Brian on the Road

We set off for our final leg of Croatian craziness on the island of Hvar. We hopped the correct ferry, which we thought was going straight there. It turns out it was making a stop. We didn't know, but stayed strong until we actually got to Hvar. This was confirmed by asking to everyone we saw on the boat "Hvar? Hvar? Hvar?" until they dismissed us. Remind me to learn Croatian. The ferry insanity was confirmed by a couple of Irish girls who had gotten screwed over by non-existent boats.

We arrived at the crack of dawn, aka 8-30 (sorry for the additional keyboard troubles), so there weren't rooms available yet due to the old women that own them not calling in. Let's take a break to review a few key facts about Hvar - there are three main towns, all about 15k away from each other, with each a 45 minute bus ride from the other. There are things to see in each city and they apparently all have their own character. We would be there 24 hours. Throw into the mix the fact that some friends of Sara's that we'd seen in Morocco were in the furthest town away.

So we did what anybody would do - we rented a car. A convertible Rover 2 door, to be more specific. It was old, it was beat, and it redefined the term "cowl shake". Think wet noodle with half the noodle missing. As VP of transportation and the only member of our merry band that can drive stick, I loved it. We took the long, old road over to the furthest town, which was awesome for me because with a manual transmission, driving anything on the ascending, descending, twisting roads was a good time. I tried to block out the huge dropoffs on the side of the road. Guard rails haven't yet made it there.

We made it to Jelsa, where Sara's friends were staying and actually ran into them walking down the sidewalk near their hotel. Obviously it\s not a huge place. We hung out on their beach for a while (think stones and concrete slab, but nice) and then went back into town for lunch.

We piled in the car to drive to the next town, Stari Grad, which is interesting in its own right. Very local and very mellow. We happened upon a woman selling wine out of her courtyard/living room. It was decent stuff, so we bought some. Just the right amount of anti-freeze. I think some people bought some souvenirs.

Back to Jelsa to drop off the girls and we had called the room place in Hvar town, who told us we had a room. Said our goodbyes and took another "spirited" drive, this time on the new road to Hvar. We got the room info after some confusion (oh - the people who called! right, right, the people who called.) We returned the car and then lugged our stuff about a half mile and up a ton of stairs to "meet the woman in front of the school". We found what looked like a school and a woman appeared like Batman out of nowhere. She beckoned us on, and like a couple climbers and a sherpa, we made it to her house. As we're about to go in, we notice the house is completely dark. She started gesticulating wildly about a fire and it seemed like an electrical fire. At this point Sara and I shoot looks of total terror to each other, because we've just figured out why this room is only 30 Euro while most rooms in town are 60-70 and up. The woman picks up on this, and looks like she's going to cry, so we go in and check it out. Sure enough, there are candles lighting everything, and the room was amazing - private bathroom, new, huge terrace, etc. We figure it's late and this is it, so agree to it. About 5 minutes after paying the woman, the lights come on. No joke. They stayed on the rest of the night. I was afraid to sneeze for most of the night. We finally figured out that a house nearby had had a fire and that had affected several houses in the area.

We checked out Hvar town at night, which is quite the spectacle of jet setters, or in this case, yacht setters. There were a couple boats docked that were drawing crowds just sitting there. It was bizarre. A few drinks and we were back to our fully lit bargain pad. The next day we set out back for Split.

Once back in Split sans ferry incidents, we made the decision to hit another town further up the coast but very close to the airport. We boarded a local bus (think communist-era old-school) and headed over there. Sara found us a very cheap but very, very small room which had AC and a TV, so we pretended we were back in the states and watched CNN drone on about Israel for 30 minutes. Another decent dinner and drinks and it was an early night.
We hopped a 7am flight with a double connection through Zagreb, Croatia and Vienna on our way to Bucharest, Romania...