Croatia - Island Hopping in the Adriatic

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Wow - Croatia! We have had the most amazing time here. It has truly been the highlight of our trip and I am absolutely in love with this beautiful country. I had no idea it would be so amazingly excellent. I wish that we never had to leave but I know I'll never forget how spectacular this part of our journey was. We started in Split after taking the overnight ferry over from Ancona. Split has some great markets and I spent half my day ˝browsing˝ for dresses and sarongs. We stayed at a great campsite (Camp Stobrec) 6km outside of Split and after setting up camp, we drove to the airport to pick up Stef and Jess and Jason who were all flying in from London.

The next day was departure day - woohoo!! When we first laid eyes on the boat, I’ll admit that we were a little disappointed. It was the smallest of the 5 Sail Croatia boats docked and it only had a lower deck, a kitchen and dining area, and then a sundeck on top. Some of the other boats had 3 decks with a sundeck on top and private bathrooms (of this I was very jealous as we only had 2 bathrooms - but we did have a full length mirror thank god!). But as has often been the case on this trip, the good totally outweighed the bad! There were only 20 of us on the boat - 8 in our crew, a group of 10 and 2 girls travelling together (and 4 crew members to look after us).

Our group of 15 girls and 5 guys totally denied all stereotypes - there were no bitches, no stud muffins, no outcasts and most importantly no Aussie yobs! Bretto and I barely spent any time together because it was so great to be making new friends and generally just hanging out with people other than ourselves or Kirra and Lauren (not that its bad hanging out with each other, just nice to have a change :-) ). Plus Stef had flown down from London and I hadn’t seen her since we left over 1 ½ months ago and Jess flew down all the way from Scotland - that girl is a bundle of laughs! Bretto was super excited because he finally got to hang out with some guys (who knew he could get sick of girls?) and tell man jokes and talk about other man things that girls don’t know about. Anyway, it was an awesome crew of people and we couldn’t of asked for anyone better.

So I think this blog is going to be a bit short even though it covers about 9 days because every day was pretty much the same - relaxing, sunny and brilliant! Every day we would wake up, eat, sun bathe on the top deck, swim and snorkel, eat, sun bathe on the top deck, swim, snorkel, dock at another beautiful island, eat, drink cocktails then repeat. Sounds heavenly doesn’t it?!

So a quick itinerary just so you know where I’ve been and can get a little jealous! The first night was spent on the mainland in Makarska. We had a great dinner and then cocktails at a cave bar on the ocean. The music was corny but the cocktails were cheap compared to everywhere else we had travelled. By the end of the trip we would realise that they weren’t actually that cheap, we just weren’t very good at converting!

The second night we travelled to the island of Brac where we spent most of the day moored off the famous Bol Beach which is a long skinny stretch of pebbled beach that juts out 500 metres from the mainland. Afterwards we docked at the mainland and the entire crew went out for dinner and cocktails at the windiest bar ever! I was feeling rather ‘land sick’ which I didn’t think was possible but after spending so much time on the boat, I felt like the mainland was rocking and I was so dizzy I had to go ‘home’. A bit lame I know, but Bretto and Stef more than made up for it and came home at 3!

The third night we finally made our way to the much anticipated Hvar Island for pre dinner cocktails at a gorgeous resort perched on natural limestone terraces overlooking the turquoise sea, another beautiful dinner and a REALLY fun night out! The Carpe Diem bar lived up to the hype - I tell ya, nothings more exciting than a jug of mojito with 4 super duper long straws, fruit decorations and a live firecracker! The music was awesome and I was bummed when we had to leave at 2, but never fear, Hvar had more to offer! While everyone else piked (sorry guys but it was definitely piking) Jess, Kirra and I went to the club on the hill with 4 bars, a swimming pool, and lots of drunk people who didn't want to go to bed at 2am (so basically we fit right in). At 5.30 I decided I’d proved I still had it and I wasn’t aN old nanna and we made our way back to the boat for our 7am departure.

