Preparations for the most important day of the Dubrovnik calendar are well underway. The Day of St. Blaise, held on the 3rd of February, is the day of the patron saint of the city and wreathes, flags and banners already adorn the historic city core.

Workers from the public garden authority had a busy morning decorating the streets, the monuments and most importantly the St. Blaise Church in the very heart of the Old City.

Apart from drive-through fast food stands and drive-in cinemas that were introduced in Croatia in the last decade, the first drive-in pharmacy is to be opened in Zagreb in February.

The drive-through pharmacy at Zagreb's neighbourhood Retkovec has already opened its doors to consumers, but its official opening is scheduled for the next month.

The Zagreb City Pharmacy company has opened this type of pharmacy with the aim to improve the availability and provision of health care services to less mobile senior citizens and parents with small children.

An access for cars is provided; all that consumers have to do is to ring the pharmacy’s bell and a pharmacist will give medications to patients through a specially designed window without requiring a patient to get out of a car or enter into the pharmacy area.

The Zagreb City Pharmacy company also plans to open drive-through pharmacies in other parts of the Croatian capital.

The Esplanade Luxury Hotel in Zagreb has become the first hotel in Croatia with the Gluten-Free Food Service Certification.

On the 24th of January the Bosk company from Rijeka which developed the first such standard for hospitality in the country awarded the Esplanade Hotel this significant certificate.

''In the past few years a demand for gluten-free food has significantly increased at the Esplanade Hotel. The gluten-free meals has already been available on our menues, but now with the certificate we believe that guests will have more confidence in what we have to offer in terms of gluten-free food'', commented Sanda Sokol, the PR and marketing manager of the Esplanade Hotel. She also hoped that this was the added value of the hotel and a specific completion of the offer, because the hotel has already have halal and kosher certificates and the HACCP system which is the basis for all standards.

On this occasion Denis Delogu, the manager of the Bosk company, emphasized that the lack of restaurants and other tourist services in Croatia with such standards was quite visible. ''These standards are increasingly present every day in the whole world, especially in the United States and Italy which have gone the furthest in terms of gluten-free food service''.

Delogu also presented data that show that nowadays 70 million people in the world are sensitive to gluten, around 190 million people avoid wheat, whilst one or two persons out of a hundred people have celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder related to intolerance to gluten, a protein from wheat, rye and barley.

On the other hand, it is estimated that the gluten-free food market in Europe is worth more than one billion Euros and is expected to grow by a further 40 percent till 2018. For comparison, a kilo of gluten-free flour in Croatia is up to ten times more expensive than 'ordinary' flour.

At just after 11.30 this morning a forest fire broke out in a suburb to the north of Dubrovnik. In the hills overlooking the small village of Vrbica smoke could be seen rising into the blue skies.

According to information from the Dubrovnik Fire Brigade 27 fire-fighters with 7 fire fighting vehicles are on the scene and special planes are also dropping water on the blaze. The cause of the fire is still unknown.

Video by Kejt Marinovic  

A few days ago the Youtube channel of Epic Drone Videos published an amazing video of a drone video sailing in Croatia made by Jus Medic. It shows breathtaking views of Solta, Bol on Brac, Hvar and Pakleni islands, filmed by GoPro and DJI Phantom 4. 

This aerial footage is almost surreal and highlights the beauty of the Croatian islands and clean blue sea.

For the first time in history seven Croatian airports had more than eight million passengers! That's almost 900 thousand passengers more than in 2015 – reports Vecernji.hr. 

Most of these 8.1 million air passengers arrived in Croatia during the summer months, which shows how successful the tourist season really was.

In order to break the overall record of the number of passengers, most of the Croatian airports broke their own records. Split Airport for the first time in its history exceeded the figure of two million passengers in one year, and the Dubrovnik airport came close to the figure of two million passengers. Zadar airport got over half a million passengers and Pula Airport year had more than 400 thousand passengers for the first time in one year. Pleso Airport, the largest airport in Croatia, named after the first president of Croatia Franjo Tudjman, also boasts a growing number of passengers – over 2.7 million. A new terminal will be opened soon, with equipment for receiving 3.5 million passengers a year.

Split Airport had 476 thousand passengers less than Zagreb Airport, which doesn’t depend that much on the tourist season. But Split has one more record to brag about – it’s the only airport in Croatia that had over 500 thousand passengers in one month. Last year in July 544 262 passengers passed through the airport. However, the traffic at this airport is really seasonal, which is easy to see from the numbers – in January last year there was only 25 958 passengers. At Franjo Tudman Airport the greatest month last year was August with 284 419 passengers, while the slowest was February with 141 834 passengers.

With new lines being announced by many airlines already – Croatian airports could break even more records this year.

Preparations for the upcoming summer season are in a full swing. Thus the Croatian shipping company Brodosplit from Split has launched a new mini cruiser that is to set sail in the Adriatic this summer.

The new mini cruiser, with an estimated value at more than a million Euros, was built for a local private company Mladin Punta from Jesenice near Split.

The newest member of the Croatian nautical fleet is 42.4 metres long, 8.5 metres wide and 3.8 metres high. It has three decks: the main deck, the upper deck and the sun deck. Brodosplit has constructed a steel hull and a superstructure for the mini cruiser which will be able to accommodate 36 passengers and six members of the crew.

This is the tenth jubilee mini cruiser from the series of passenger ships for nautical tourism that has been built in Brodosplit since 2012 for domestic clients. The construction was realized within the government's program for the restoration of the passenger and excursion fleet for Croatia's private shipping companies - small entrepreneurs.

''The construction of passenger cruise ships has been fulfilling the efforts of Brodosplit to be a constant support to domestic nautical tourism'', stated the company from Split.

Almost exactly one month after Christmas, one of the most impressive Christmas decorations – a giant Christmas ball has left Dubrovnik. It was taken apart this morning. 

A great attraction that has been added to Christmas decorations last year and made a comeback this year is a favorite among children but also adults, who just love to take selfies with it. It looks beautiful during the night and during the day, but it had to be taken away because of preparations for the festivity of Saint Blaise.

                                                                                                                                       Photos by Dube Marjanovic Ladasic