Free Google Wave invitations

Have you heard of Google Wave yet?
I guess most of you answered with a definite YES. For you two ignorant goat herdsmen, who haven't heard of it yet due to a busy goat herding season or something, it is time to get out of your cave and take a look at Wave's interesting features directly from members of the Google team.

Even if it might seem this thing has nothing to do with blogging and even less with photography, that is not the case.
Google Wave is a powerful communication platform which among other features also allows you to automatically publish your communications (interactions or "waves" as they are called) on your blog. You can also easily share your photos with your friends.
These are just a couple of the features that Google Wave offers. If you want to know more, simply go to wave.google.com and check it out for yourself.


Let me finally get to the point... Recently I have been invited to use Google Wave and awarded a few invitations myself. I have 5 invitations left and since Santa Claus spirit is in the air I decided to give them away to my readers.

If you are interested simply leave your request with an email address in a comment to this post.

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Exploring the island of Cres

After spending two days in central Istria, road led us to the island of Cres in Croatia. On our way to Brestova - our ferryboat link to Porozina, we passed by Plomin. There was a tall thermal power plant chimney piercing low clouds in this narrow bay.


Not an idyllic seaside destination by my standards, but it looks kind of nice in this photo anyway.

After an uneventful, 30 minute ferry ride across to the island of Cres we spent an easy day planning our stay and settling in a small apartment in the town of Martinščica.
We have been on this island many times before, but usually just to get to it's southern neighbor - island of Lošinj.


As we have discovered, Cres offers many interesting locations that are worth visiting.

Since we were hungry, we decided to visit the fishing village of Valun and taste some fresh fish. We weren't disappointed with grilled cod and relaxed setting at the restaurant Toš Juna.


The restaurant walls are covered with replicas of ancient stone tablets (Valun tablet) the village is famous for. Tablets are believed to have served as an 11th century gravestone. Written in bilingual (Old Croatian and Latin) and digraphic (Glagolitic and Latin) writing, the tablet truly is special.

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Charming hill towns of Istria

As I already mentioned a couple of posts earlier (click) I recently visited some charming hill towns of central Istria, Croatia.


If I had to pick one of them, Groznjan (Grožnjan in Croatian) would be my favourite choice. Ancient feel of this town is really hard to ignore. It seems like time has stopped on that particular hill. When we were driving towards it, I wasn't sure we were on the right way at all. When we finally reached the town, parking lots were full of cars - only a few license plates were local. This seemed a bit strange, since from a distance it really looked like a small and peaceful medieval town.

Today Groznjan is an artist colony, which is a result of the Croatian government’s effort to save hill towns from abandonment by offering cheap rents to artists. This seems like a good solution since the town was abandoned by its mainly Italian inhabitants after the Second World War. That happened when Istria was given from Italy to Yugoslavia.


It is a small town but offers many beautiful vistas and picturesque narrow stone alleyways to wander. Every corner is filled with flower pots and various examples of local art. Definitely a right place to just wander around and soak in the positive vibe. I think the artistic touch on the above photo captures the atmosphere of this town perfectly.


On one of the many town squares we found a promising tavern called Bastia and enjoyed a great meal topped with a glass of superb red wine. All that for a very reasonable price. Since M. is not too fond of truffles, we left them for our next visit. I definitely recommend you visit this place when in the neighborhood.

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