere in 2017 I actually managed to run 500k in a year twice before. These were the covid years 2020 and 2021 where we were all forced to stay at home a lot. There was more time and…

    My Strava 2025 Running Summary: Achievements and Goals
  • Growing Herbs at Home: Update on my Experience with Auk Mini

    Last May I bought an Auk mini and planted some basil and parsley. As mentioned in another post growing the plants turned out to be as easy as claimed on the Auk website. The plants also lasted a good while : we finally decided they were over their peak in November. Partly this was because of maltreatment from our side during the vacation period with not enough cutting followed by not administering the advised amount of nutrients. Still, we had roughly 5 months of joy from the plants, offering multiple cuttings each week. And especially the taste of the basil…

  • If on Ugljan looking for food, consider stopping at the Konoba Ugljan

    During our vacation we went for a bicycle ride on the island Ugljan starting in Zadar. We took the ferry in Zadar to the island and then cycled around on the island. The city of Zadar has some bike paths but they are not in very good shape, often very narrow with a lot of holes and bumps and used in 2 directions. Also, they are not well indicated so it is not always clear if you are on a bikepath or a footwalk. In the marina we were biking according to instructions on bike paths crowded with pedestrians. Same…

  • Biking from Zadar to Nin: Great Food and Scenic Stops in Nin and Vir in Croatia

    While in Croatia this year we went on a number of bike rides. On the first one we cycled to Nin and as we arrived there around lunch time we looked for a place to eat on Google. We picked Trattoria Peperoni’s. It was an excellent choice. We could sit outside in the shade and had good pizza and Greek salads. The place was crowded with tourists but staff was still super friendly and service was smooth, we didn’t have to wait for our orders for long. After lunch we continued our bike ride to Vir where we stopped for…

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  • Unexpected Delays on the Road to Zadar: A Travel Story

    On our last leg to Croatia from Maribor to Zadar we were expecting an easy and relatively short ride of 400km. We could not have been more wrong. After 50km towards the border the gps started to show alerts about traffic jams ahead and delays increasing into the +2 hours range. We decided to exit the highway and take smaller roads to avoid the traffic jam. That worked well but the roads in Croatia are not really made for making a lot of headway, endless changes in speed limits without any obvious reason seem to be there to make you…

    Unexpected Delays on the Road to Zadar: A Travel Story
  • Familie Ultradom

    In de familie Ultradom zetten ze de kachel altijd in een hoek van een rechthoekige kamer. Weet je waarom ? Antwoord : ze weten dat het daar 90° is. (uit Argument 3 leerboek Meetkunde, ISBN 9789045533643)

  • Selling Second-Hand Books: My First Experience with BoekenBalie

    I had a long weekend free and decided to complete my library dabase. In the process I discovered a couple of books I have 2 copies of. Some time ago we were discussing with friends about buying and selling second hand books and they were using BoekenBalie because it is an easy process to sell your books with them. The process is indeed easy, create an account, download the app and you can scan the ISBN codes of the books you want to sell. The app immediately gives feedback about the expected price they will pay you for the book…

  • Hotel Citymap and Jack & Joe Steak and Burger Club in Maribor

    Our second stop on our way to Croatia was in Maribor. We stayed in the Citymap Hotel which has free parking and 2 low power charging stations. They didn’t work with my charging card which was one of the exceptions on our trip. But it did accept my credit card so I was able to charge overnight and we had a full battery in the morning for our last leg to Croatia. We had a family room which was spatious enough for 4. The view through the window was towards a backyard, not very beautiful but we arrived late and…

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