cherry on top dubrovnik

A nice Italian lady told us when we were in Nice, that the Dalmatia coast is beautiful, and Dubrovnik is the perfect cherry on top. I couldn't agree with it more! We arrived in Dubrovnik after a relaxing seven hour cruise. Dubrovnik was to be the last stop in our nearly 3-month holiday, and I think we saved the best for last!

With the mountain on one side and the sea on the other, Dubrovnik is famous for its beautifully preserved old town fortified by two kilometres of city walls.

The view of the old town harbour is amazing!

Inside the walls is a charming old town with lots of tourists.

There are many alleyways that run into the steep hillsides. BIRD!

 Squid risotto and fried small fish for lunch! I thought it was pretty good, though Joe wasn't too keen on it. 

We took a ferry to the Lokrum island, a tiny island with no cars just off the coast of Dubrovnik. From the ferry ride we could see swarms of fish in the crystal clear water.

Lokrum island is much more peaceful than the tourist filled Dubrovnik old town. The leafy island has shady parks, a botanic garden, a small lake, and plenty of swimming spots.

In the evening back in Dubrovnik, we climbed the famous city walls where everywhere you looked were spectacular views! I must have taken hundreds of photographs! 

View from the walls of the old town harbour and Lokrum island in the background. 

The big round thing is the Onofrio Fountain, which has water drawn from a spring 12km away.

Here you could see damages from the shelling of Dubrovnik during the Croatian War of Indepence in 1991.

On our last day in Dubrovnik we hired a kayak.

We paddled to Lokrum island and did a loop around the island. 

We stopped on the island for a swim, where Joe stepped on a sea urchin. It was funny because the whole of our time in Croatia he kept telling me to watch out for sea urchins, and then he stepped on one, and had about twenty spines stuck in his water shoe. Two urchin spines made it through the shoe and are still embedded in the heel of his foot. 

After sea kayaking, we had a most excellent seafood platter for dinner. The serving was massive - it came in a bucket about 70cm wide! There was squid, fish fillet, baby octopus & squid, prawns, sardines and mussels all cooked to perfection!

We had a great view of the harbour too! 

And sadly, our holiday is drawing to a close. We have visited so many awesome places over the last few months. We must thank our wonderful friends who have shown us a good time and let us crash with them on our journey. From Dubrovnik we go back to London where we will attempt to start the "working" part of our working holiday.

We plan to keep updating this blog with other adventures of our time in the UK, travels and otherwise.

hvar island

Looking for some relaxing island life, we spent 4 days on the island of Hvar, just an hour's boat from Split. Hvar is a popular tourist island. Very popular. The main town apparently attracts a whopping 10000 people per day during the peak season, but we guessed that most of those typical tourist types stay in the main town. Nearby there is a much smaller town called Milna - well it's more like a street by the shores. 

This is Milna. It's much quieter, and easier to escape.

Our room was right on the water. Below that white gate thing is "our very own private beach" - well, it was more like a concrete slab. It was actually a great spot to end the day reading and drinking before dusk. 

The sun did start to go down eventually. This part of Croatia apparently gets the most sun filled days per year in Europe, and pretty long sunsets too.

We had a few days at this spot so we wanted to explore a little more, although nothing too exhausting. Wandering away from civilisation wasn't hard - it's maybe a 10 minute walk before you stop seeing people and the beaches turn from pebbles to jagged slabs or rock.

Some of the more secluded FKK beaches (nude beaches) were just smaller, quieter and nicer. We are not quite the nude types, but it does make it easy to change for swimming! Although there was a screaming child here who maybe just didn't want to be naked. It is funny seeing the nude people meandering about all day - kind of makes you imagine human life before civilization...

We bought some goggles to save our eyes from the salty Adriatic seabed, also to spot any of the black spiny sea urchins that were pretty dangerous looking. But these small critters are basically the only worry in the whole ocean. No one was concerned at all about drowning or being eaten - the waters were calm, sharks were very uncommon, people would just swim out into the ocean and float around. Even the heat wasn't much of an issue. In the water, chilly cool undercurrents mixed with waters warmed by the sun made for a really interesting swim.

Really trying to be comfortable - worked for a little while! Actually the rocks are mostly very sharp, you have trouble walking on them barefoot. Actually, one thing we experienced while treking around on the high road (that is, in the scrub) was that the island is practically covered in wild rosemary. We didn't realise it at first, probably because it's so scratchy to your feet as you stomp through it.

Unfortunately we had to leave sometime! But at least we weren't going too far, just to the other side of the island at a place called Stari Grad - another town which wasn't tourist filled Hvar town. 

What we found in Stari Grad was a pleasant port town with quiet back streets and great swimming spots. We wanted to spend the night here and jump on the morning boat to Dubrovnik.

There were lovely old buildings dotted throughout the back streets. Oh, and best photo of me ever!

Very relaxed, chilled out place... but a lot of walking if you want to get from one side of the port to the other!

The next day we boarded our deck accomodation on the boat to dubrovnik, an 8 hour cruise journey. Didn't really know how comfortable it would be until we got there. We made the most of it - this spot we're in was shady for more or less the whole time. Actually Grace had to convince me to get up and walk around - I must have been hypnotised for a good 6 hours by the moving views.

It's a lot of the same really, but we didn't tire of looking at it - staring at a massive chunk of Croatian coastline for hours and hours. It was... Great!