Hvar - Day 6


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Europe » Croatia » Dalmatia » Hvar
July 13th 2015
Published: July 17th 2015
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Since we would only be allowed to use the pool today, we decided to maximize our use of it – it was also our first day to just sit back and relax, so it worked on both fronts. We slept in, a little, and headed up for breakfast. As with the previous hotels, Amfora’s breakfast was a full buffet with an assortment of teas, “pastries” (rice cakes), fruit, cheese, meat – literally a gigantic ham ready for slicing, cereal, eggs, sausage, bacon, mini-chicken franks, breads, salads, and waffles, pancakes and bread puddings. It was quite delicious. Stacey favored the eggs and this amazing chocolate bread that was just the right balance between hearty and sweet. James favored the sour cherry bread pudding and the cantaloupe. After eating, we headed out to the pool area.

We managed to nab two chairs in the shade off to the side of the pool by the waterfall. They were sort of on their own little peninsula. We hung out and read for a while, but we started to quickly lose shade. After about an hour of reading, Stacey hit the water. It was cool and refreshing. This truly is an amazing pool, very disappointing this was the only day we could use it. Stacey swam up to the waterfall wall – best view in Hvar. You have a waterfall below with a smaller pool, and the beach and sea straight ahead. After cooling off and exploring the odd shaped pool, Stacey returned to the sun chair and began reading again. After a while, James was ready for a swim, so we both got in and enjoyed cooling off in the water, and quickly nabbed two seats at the swim up bar – Stacey has always wanted to go to a swim up bar, so this was a lot of fun for her. It was very hot and pretty early, so we decided to get non-alcoholic beverages – Stacey got a Pina Colada (but snuck in some blue curacao) and James got a Nojito (Mojito with no rum – very popular in Hvar). They were both very good and it was fun to just sit on a barstool in the middle of the pool.

Afterwards we decided a work-out was in order (this was the first hotel with a gym). James decided to explore the running scene, and Stacey headed up to the gym. The gym was on the top floor of the hotel, and had amazing views of the sea. The only problem was it was HOT. She lasted 10 minutes on the bike, then decided to just do some free-weights. Everything was in KG so she guessed at what seemed to be most similar to the pounds in the US. She was pretty accurate and had a good workout. James’s run was also quite warm – it was the middle of the day, so very hot and humid. He ran along the sea, going the opposite direction of downtown Hvar. Most of the route was not that great for running – narrow roads that don’t go for too long – but got to see a lot of the island by running down a few spurs. Towards the end of his run, he found a trail of some sorts. The early portions led to some hotels, but once out past that, the trail was pretty desolate aside from some abandoned swing sets and lamps, but did provide some great views of less built-up portions of the island.

We rinsed off quick and then headed back down to the pool. It was just after lunch time, so we got a table (those cool looking pavilions around the pool are for lunch only – we couldn’t get one of those, but we got a couch close to the restaurant). Since it was a late lunch, we decided to split a salad. Opting for some local flavor, we got the chili-prawn salad. It was not quite what we expected. Large pieces of lettuce, with no dressing, lots of shrimp and peppers (as promised on the menu) topped with two fully cooked, fully intact prawns. The salad was better than expected, once we saw it, but not quite up to the menu’s description. We saved the full-sized prawns for last, but neither of us was able to figure out how to get the shells off cleanly. After lunch, we wanted to hit the pool again, this time with a drink in hand. After some deliberation we decided the champagne was so good from the hotel the day before, that we might as well get another bottle. The waitress told us to find a spot by the pool and she would bring it to us. We were both wanting some shade, and grabbed the last two chairs fully shaded – right in front of some trees. As promised, the champagne was delivered and we began phase 2 of our relaxing day. After some time, the shade started to move off of us, and two more shady spots opened up, so we moved down to the other end of our row of chairs, right next to the bar. This was a great spot for some people watching. We took one last swim before calling getting ready for dinner and both decided that a relaxing day at the pool is exactly what we needed after some very busy (although very enjoyable and memorable) days preceding it. Thanks again Barbara, Francois, Adrien, and Janine Gallois, AJ Sutton, Tim Stanton, Victoria Noland, and Leann and Ryan Hays for the stay at Hotel Amfora!

