I know you probably don’t REALLY want to hear it, but we have recently arrived back in the UK from an amazing 12 days in Croatia… Lots of sun, food and beer… but also some beautiful cities and bays for swimming… not to mention the many new friends we made along the way!
Matt and I started off with a couple of chilled out days in Split.
We staye
d in a private apartment I booked off the internet (clicksplit.com). I was a little sceptical… the apartment had only had one review, and that was in Croatian, so I really had no idea what to expect – cept it looked alright in the pictures! I had further doubts when I saw the entrance! It looked a little rundown and the first floor entry to the block was really shabby…but all fears disappeared when we saw the flat itself. The whole top floor (split into 3 – 1 for Mum, 1 for brother, 1 for tourists) looked newly renovated and we couldn’t really fault the apartment we were staying in – particularly for the price (50 Euro a night) and the location (100m from the seafront and lots of restaurants, bakery, supermarket etc all within 30m).
Food in Croatia is really a combination of Italian – Pizza/Pasta etc, Grills, Schnitzel and seafood. Then a few traditional things like čavapi (bread roll filled with long meatballs, tomato and roast capsicum relish and some other thing I’m not sure what it was!.. but yum). Most menus wherever you went were pretty much the same.
We really didn’t do a lot these 2 nights in Split – we wandered around the city, through all the cobbled and limestone lined streets… around Diocletian’s Palace… went for a walk up a hill – towards a lookout, but got waylaid by a bar with an amazing view across Split… dabbed our feet in the water at the ‘Beach’, ate some gelato…
Diocletian's Palace
We first caught sight of our boat (the Novi Dan) at that Terrace Bar halfway up a hill just to the North of the old town of Split. We were enjoying the view and lemonade and beer when we saw the old ships start to arrive into the harbour. We didn’t know it at the time, but we did actually take a photo as it came through.
There were about 18 boats for Katarina Lines (which is the company that runs all the tours for Busabout/Sail Croatia etc) in the harbour Sat morning– all pretty similar, though some cabins had ensuites, some were share showers etc. There was a bit of confusion with our boat. We were allocated a room and Matt had completely unpacked when we and the rest of our group were told to change boats. But I think in the end we ended up with a better room as we didn’t have to share a bathroom… but the stairs down to the lower deck were a little ridiculous! Well they were probably closer to a ladder than being stairs to be honest! What I did quickly notice was that the beers were 5 Kn (About 8Kn to a £) cheaper on the new boat!... Score!
From then on it was all ‘smooth sailing’! I could write for hours on everything we got up to on our cruise… but instead I’ll just give you an idea of what our itinerary was!!.... these blogs sometimes start to feel like a chore, specially when I’ve been at work on a computer all day!
Day 1 – Board at Split Harbour
Lunch – on boat – food on the boat was WAY better than expected. Breakfast (bread, cereal etc) and lunch (3 course meal, with lots of traditional type food) were all included.
Swim in the Adriatic Sea
Walk around Hvar
DrinkDinner on boatSunset Drinks and dancing in Hvar – Our first stop was the Carpe Diem bar, parently a hotspot for celebrities, but I didn’t see any. Then again, I was enjoying my cocktail!. We spent some time at a ‘Foam Party’ and what we called the ‘Monastery of Sound’ – a night club that was out in the open set up with bars, food outlets, dancefloor… and a pool?!! We kind of ended up taking over the dancefloor – except for the 2 or 3 token “princesses” kind of dancing on the sideline… We think they were paid to be there… As soon as we got off, all the locals all of a sudden came streaming on to dance… We would like to think they were in awe of our dance ability, but to be honest they did look slightly more sophisticated and dressed up compared to our lot!... then... Crash
Day 2BreakfastSwimSunLunch (getting the picture that there was lots of relaxation?!!)Miljet National Park – we visited a Monastery on an island on a lake on an Island… which is how they liked to explain the location. It was a really pretty national park and it was nice to get out for a walk! We had a quick squizz around the Monastery and had a swim before heading back to the boat for our BBQ on the boat. Captains BBQ (was an additional charge though a bit better value than the couple of restaurants that were there) – complete with Pyjama partySunset – gorgeousBack to boat for after dinner drinks… they were included with the meal so some of us may have had a few too many?!! Matt definitely enjoyed the red wine! I ended up crashing out pretty early which was probably a good thing. Matt did make it down the stairs at some point, but apparently he spent most of the night sleeping on the deck… “under the starrrrrrrrrsss” Day 3Breakfast (though one of us didn’t quite make it)SwimLunchDUBROVNIK!!! – Loved Dubrovnik. The whole setting of the walled city is just stunning, and it was great just wandering around all the little laneways. I had definitely lost my land legs by this stage. My legs felt really wobbly when we were walking around the wall. We did go to a few bars in the evening. My favourite was the first one we went to just off the main street with 3L and buckets of cocktails…mmmm yum. I loved how the bars spilled out into the laneways. It would have been way too hot to stay inside the bar. Needed the fresh air. Was fun just sitting/dancing/drinking there… but then, we headed to a karaoke bar… which, surprisingly was way too popular.. and probably the worst karaoke we’d ever heard… we were there about 3 songs when we decided to leave… and at least 50 people had the same thought all at the same time… mass exodus! Decision had to be made then… grab the last bus back to the boat or find another bar… probably surprising to most… we took the bus!
