We heart Hvar

It's official, we LOVE it here!! The sun, the beaches, the small town, the food... this place has it all and we are finding it difficult to move forward on our trip.
We arrived in Hvar port, via humungous catamaran, on Tuesday and set about to meet up with the landlord of our guesthouse.

Waiting at the pier in Split for our boat to Hvar.

Our landlord picked us up at the bus station in town and drove us up the hill to the house. And then the best part... his mother was baking strudel and he brought us some after we were all settled in. For reals!

Homemade strudel, mmmm

This guesthouse is hands-down the best one we have stayed in so far. As you can see, it has a kitchen with balcony, and there's a big bedroom with another balcony and our own bathroom (which seems to be more common in Eastern Europe than in France/Italy). AND it's only 36 euros a night, which is something like $45. AND it has sea views, AND it's five minutes walk to town AND five minutes walk to a quiet beach. Score!
Honestly though, they had me at "strudel".

View of the Adriatic Sea from our bedroom balcony

Our first evening in Hvar it was raining (of course). Fun Fact: Every place that we have stayed in for more than 24 hours, it has rained there.
But the next two days were sun, sun, SUN! So of course we hit the beach. And did pretty much nothing else.

Walking down to the beach

Brannan found this cliff and took the opportunity for some diving

Look how clear the water is! That is probably 20 feet deep and you can see the bottom

Ahhh the beach. The water is still pretty warm this time of year - around 60 degrees

There was a little restaurant on the beach so we took the opportunity for some seafood. I got some seafood spaghetti and Brannan got some pasta with shrimp tails. I certainly didn't expect the barnacle-y oyster shells that were sitting atop my spaghetti, but they were certainly delicious! It's amazing how much better fresh seafood tastes.

The aftermath of the feast. Look at those crazy shells!

I'm pretty sure the topic of how to become a professional beach bum was seriously discussed. Beach bummery seems like something I could do with my life...

The following day I had the notion to do a little exploration of the town before hitting the beach. There is an old castle (of course there is!) on top of the hill overlooking the town that you can hike up to.

The main boardwalk along the harbor and the castle sitting atop the hill

Well, turns out that there are approximately 50,000 stairs to climb before you get up to the castle. We stood at the bottom and said "uh-uh, no way" and headed to find us some lunch instead.

Waaaaaay up there in the distance is the castle. No thanks!

The cool town square with the old church and bell tower (which some nun rings like a crazed maniac around 5:00... for at least ten minutes)

More pasta for lunch. Don't tell Italy, but we think the pasta in Croatia might be better!

Brannan wanted to find a place that rented some snorkels. The water is so clear that you can see all the way to the bottom pretty much anywhere you swim. We were pointed in the direction of a guide that takes you sea kayaking and snorkeling. We were in - and what a blast!!

Yaaahr! To the seas!

Showing off our kayaking skills

The fellow kayakers

We paddled around several islands, and periodically our guide (a very beach bum/snowboarder dude-type) would explain where we were and something about the islands.
We turned around one corner to an island, happily paddling and smiling along, and were met with an old man's bum! Brannan hollered out to me "Don't look Ethel!" because there were several more bare bums up ahead. Yes, yes, our first nudie beach. How exciting! They didn't mention that in the brochure!  All us kayakers suddenly became very interested in the view in the opposite direction until we passed the island.  Thankfully we only saw bums and aren't scarred for life.

After about an hour we stopped at a bay to do some snorkeling and swimming. Brannan had a blast snorkeling for about an hour. Our guide told us that normally they stop for an hour or two because there is a little restaurant there where you can have lunch or drinks, but because it was so late in the season it was closed. No complaints, we just enjoyed some more beach time!

Scuba Steve!

View from the island, and that's Brannan out there snorkeling

After snorkeling we paddled another 30 minutes or so back to Hvar. Such a fun experience! We weren't able to get any pictures of the scenery from the kayaks because the camera was locked up in our water-proof container. But it was so beautiful to go around and see the view from the sea. We decided that we are definitely going to do more excursion-type things during the rest of our trip because we had such a good time.

The next day was Friday, our scheduled day to leave Hvar. Yeah right! We went and told our host that we would stay at least one more day because it was rainy on Friday, but supposed to clear up on Saturday. So we stayed one more day and then decided that we would just go ahead and stay through the weekend.

View on Friday. Boooo

View on Saturday. Yaaay! And some delicious donuts for breakfast

We will see if we make it out of here on Monday. Eventually we want to go south to see the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia. I'm sure we'll get there sometime! Check back to see if we keep traveling onward or update our resumes to include Professional Beach Bums...