Europe Spring 2019 Croatia

We’re cruising Croatia!

Now we are traveling in a different sort of way. In a way we have not tried before, but have discussed. A cruise. But not a big ship cruise, more of a yacht cruise along the coast of Croatia and some of it’s islands.

This is our yacht for the next week and it holds about 36 people not including the crew of 7 or 8.

We boarded our boat in Dubrovnik. As we got there early in the day we were able to spend part of the day exploring the city of Dubrovnik.

We had been to this city before, and it is famous for the wall which encloses it. Most people will walk the top of the wall for a small fee, but we did not do that on the first visit and we did not do that on this visit either.

However the walls are pretty cool, especially being that they are all so intact.

Instead we take off in the other direction from all the tourists,

This way you get to see some things that are not so historical but possibly more entertaining.

The city has a big personality, we found another part of the fortress, and paid to get in, the door being guarded by that stone priest with his tablet in his left hand.

There were not many tourists in this part of the fortress which is not attached to the main wall.

So after that, we had a little lunch at a cafe. It’s pretty easy to find grilled vegetables here, and that is one of our favorite dishes. Then it was time to head out on our boat.

It’s amazing how the yachts are moored together at the dock . One yacht is tied off to the dock and all the others are tied to each other. If you are on the outer boat you have to walk through each boat to get to your room. It does work though.

Our first stop was the island of Mljet. Took a small tour of the local monastery on an smaller island inside a lake. So you got the island of Mljet with a lake on it, and another island in that lake. Got that?

This was fun for our first stop. We did not stay there however, and left for another island where we docked for the night. This would be the norm for most evenings, docking at an island for the night. It works well for sleeping, as the boat does not rock as much when moored. However, we did run into some nasty weather that prevented us from swimming much. We only got to swim once out of the 7 day island cruise.

Onward to the little town of Lumbarda on the island of Korcula. It was a rainy day, and we only had a few hours there, but we managed a bit of a hike to a great winery. Grk vineyards. Yep, that is the way it is spelled. No vowels. But they don’t need vowels to make great wine and some fine liquors.

We had a lunch there and a tasting of all of their current products, and all were superb. Now we are not connoisseurs of wine but if ever you are in this area, do check out this winery, you won’t be disappointed.

Back to our yacht and a short ride to the town of Korcula on the same island where we docked for the night. Korcula island only has a population of about 5,500, but surely gets many more than that as a tourist destination. So beware of that, however, Korcula old town is still worth checking out.

We struggled to find a restaurant this evening that was a bit away from the tourists. Y’know a little peace and quite. So we ended up at a smaller harbor on the other side of the city where we were treated with a marvelous grilled squid dish, and with exceptional service. An interesting thing happened though. There was another couple that had finished their meal next to us, and stayed having their wine and watching the sunset (really beautiful). This was some of the sunset sequence.

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Well this will be a bit long winded, but I assure it has a good ending. So this couple probably spent the good part of 2 hours or more at this restaurant. When they went to pay their bill they were notified that credit cards were not accepted. They got quite upset as they did not have the cash to pay. Even after having the waiter check with the owner they were still asked to pay in cash and were showed where there was an atm machine to get the cash. Well, none of this went over well. However, after all was said and done they paid in cash. When we finished our dinner, and asked to pay our bill, I asked the waiter if they had left a tip. The answer was ‘no’. This upset us a lot. It was not the waiter’s fault. Anyway, we paid our tip, and also paid that couples tip. At first the waiter did not want to accept, but he finally did. The reason we bring this up is because of what happened to us after we left this restaurant. Y’know life is too short to be petty, and sometimes karma can come back to you quickly. As we walked away down a few streets from the restaurant, in an alley we caught a glimpse of some Croatian men dressed in garb from another century. So we followed them to a theater where there was a private showing of the Moreska sword dance. As we were there, we kindly asked if we may attend. At first, they were to answer no to us, but something made them change their mind and they let us in as if we were part of that group without having to pay! So we got to be part of a private showing of the Moreska sword dance that night. If we hadn’t stayed to pay that couple’s tip we probably would not have caught a glimpse of those dressed up men. Kind of interesting, no?

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This dance started around 1561, and has many versions on the island of Korcula, also in other towns of the island. You can also check it out on youtube.

We’ll leave you with another collage of pictures gathered so far.

We’ll see you again from Croatia!