We didn’t really have much in mind for dinner – we just wanted some good gnocchi. We walked from the hotel down to the city center and looked at a few menus. In Croatia, they have hostesses that stand in the streets with menus, trying to get you to come to their restaurant, much like a pushy salesman. We found one really nice girl who didn’t try to push us towards her restaurant (Park Restaurant), but rather, just made small talk. We had one more place to check out before making our decision for food, and that was the pasta restaurant by the dock. There were a lot of boats coming in for the Ultra Music Fest, so the dock smelled of gasoline and was noisy. We decided to return to one of the smaller restaurants tucked into an alley. We decided on Dalmantino – Stacey was not enthused about the 1 hour wait, but James was convinced the food must be good if the wait is that long when so many places do not have waits. We sat at the bar next door (part of the Park restaurant) and had one of the WORST servers, ever. Stacey got a cappuccino and James got a cherry brandy. The drinks came out relatively fast, but Stacey remembered she can’t drink coffee on an empty stomach, so she ordered a plate of olives. When she asked the server what size dish it was, he replied “normal portion”, which meant nothing to us. 15 minutes later, a server from Dalmantino came to seat us – we still had our drinks and hadn’t gotten the olives yet (how hard is it to plate a few olives?). We were told it was no problem, the server took our drinks right over to his restaurant and told us to close the tab and they would return the barware to the Park later that evening. We were still waiting for the olives 10 minutes later, so we asked our new server about it. He went back to the old server, who told him he had cancelled our order. Apparently his smoke break trumped our order of food, so he never brought them to us while we were at his restaurant, and decided he didn’t want to bring them next door. We were ok with that, and ordered some bread instead. Before any food came out we had a small portion of carob delivered to our table and some carob brandy. This restaurant had a host of servers, each with their own task. This particular server did a great job explaining the ritual – St. John’s Bread, is what they called it. Apparently St. John was a vegetarian, and his food of choice was carobs, in particularly carob brandy. The joke goes that he liked the brandy so much it was like his daily bread for survival. We were instructed to eat the carob first, then take the carob brandy as a shot – it is supposed to help with appetite and decrease stress so you go into your meal relaxed, and ready to eat. It was a great way to start a meal – and indeed, relaxing. Every meal is served with truffle bread sprinkled with olive oil and garlic, so those came out first, followed by our bread basket we had ordered. We had also ordered a sample of their olive oil – apparently it was made the day before and they keep it in some sort of pressurized vessel that makes it “taste like it was just opened, each time”. It was some of the best olive oil we have had. Our meals came out shortly – Stacey got the gnocchi with chicken and mushrooms in a white wine cream sauce, and James got the black gnocchi – gnocchi injected with squid ink, with shrimp and a white wine truffle cream sauce with sprinkles of truffles. Both meals were hands down the best we had had on the trip. Following our dinner, we were presented with another brandy – sage brandy. It is supposed to help with digestion. We sipped on this one – it reminded Stacey of Christmas morning. Very good, and definitely helps with digestion. After our brandies, we ordered a walnut chocolate cake with ice cream. It was definitely the best dessert we’d had on the trip. It wasn’t so much of a cake as it was the fine mixture of walnuts and flour, baked and covered in a chocolate topping (in general, Croatian desserts tend to be less sugary than American desserts, which is nice). It was so good, James asked Stacey to figure out how to make it when we get back home. Stacey decided that was a good task. After our desserts, we were presented with yet another free sample of alcohol. This time it was a Croatian dessert wine – similar to a port, but not quite as heavy. It’s more similar to a rose in color, but definitely sweet. The very last thing the restaurant gave us was a 10%!o(MISSING)ff coupon should we choose to return to their restaurant another time.

Our experience at Dalmantino was definitely the best we’ve had on the trip and when we got home we found out it was the #1 restaurant of 300+ on Hvar, per TripAdvisor (all the hotels and restaurants proudly display the certificates of excellent from TripAdvisor) The servers were great – first time we had a server who was prompt, and even funny. He enjoyed rattling off English sayings. Everyone was friendly, and the sampling of Croatian liquors and traditions was a nice touch. Thanks Janine Gallois and AJ Sutton for such a delicious and memorable dinner! After a long day of taking it easy, we topped it off by heading back to the hotel to get some sleep.

Photo Link:

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