The Dubrovnik Times and Gulliver Travel have teamed up this summer season to offer you some great travel prizes! Stay tuned to The Dubrovnik Times and win with Gulliver Travel!

Easy to enter all we need is your creativity!

This week we are offering you the chance to win two tickets for the excellent Gulliver Travel excursion “Scenic Train Ride Through Konavle Valley.” For more info on this excursion follow this link. It is a great chance to get up close and personal with the fine wines of the Konavle region.

Simply add #gulliverwine to your travel, wine and gastronomy photos and the best photo, as decided by our jury, will win two tickets to explore the beauties of Konavle, the culture, the traditions, the nature and of course the glorious wines. Use your imagination and win with The Dubrovnik Times and Gulliver Travel!

#gulliverwine on your photos on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Don’t forget to make them public! The competition opens on the 15th of July and will close on the 22nd of July at midnight.

Good luck!

Introducing wonderful items made by Croatians, is the slogan of a new boutique that opened its doors in Dubrovnik last night. Kawa is located just outside of the historic Old City walls on the east gate, Ploce, and in a spacious store offers a breath of fresh air on the Dubrovnik souvenir scene. Small is beautiful, and in Kawa the emphasis is on “small-batch” design products with a Croatian signature.

From souvenirs, clothing, children’s clothes and toys, shoes, bags and even craft beers, Kawa is only two-minutes from the centre of the Old City and offers guests to Dubrovnik the chance to find an authentic memento of their time in Croatia.

I don’t go to the beach. It’s not that I don’t want to; I just can’t find the time. Trying to run a private business tied to the summer season in Dubrovnik can be pretty exhausting. There are no days off and stress levels are such that even when you find the time to do something like that, you simply don’t feel like it. This is why I am doomed to walk the earth six months out of a year with those ridiculous t-shirt tan lines where your torso is left pale while your arms and head are Caribbean-bronzed. It’s not flattering at all.

There is one more reason for my lack of beach enthusiasm. My grandparents on my mother’s side used to live on one of the islands of the local archipelago and I spent my summers there growing up. This meant the entire island was my playground. My cousins and I could always find a perfect spot away from the crowds regardless of whether we wanted to go swimming, cliff diving, snorkelling, or anything else we might think of. Every day was a beach day. So, you could say I’m just a tad bit spoilt when it comes to everybody’s favourite summertime activity. Trying to find a spot to lay down my towel in the middle of an overcrowded city beach among hundreds of sweating people and screaming children is not my idea of a good time. No, I’m used to a completely different experience.

We would make our way barefoot through the village and the nearby woods, trying to avoid sharp rocks along the footpath. After about 15 minutes of walking, beyond a flimsy old hand railing, a breath taking sight of sea cliffs descending down into a small rocky cove would make us pause for just a second, before racing to an old staircase leading all the way down to the cove. There, huge rocks which tore away from the cliff centuries ago formed natural sun bathing platforms, small pools of sea water, and underwater pits and crevices perfect for exploring while snorkelling. When entering the water I would be facing a dark blue vastness disappearing on the horizon. Behind me, tall cliffs lined with crooked cypress trees. Dancing around them, swooping swallows and swifts. Underneath the surface of the sea, silence. The kind of silence that is hard to bear for a human. A perfect place to simply float, suspended on the calm waters, facing the skies. Content and peaceful.

It makes a regular beach with an overpriced bar and plastic sun beds for hire look pretty drab if you ask me. I’m hoping to go back to my favourite island one of these days, as it’s been too long since I last visited. After all, isn’t that how life works? The moment you start appreciating things you took for granted as a child, you find they’ve become distant and scarce, and all you are left with is a yearning to go back in time and re-live those perfect moments.

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Bozidar Jukic is a Dubrovnik local with too many interests to name them all, with writing being at the very top of the list. He is a lover of good food, music and film, and a firm believer in the healing power of laughter. His professional orientation is towards tourism and travel so it comes as no surprise he spends most of his time alongside Mrs. Jukic running their own local tour company. Their goal is helping travellers from all over the world get a more intimate experience of Dubrovnik and what it has to offer. To find out more about their work, visit their website or Facebook page.
www.insiderholidays.eu

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More praise for the Croatian tourism industry are flooding in from all around the globe. The international media cannot stop marveling at Croatia especially its Adriatic region and Croatian cuisine as one of the best and healthiest in the world.

