Croatia Online - Film Lovers in Dalmatia Take Note!

There's a good selection of the more traditional cinemas in Split and around Dalmatia, some more modern than others. However it's hard to beat the newly opened Broadway Kina, on the first floor of the Joker shopping centre, just behind the five star Atrium hotel in Split.

The new Brodarica area of Split, not to be confused with the village of the same name near Šibenik, has sprung up from nowhere in the last couple of years. First came the Atrium Hotel, swiftly followed by big blocks of modern colourful flats with dolphin, elephant and other sculptures on the roofs. A few months ago the Joker shopping centre opened with a big splash of publicity and some recognisable "high street" names such as Miss Selfridge, Top Shop and, yes, McDonalds. Now, just a couple of weeks old, Broadway Kina provides the state of the art comfort and technology with which to enjoy your favourite blockbusters. Five cinemas of varying sizes, comfortable airline business class type chairs, and technology we have not quite got our heads round will help you maximise your evening's entertainment. The programme changes every 3 days and you can find out what's on by linking to the website http://www.broadway-kina.com/. Unfortunately there are no English pages yet so you may need to phone the box office if you don't understand the Croatian translation of the film titles. Those that are unfamiliar with Croatia will be relieved to know that all English language films (and French, German, Italian, etc) remain in the original version, with Croatian subtitles added. One of the reasons, we suspect, that most Croatians pick up English so quickly though, scarily, Only Fools and Horses has been a big hit on Croatian TV recently and you'll find a number of Croatians now speaking English with a cockney accent.

We don't believe there's anything else like Broadway Kina in Dalmatia though there is a sister operation in Zagreb, the capital. We wondered how it would fill all the seats but a friend told us they were sold out last Saturday and, at 22 kunas a session, it's a snip compared with the equivalent in London.

Unusually we struggled a bit to find a suitable picture from our library to go with today's posting. The best we've been able to come up with is Uvala Smrka, towards the west end of the south coast of Brač island, known by the locals as James Bond Bay!

Read more about James Bond Bay in our Croatia Cruising Companion due out in early December - go to http://www.croatiacruisingcompanion.blogspot.com/ for more information on that.