We left Split Monday morning after spending only one night there, and caught a ferry to Hvar, an island off the Croatian coast. The ferry only took an hour, though I have to admit that I slept most of the ride, bringing back fond memories of the ferry rides in Greece.We arrived on Hvar mid-afternoon, unpacked our stuff, changed into bathing suits and set out for the closest swimming hole.
For somewhere that's billed as an island paradise, Hvar's beaches aren't too nice. Most are just rocky coastline where vendors have decided to capitalize by hawking sun chairs. Laying out on a towel is an interesting experience, and probably not too good for the back. There are really nice beaches, they're located just offshore on a nearby island, and I wasn't really up for spending more money on a taxi boat.
But, determined to take a dip in the Adriatic, we staked out a spot on a nice rock outcropping and jumped in. The nice thing about a rocky coastline is that you can jump in and not have to do that awkward half run, half dive move that's always torture with somewhat cold beaches.
Day two was the epitome of how I was feeling. That would be exhausted. We didn't wake up until around 2:30, mainly due to the fact that since we left Berlin we've been going nonstop, and frankly we were a little tired. Throw on top of that the fact that we haven't slept more than 4 hours for the past few nights, and you can begin to understand how one can sleep more than 12 hours. The rest of the day passed in a blur, and I can't really recall doing anything besides being overwhelmingly tired and wanting to go to sleep. So that's what we did eventually.On day three, Annie and I went exploring around Hvar in hopes of finding a sandy beach or something that isn't jagged rock. After noticing a spot on a Google map that looked promising, we set off in that direction only to get distracted at another beach, and while it might not have been that pretty, we were soaking with sweat, and decided that a swim might be nice.
After our dip we pressed on in search of that far off beach, eventually realizing that the road had narrowed down into a slightly used path that was only noticeable because of the discoloration of the stone, which we supposed meant that it was well-traveled. I think it was actually discolored to warn against taking it, as it was possibly the most perilous path I've ever been on, occasionally coming very close to falling off into the ocean. As we made our way around, we came to another beach, where we took another dip. After pressing on from that beach for a while, we realized that where we stopped was actually the nice beach that we were looking for, but by this time it was getting late and I was starting to feel like I was getting sunburned.
By the time we made it back I was sufficiently sunburned, and we headed inside to drink lots of water and relax in air conditioning. As the sun started going down we wandered around town and found a good spot to sit and watch the sun go down.Being sunburned, I didn't really feel too up to laying around in the sun, so we spent most of the next day inside watching movies on the computer. As the sun started to go down, we again braved the heat to hike up to the Hvar fortress, situated high above the city. Coming down, we again made for the beach to watch the sun set. I have really good pictures, but none of them are on the computer yet, so I can't post them.
The next morning, bright and early, we headed back to Split in order to catch a bus to take us down to Dubrovnik, which, while it's really the tourist-capital of Croatia, doesn't have a ferry or railroad or any kind of easy transport running to it. In addition to the languages being similar, I'm beginning to notice more and more similarities between Croatia and Poland. It must have something to do with being stuck behind the Iron Curtain for so long.
No comments:
Post a Comment