Hvar Artist Retreat – Sept 2013

This week has been a very exciting one for me – I’ve been able to share the lovely places, people and experiences of this island with some wonderful artists from California. We’ve explored some gorgeous locations armed with sketch books, cameras and paints. We’ve walked for miles, enjoyed some fantastic meals, great wine, and the…

A Language Lesson with Fresh Vegetables

This morning, at Total Hvar HQ in Jelsa, we were treated to a behind the scenes look at the filming of Total Hvar’s language lesson series. If you haven’t been following along as the Professor gives us the benefit of his expertise in the Hvar dialect, you’ve missed one of the cultural highlights of the…

Painting with Wine

Every so often, if I have a glass of wine as I’m painting, I’ll accidentally go to dip my brush in the wrong container. The opposite is also true, and I actually took a good swig of my paint water – but only once, I’ve been a lot more careful since! So I was extremely…

Wine and jazz in Jelsa on a summer evening

Jelsa, it seems, can throw a really good party. Last night’s festival of wine and Jazz was a fine evening’s entertainment in a lovely setting. The entire waterfront was sparkling as we arrived shortly after the 8pm start. We strolled around, looking to see what was where, enjoying the wafting smells of food being prepared…

The fine art of making lace from agave leaves

Legend has it that the skill of making lace from agave leaves arrived from the Canary Islands around the mid-nineteenth century. A seaman brought back a sample of Tenerife lace from his latest trip, you could imagine as a gift for his sister, who may have been a nun, or attended convent school. The sister…

A slow food adventure in Hvar’s Golden Shell

A birthday is a perfect excuse for eating somewhere special – maybe even somewhere new.  We’d read about the  Zlatna Školjka (Golden Shell) in Hvar town, and how the chef is part of the “slow food” movement. Now that doesn’t mean you’ll still be waiting for your starter a couple of hours after ordering, but…