Night 4 and 5 we spent in Korcula as we skipped Vis Island due to choppy weather (thank god as I was having enough trouble with my sea legs!). Korcula was cute although not as much as a party as Hvar. I was secretly ok with this though because I was stuffed and a good nights sleep sounded like a blessing! So it was an early night for me but the next day I was back into our ‘regular’ routine of nap, eat, cocktails and lots of laughs. Apart from the cocktails, Korcula has some beautiful little surrounding islands with great snorkelling. A few of us girls asked Roberto from our crew to drive us over to one of the islands and we spent the afternoon walking around the rocks and admiring the gorgeous transparency of the water.

While we were away, Bretto did some fishing and caught 5 fish (apparently! - no, he does actually have witnesses!) but 4 got away when he was lifting them up to the boat. The one he did get in though, our cook Nano cooked up for us at lunch the next day and Bretto shared with everyone (I think he was very pleased to act as the ‘provider’ on the boat!).

After our 2 night stay in Korcula we hopped over to Mijet to spend the day at the National Park. Same deal as every other day - swimming, snorkelling, eating - except we had to walk a little way to get to the inland lake. Exhausting! Bretto put on a bit of entertainment on the top deck after dark and some of us carried on at the beach after midnight. Oh, the life of an island hopper! After Mijet the end was growing near (sob :-( ) so we made the best of our last day swimming before heading to Dubrovnik for one more night on the boat. We had a quiet night knowing that we’d live it up for the next 2 nights in Dubrovnik as most of the crew were staying behind for at least 1 extra night.

Dubrovnik is SOOOO awesome!! We had an absolute ball staying at the Fresh Sheets hostel in the old town (my first time in a shared mixed dorm and it was pretty fun - actually the first night there was no room in the hostel so we had to sleep in the common room but it ended up not really being used!). The old town is amazing - all red roofs, limestone buildings, polished streets and rambling lanes. The heat was utterly exhausting though and Jess, Stef, Bretto and I stayed indoors for most of the day except to go down to the ocean and jump off the rocks in the afternoon (I am now a certified expert bomber!). Bretto stayed in the hostel and drank and played guitar with an American backpacker (again, soaking up all the boy time possible before he’s back on the road with the girls). Bretto clocked up 16 stubbies and so won a free shirt from the hostel pretty much by default (one beer = one ticket. A shirt is given away every day).

After dinner we met up with the rest of the gang in a bar in old town for some bucket cocktails (yes they really do come in a little sand bucket - so cute but I think they’re mostly full of juice!). Needless to say, Bretto had been going all day and when it was the end of the night for most people, he followed suit and went back to the hostel without realising he had no key and so slept on the step til 6am (hence not really using the common room for sleeping!).

Meanwhile, Jess, Stef and I had gone out to a party we heard about from some people we met on another boat near Mijet. It was kind of dodgy at first because it was 6km out of town in an abandoned old hotel that was most probably not structurally sound (only in Europe can you make a club out of a hotel partly destroyed in an earthquake!) but the Hotel Belvedere soon turned out to be the best party of my life!!! The music was awesome (apparently some hotshot Slovenian DJ) and it got REALLY good at about 5am and even better at 7am. Oh my god it was so awesome and every time I thought I was ready to go it would drag me back in! We watched the sun come up and the massive cruise liners drive into the harbour with flashes going off from people who were getting up for breakfast and then taking pictures of us and our awesome party on the terrace of an abandoned hotel - absolutely amazing! But by 8 (so Stef and I also didn’t use our beds in the common room) we decided vodka for breakfast was not the answer and we (safely) found our way back to our hostel through the quiet morning streets of Dubrovnik old town. We walked in to find Dan having breakfast and Bretto curled up in the corner. Yes! I still have it!!

Poor Jess had to shower, pack and then go straight to the bus stop to catch an 8 hour ride to Zadar to catch her flight back to Edinburgh - rock on Jess! The rest of the day was filled with sleeping, refuelling, a quick visit to the museum, a last goodbye dinner with Stef and a good night’s rest.


So that was longer than I thought but I had to tell you how amazing Croatia was and especially Dubrovnik which has to be one of my favourite European cities (and one of my favourite nights ever!). And just in case you didn’t get it - I LOOOOOOOOOVE CROATIA!!!

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Comments

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Croatia
Am happy you liked our little country! Pozdrav iz Hrvatske (greetings from Croatia) :)