Sooo, with heavy hearts but curiously light feet, we actually managed to leave Hvar! The bad news is that the daily catamaran only comes at like 6:30 most days or 7:30 on Tuesdays. Needless to say, we stuck around for another day because we hated the thought of getting up at 5:00 a.m. as much as we loved the idea of (yet) another day in Hvar. For those keeping track, we meant to stay 3 nights, and we ended up staying for 8. Yay!
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| Bittersweetly leaving Hvar (on the cool catamaran) |
But we got on the boat, with the weird sensation of being ready to go, but also ready to stay, possibly forever. We took the boat to Split, where we then took an almost 5 hour bus ride down to Dubrovnik. After our debacle during the 6 hour ride from Plitvice Lakes to the coast, we were thinking "great, another terrible bus ride" so we loaded up on things to read and watch on the computer. It was, however, the most beautiful ride of our trip!
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| Wow! It was even more beautiful in person |
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| If you ever are forced to take a bus ride, this is the one to take |
The Croatian coast is a curious invention, and I believe we have mentioned that on a map it looks like Croatia won a war and the condition of victory was that they got all the beaches in this part of the world. The entire coast, but only for a few miles inland, belongs to Croatia, except for one tiny part, that belongs to Bosnia.
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| Above: Bosnia gets the shaft, Croatia gets the beach. Can you spot the part that belongs to Bosnia? |
Why is it this way? I asked a guy I met on a train why Croatia was so strangely shaped, and he said he couldn't explain it in less than a week. Anyways, it was a lovely ride, but I was apprehensive about the Bosnian border crossing because, well, it's a Bosnian border crossing. Turned out to be nothing, the first one the guy just saw American passports and didn't even open it. That's the kinda border guard I like! But we did stop in Bosnia for lunch, shown below.
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| The three miles of Bosnian coast. At least it's nice! |
We did finally arrive in Dubrovnik, a place that I have been looking forward to for a long time. It is a medieval walled city, excellently preserved, on the coast. And it was more incredible than I'd hoped.
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| Dubrovnik. Yeah, it's a little awesome |
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| I thought this plaque, on a sculpture in the main square, was hilarious. It shows the Dragon and Winged Lion (symbols of Venice) sitting at the foot of the throne of Dubrovnic. In your face, Venice! |
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| Medieval Main street |
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| Doge's Palace or Dubrovnik wanna-be? |
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| View of town from the harbor |
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| View from the breakwater outside the walls. |
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| The walls were this high all the way around the city. |
We were fortunate enough to have enough time to wander around the city for a while, and just in time we found the perfect place to watch an Adriatic sunset. It was a restaurant built onto the cliffs outside the wall that was accessed through a hole in the wall. One of the most amazing settings and sunsets of my life.
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| The entrance. What's in here, we wondered. |
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| This is what awaited us |
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| Romantic! |
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| So long, sun! |
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| A little cove we found at twilight just outside one of the gates |
THE thing to do in Dubrovnik is to walk the walls, which are anywhere from 50 to 90 feet tall and surround all of the Old Town. It did not disappoint, the views of the city were fantastic.
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| To the walls! |
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| Looking down on the main square and well of the city |
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| Not going to breach these wall from the sea |
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| Kayakers about to have a fantastic time. We were jealous but had just done that in Hvar |
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| The cruelest joke ever- on the left is the city High School. And I thought I had a hard time concentrating! |
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| Keeping an eye out for pirates. Or Turks. Or Venetians. These walls weren't built just for tourists! |
Like everywhere we've been in Croatia, Dubrovnik showed some wear and tear from the wars of the early 90's. It's harrowing to see bullet holes from 20 years ago, but I'm glad they keep them around to remind them of the horrors of war.
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| The most beautiful place we've been so far? I think so. |
So you would think it is a beautiful place, full of history and incredible sights, wouldn't Brannan and Melanie spend like a week there? Actually, we spent less than 48 hours there. We'd heard it described as a "Mediterranean Disneyland," and that was a sadly accurate description. The whole place had a too-touristy vibe and was lousy with tour groups and ugly americans, as exemplified by the following story.
After walking the walls on the morning of the second day, we found a little place to grab some lunch. A little while after sitting down, a large, red-faced american woman dressed in a matching peach-colored shorts/shirt combo with sun hat sat down and ordered a pizza while loudly detailing to the poor waiter how she had lost her tour group and husband. She talked to the couple at the next table who told hear (unsurprisingly) that the restaurant accepted Kuna and Euros, and she revealed that she only had US dollars. So there you are, in a country on the other side of the world, get separated from your tour group, so you sit down and order a meal and you somehow have neither of the two currencies used on that CONTINENT? Fortunately the kind waiter talked to his boss and they took her dollars (with a less-than-optimal exchange rate, I'm guessing), but we were hoping that they would make her wash dishes. We were incredulous the whole time, and after she left, while shaking our heads at our countrywoman, we heard the table of Scots also laughing in disbelief. On the way out Melanie joked to the Scots that she had both Kuna and her husband, I hope we undid some of the impression that woman made. Yikes.
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| If only...we could handle those cruise ships once and for all! |
So in that kind of over-touristy place, we didn't feel much like sticking around, too many tour groups and (ironically) americans. We loved it, and it was the most beautiful place we've been, but the vibe was all off, we wanted to get outta there, so we took off after only two days there.
We went back to Split, hoping to catch the boat from Split to Pescara, Italy. Upon discovering that there was one that night from Split to Anacona Italy, we figured we'd see Split before our boat, and it was a cool place to spend a few hours. The Old Town is built inside the walls of what was once an (older) palace. Ancient buildings on top of even more ancient walls and ruins. Now we're in the Mediterranean!
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| Main square |
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| Shops in the same place they've always been |
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| For some reason, there was a huge statue of a wizard. Sweet! |
After a while on the move, we've discovered that we become restless very easily, and it doesn't quite feel right if we aren't constantly on the move. The good news is that after leaving Hvar, we haven't had any problems moving. Since leaving Hvar, we have had quite the journey, demonstrated below:
The Hvar-Split-Dubrovnik-Split leg went according to plan, but since then we have veered from the original plan (blue) of heading to Rome. We couldn't find a boat to Pescara, so we went to Anacona, and since we were so close to Florence, why not? So we're having a great time, and plans are meant to be broken. Next post: a night at Sea, and Florence and Sienna, more good stuff to come!
