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...
We made our way to Split, one of the larger cities in Croatia. At this point we decided that we needed a vacation from our vacation. It's a hard knock life. We found a decent room in Split and left about 3/4 of Sara's stuff in a luggage depot, which was an excellent move. After a night in Split where we hiked to the top of a bluff and checked out the town, we went to bed early to get up early and catch a ferry, which we, both well-educated individuals, thought we'd have no problem making.
After asking everyone at the terminal which boat was the right one to get to Korcula, the island we were heading to, we finally figured out that it was the giant one at the end of the dock. After hustling there, we thought there would be a ticket window. There was no such thing. So we asked a guy on the boat if we could buy a ticket on board. (The boat was 2 minutes to departure at this point.) He said no, but if we gave him our passports, he would let us on and we could take care of it when we got off. He had a uniform, it was early, and I'm not terribly bright, so we did just that. After 3.5 hours on the ferry (and some dolphin watching to boot), we started to get off when we heard one announcement in Croatia and "Mr. Hendrix to the xlsjlkcsldkj." So we went down to where I thought the crew offices were, and sure enough, after asking an older guy in a uniform, he ducks into an office and comes back with the passports. We try to ask how to pay, etc., but he gives us the universal sign for "Don't worry about it. It's taken care of." We quickly sprinted off the boat and onto a van to get to the other side of the island.
Korcula is a beautiful little island and Korcula town is a pretty mellow little town with the requisite old city and lots of crazy stairways and alleys. We found a really sweet apartment for more than we should have paid and set up camp. We hit a wrap stand for lunch because after days and days of italian and seafood, we were at the end of the rope. We also set up wind surfing lessons with a kid who could have easily passed for a California surfer dude stoner. Turns out he speaks 4 languages, went to the UN school in NYC, and is going to school in Vermont (Marlboro, I think) next year. Appearences and all that...
For the next couple days we chilled out, hung at the pebbly beaches, rented a scooter and explored the island a bit, I went biking, and we learned (a little bit) how to windsurf. It's actually a lot easier to get going than I thought. There's some decent night life in Korcula, most of which occurs around Fresh, the wrap stand. Those guys are geniuses.
We cut out of Korcula after another near ferry miss and headed for Hvar, island of the jet setters...
We hopped a really cheap early morning flight from Prague to Dubrovinik, Croatia, on the southern tip of the country. I still can't believe the neighboring countries let them divide up the land like this, since Croatia has pretty much the entire coast. We made it to the Dubrovnik airport with no problem and jumped on a bus to town. We immediately went to the tourist/travel agency where the woman gave us incredibly vague directions to our (excellent) room. Well, it had an excellent view and a fan as well as a bathroom shared with just one other room. So it was all good.
We hit the old city, which is completely contained in a fortress. It had been shelled within the past couple of decades, but it was almost completely restored. We grabbed lunch and headed for the top of the walls to walk around the city. I took about 50 pics because the view into town as well as out to sea were amazing. It's about a 2km walk around, so we took our time and enjoyed the sights. The rest of the afternoon we tooled around town checking out various churches and other sights. We made plans and bought tickets to go see some chamber music as part of their summer fesitval. We had an awesome seafood dinner of stuff that seemed like it jumped out of the water and onto the plate. We arrived for the concert a bit underdressed to find they were holding it in one of the most amazing courtyards I could imagine. There were general admission tickets available, which meant sitting on a giant stone staircase or up in some arches above the musicians. The music was incredible, and the acoustics were fantastic. With only about 200 people in attendance, it was a very cool sight.
We had made plans to go sea kayaking the next day, and I should have thought about it a bit more when I woke up to say 'wow, there are white caps out there'. So it was a no-go. Instead we wandered down to the ferry dock and hopped a boat to Lupon, one of three islands in the Elephitine set. (Not sure about the Elephitine thing). We hiked across the island (about 2k) to go to a sand beach, which is rare in Croatia. We sat down and it started raining - hard. So we packed up and headed back to the bay where the ferry dropped us and had lunch. We hung out on the pebbly beach all afternoon and hopped the boat back to Dubrovnik. We met up with our housemate, a very cool Aussie, and got dinner and drinks and listened to some jazz outside until late. After some confusion and a missed bus the next morning, we headed north for Split, a larger city about 5 hours up the coast by bus.