The popular portal BuzzFeed, a media company from New York, has published a list of food and drinks that guests to Croatia definitely have to try when they arrive in the country. According to the BuzzFeed list here are some of the popular Croatian dishes and drinks guests should taste:

- octopus

- oysters

- seafood risotto

- cheese

- olive oil

- handmade pasta

- local wine and spirits

- rozata

- almond cake

- Bosnian specialties like cevapi and burek.

According to preliminary data from the Croatian National Bank (HNB) the value of foreign direct investments (FDI) in Croatia in the first quarter of 2016 was 503 million Euros. Compared to 2015 it was an increase of 107.4 million Euros or 27.1 percent more than over the same period last year.

''After a significant decline of almost 86 percent in foreign direct investments last year, the first quarter of this year brought a certain recovery thus the highest quarter value of the FDI was recorded since the second quarter of 2014'', said Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) analysts in the review of the data from the HNB.

The RBA analysts have also reminded of two transactions in 2015 that made a significant impact on the amount of direct investments in Croatia.

The first was the sale of the tobacco company TDR to the British BAT for 510 million Euros. The amount of foreign investments last year was influenced by banks losses caused by the conversion of bank loans in Swiss francs to Euros, which as a result, largely neutralized the positive effects of BAT's investment.

In the first quarter of this year the most foreign direct investments were from Austria, around 184 million Euros or 36.5 percent in the structure of the total foreign investments in Croatia. The Austrian investment was followed by investments from Luxembourg of 139 million Euros accounting for 27.6 percent whilst investments from Germany amounted to 49.3 million Euros or 10 percent in the structure of a total FDI.

According to revised data, in the period from 1993 to the end of the first quarter of 2016 Croatia recorded 29.6 billion Euros worth of FDI.

''Excluding the so called ''circular investments'' which have the effect of increasing foreign direct investments in both directions i.e direct investments into the Republic of Croatia and direct investments abroad, this amount was actually 27.2 billion Euros'', emphasized the RBA analysts.

The RBA analysts have also stated that the highest values of foreign direct investments in Croatia for the same period were in the sector of financial intermediation (more than 25 percent) followed by trade investments (16.3%) and business and equity investments in real estate business (13.4%). The lowest amount of investments was recorded in the tradable sector.

The renowned Dubrovnik jazz musician Ines Trickovic will perform a special concert on Saturday the 23rd of July on the island of Lokrum. Trickovic, who spends her time between three bases Dubrovnik, New York and Macau caused a sensation in the musical world in April this year when she performed in the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York where she promoted her second album “Tales of Quiet Lands and Other Stories.”

And now audiences in Dubrovnik will have the unique opportunity to experience that Carnegie Hall hit as Trickovic will perform an identical concert as the one held in New York. On this magical evening Trickovic will perform with Julian Shore (USA), Joe Pandur (Croatia), Shin Sakaino (Japan) and Alan Polzer (Croatia).

“All of my life I am on Lokrum, my family actually lived on Lokrum and it is just a place that relaxes and inspires me. I can’t imagine a more perfect place in which to hold a concert,” commented Trickovic.

The concert will be held on the island of Lokrum on Saturday the 23rd of July at 9pm and Trickovic thanked the Lokrum Reserve for all their help. Tickets are priced at 160 Kuna and go on sale on Monday the 18th of July at the offices of the Lokrum Reserve (Od Bosanke 4) and in the Old City harbour at the ticket desk for the Lokrum ferry. The special ferry for the concert will leave at 8.30pm.

Ines Trickovic

Mixed choir from France ''ROYE de Choeur'' will perform in front of St.Blaise church on Saturday from 8 to 9 pm. The concert is organized by Dubrovnik Tourist Board.
The choir was founded in 2008. They have international repertoire, made up of songs from all over the world, from traditional to contemporary African songs.
They first stay in Croatia was in 2013 at the invitation of Croatian singing society ''Klek'' from Ogulin and on this occasion they've learned a couple of Croatian songs. They perform accompanied by piano, guitar and drums.

Dubrovnik is an ideal destination for summer vacation and many celebrities recognize that. Adam Gallagher, world famous blogger is roaming around streets of Dubrovnik and sharing beautiful photos on his social media platforms. Fun fact: on his Instagram account he has almost 2 million followers!
Adam Gallagher is the founder and mastermind behind the highly-popular blog I AM GALLA, which aids the men’s demographic with styling tips, trend forecasts and third party inspiration. He's 25 and he started a blog when he was 17, slowly growing and improving and finally becoming one of the most famous bloggers.
 In the menswear world, Gallagher stands out due to his exceptional ability to blend his native California aesthetic with a sharp New York approach to fashion.