OK, Christmas isn't here yet but ...
... but is very near, and according to the weather forecast, my previous experiences & everything else, it's going to be sunny this year.
All the photographs I'll present in today's post were taken a couple of hours ago. In this opening one, you can see the iconic old windmill in its Christmas edition and two snowmen surrounded by various seasonal decorations in front of it.
All that stuff is situated on the most attractive stretch of the seaside promenade in the harbor of Medulin, my hometown.
"Adventura u Medulinu" was written on the wooden board near the benches and snowmen shown in the opening photograph. It's a nice wordplay that includes "Advent" and "Adventure".
The space in front of the windmill looks like the town square of the small, seasonal Christmas town that will disappear in January of the next year. On the other side of that, well, let's call it a square ...
... there is a large tent that looks almost like a real and pretty large storage building.
The tent is always open ...
... so I entered. The space inside the tent looks great in photographs.
In this shot, you can take a look outside through one of the fake windows made of transparent tarpaulin.
The wooden sales booths along the lateral edge of the tent offer food and drinks at night.
Beer, mulled wine, and sausages are the most requested goods. In the following photograph ...
... the focus is on the stage at the end of the hall.
Here you can see one of the decorations whose job is to embellish the frontal edge of the stage. This thing looks like something made of white, silky leaves with a bit of silver berries added to the frozen foliage.
This plastic imitation of the red poinsettia leaves looks almost authentic from a certain distance. All the decorations presented in this and the previous photograph belong to a Christmas arrangement shown in the following shot.
Yep, all those things are happy together here - Ho, Ho, Ho!
In this photograph, you can take a better look at the small snowman that rides on the Christmas train.
In this shot that shows the corner of the stage, you can see a relatively small Christmas tree and a relatively tall, long-legged elf in front of it.
Here you can take a look at what I saw after removing a large piece of tarpaulin that was covering an entrance to what looked like a small room near the stage. The place looks like a fun little storage room. The ice cream bycicle is certainly the highlight of this shot. In the following photograph ...
... you can take another look at the line of sales booths that form one of the lateral walls of the tent.
Here you can see a shot taken in front of one of those booths.
Yeah, I tried to make it count in this photograph.
The sales booths are actually out of the tent, only the space in front of them is covered. The tent looks like a building from the outside, but when you enter, you soon notice that the thing covers the space that looks like a central square of a village made up of small wooden houses.
These two snowmen were greeting the visitors from the branches of a small Christmas tree situated in one of the two corners close to the entrance. They were nicely illuminated by the sunlight coming through the transparent tarpaulin.
Christmas in Medulin has everything a man could want for Christmas.
Even one of the ZZ Top guys in the Santa Claus outfit is there.
Behind the ZZ Top Santa, there is a beautiful girl with a snowflake in her eye.
For this shot, I found an angle that allowed me to portray the girl and the Santa as equally important subjects.
It's cool to see how easily a log can turn into a doll.
This riding poodle was posing very close to the entrance. Less than a minute after taking this photograph ...
... I was outside again.
On one of the piers near Christmas Town...
... you can see the heart of Christmas. I mean, the heart is always there ...
... but only at this time of the year does the thing get decorated with colorful Christmas stuff. In the following photograph, taken from somewhere outside the large tent ...
... you can take a look at the center of Medulin, the town across the bay from Christmas Town.
Here I zoomed in a bit more. Mostly to show you the iconic Church of St. Agnes, the biggest one in town.
In this photograph, you can see the front facade of a small wooden house situated more or less across the square from the tent. The door was locked, I tried to knock three times but no one answered ...
... so I photographed only the things and animals on the terrace in front of that house. These three polar bears looked a bit drunk to me.
This happy dude looks like a gingerbread man made of plywood.
On the pile of straw near the bears there was a cradle, and in that cradle ...
... a bearded baby was lying. Is this a baby Santa? A baby masked and dressed to look like a Santa Claus larva? A crossbreed between Baby Jesus and Santa Claus?
I don't know. A friend who was there with me said: "It's just a doll - don't be silly" but I don't believe her.
This hypnotic circle was mounted on the straw behind the house. The day was pretty warm around noon ...
... so I saw a big black fly sunbathing on the white stretch of the circle. Next to the small wooden house ...
... there is the big, tall Christmas tree.
It's so tall That I wasn't able to insert the entire thing in the frame of a single shot.
That's why you'll see only details and fragments in today's post. The Christmas tree was decorated with a multitude of small lamps, quite a few relatively big red balls, and some other things present on the branches in considerably smaller numbers.
In this photograph, you can see the lamps shining, while in the following GIF ...
... the same lamps are winking at you.
Here you can see the silver bell near the top of the tree.
After visiting the Christmas Town near the sea, I went to buy a few things in the supermarket on the opposite end of Medulin. From the parking lot behind the large store ...
... I saw Santa Claus climbing along the facade of a neighboring house. If I didn't know anything about the business of being a Santa, I would probably call the police or just start yelling: A thief! A thief! Catch that damn Christmas thief?
Ten minutes after taking this last photograph I was back home, ready to spend the rest of the day preparing this post and waiting for Christmas.
AND THAT'S IT. HAVE A GREAT CHRISTMAS, WHEREVER ON THE PLANET YOU ARE. AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.