Day 4. Chill out day todayBreakfastSwimLunchSwimKorcula – allegedly the birth place of Marco Polo. This was another walled town, but on an Island. Was again really pretty, but not a lot to explore. One of the highlights was drinks on top of one of the towers. The drinks had to be pulled up by a pulley system. The ladder to get to the roof was almost straight up… so skirts are definitely a bad idea! Luckily I had been prewarned! Day 5BreakfastLunchMakarska – a really nice, pretty town. Was a great place to relax. For a change, we actually had a swim at a ‘beach’ rather than off the boat. At most of the beaches off the coast it’s actually quite hard to get into the water. But at Makarska, if it had had sand rather than round rocks, it would have been a proper beach! After dinner, a few of us headed round to a point where our guide had heard there was a bar. I think the guy was just closing up as we arrived, but he did open up and serve drinks and put some music on! Was quite cool sitting out there, was nice and chilled out. But then the mozzies started biting and I called it a night! Day 6BreakfastChilled out in Makarska for a couple of hoursLunchSwimOMIS – was kind of pitched as the Pirate capital of the Dalmatia… there was a pirate fortress at the top of what looked to me like an almost sheer cliff… and when they said, we’re walking up, anyone want to follow… I was like ‘yeah right’… but I went, thought I’d give it a shot, plus needed the exercise really! After about 10 or 15 mins my calves had had it, but after a few just 5 more mins… we eventually made it to the top of the ridge! Was an absolutely awesome view… the fortress itself wasn’t anything amazing and the ladder to the top of the tower didn’t feel very safe! Didn’t stay on the top of that for very long.. my legs were well and truly shaking!!!
Topped the day off with a 'pirate' party on the Novi Dan
Day 7 – Our last day on the boat… didn’t do a lot today really, specially given we had already spent a coupla days in Split. But we spent the afternoon organising our trip to Mostar and Plitvice
Day 8 - We left the boat around 8am and picked up our hire car. We started heading towards Bosnia, though the Motorway that google maps said was finished, wasn’t actually finished… so using our dodgy little map we eventually made our way to the border, though we were running out of petrol and felt like we were in quite remote area which wasn’t the nicest feeling! But we did make it. Surprisingly, the Bosnia-Croatian border was sooooo relaxed. On the way in they glanced at 2 of the 4 passports, but on the way out we didn’t even have to wind down the window! They just waved us through! Driving through Bosnia was quite interesting… some areas still looked quite devastated with no one around, while in others, there was heaps of redevelopment going on. Mostar was quite nice. It all centres round the bridge across the Neretva river, the Stari Most.
The original bridge was destroyed during the Bosnian war, but it has recently been rebuilt. There were heaps of markets, selling everything from war memorabilia, including bullets, to cards with the worlds 52 most wanted people on it. Other than that there wasn’t that much around so we had some lunch – we weren’t quite sure what we were ordering – then started heading up to Plitvice Lakes, back in Croatia. After all the driving, Matt was starting to feel a little tired, so we swapped over driving at a servo on the motorway just north of split. I reckon I would have been driving maybe 5 minutes tops before all of a sudden the clouds rolled over and it started to absolutely bucket down. The wind was amazing and the Motorway had so many big spanning bridges it was really freaky driving! I lasted about 20 minutes before I had to pull over. What a great experience for my first ever time driving on the wrong side of the road! By the time we had made it to Plitvice, the temperature had dropped about 22 degrees… was only 9 degrees when we pulled up at our accommodation.. and there’s all of us in shorts and singlets! Found a random restaurant for dinner and an even more random bar… we were the only one’s there and I think they thought we were just a bit strange!
Plitvice, for our last day in Croatia, was amazing, albeit a little cold! Waterfall upon lake upon waterfall etc etc…. soooo picturesque… it’s hard for the photos to do it justice!
