No Moss For Us

A third early morning, this one forced by the ferry schedule, had us up early again and scrambling to make sure we got to the port on time. We arrived a bit frazzled and definitely out of breath, only to discover that the ferry was late. We took advantage of the free time to grab more pastries and coffee for breakfast (seriously – our diet starts in August).

Once boarded, we grabbed seats and got to work researching for our next few countries: Norway for Grant and the island which cannot be named.

Once back in Dubrovnik, we grabbed a quick bite (chips and soda, anyone) and then headed out with a group for a kayaking tour of Dubrovnik and the nearly island of Lokrum. 

It wasn’t the smoothest daydream kayaking as a fairly consistent sea breeze was making the water quite choppy, and Jess’ arms were soon very tired. Fortunately Grant is a champion and carried the team through Jess’ breaks , ensuring that we didn’t get left behind.

King of the paddle!

We paddled all the way around the islands, stopping in a few sea caves where our guide, Nicola, explained the history and folklore that surrounds the island and bay, and obviously for a photo op or two. Ironically, the backside of the island seemed to once again be a naked beach, and we had the dubious “pleasure” of watching a bunch of older people scamper around in their birthday suits. We knew that Europeans were more casual around nudity at the beach, but Croatians are far and away the most naked either of us has experienced!

We took a lunch break at a beach that had formed at the mouth of a cave. As we paddled in, Nicola mentioned that you could do cliff jumping in the area, so as soon asked unisex, we scaled the rock wall and have it a try. The drop was ~10 meters and because the water was so clear, it looked much shallower than it actually was, which made for an extra layer of nerves pre-jump. Fortunately there was also a nesting seagull right next to the jumping off spot, to lend motivation as that bird looked pissed!

Heading into the cave for lunch and cliff jumping

Grant risks getting bitten by an angry mama-gull to show how high the jump was!

The tour ended right in front of Dubrovnik’s famous sea walls. We also learned that Dubrovnik was the first to implement a quarantine, which meant they kept anyone who wanted to enter the city in isolation for 40 days. In fact, the term quarantine comes from the Latin for forty and was so effective Duvbrovnik never experienced a plague.

After cleaning up from all the salt, we grabbed a quick cable car to the top of Mount Srd (the peak that overlooks Dubrovnik). Our goal was to catch sunset, but we also got the added bonus of being able to see the city light up for the evening.

Another quick cable car ride (and we mean quick – the whole thing only takes 3 minutes!) had us back in town, hunting down some dinner.

Dubrovnik in twilight feels like you’ve gone back in time…

We finally settled on a restaurant called Segreto which served Croatian/Italian fusion. We started with a fresh tomato and thyme soup with pesto crostini and roasted veggies with an apple vinegar/honey/sesame glaze. Then we had perfectly pan fried bronzino filets and homemade pasta with portobello mushrooms in a creamy black truffle sauce. Both were excellent and we were once again shocked at the huge truffle shavings we could see on the pasta – the Croatians don’t mess around with their truffles! We wrapped dinner with a dark chocolate and bitter oranges and a glass of prošek.

In all, this was definitely our favorite meal in Croatia.

Happy bellies mean big smiles!

– J & G

Thanks to the encouragement of our AirBnB host “mom” in Korčula, Grant found some chivalry and ducked out early to grab a breakfast to be enjoyed on the rooftop patio over looking the town.

When we told “mom” later, she remarked “Ah, Korčula makes him a good boy, see?!”.

After breakfast, we found some rental bikes and set off in search of tiny coves with beaches far from the main hotspots.

The way was promised to be basically flat, it was definitely not. We huffed and puffed our way over hills, Grant surviving better than Jess (could it have been revenge for the Krka force march from earlier in the week?!). We cycled for about an hour, and only ran into forks in the road where we needed local help twice – an amazing feat, as yet again, signage was poor to non-existent.

We ended up having to hike the last 30 meters to reach our destination, the beach of Vaja. While there was a small rocky beach, we opted to stay on the seawall just beside the beach and it was lucky we did.

Carefully making your way down a slippery slope is hard when you have that view waiting!

While we first had the whole cove to ourselves, 30 minutes into our relaxation we were joined by a middle aged couple, who immediately headed to the beach and then… stripped down to their birthday suits and dive on. 20 minutes later… two more birthdays suits. Another 20 minutes…. two more birthday suits!

The nudist beach in question, pre-nudists…

We are not 100% certain, but we are pretty positive that we accidentally stumbled onto a nudie beach without anyone giving us any warning.

Eventually we realized we couldn’t avoid the naked scene anymore and so we……

…headed back into town for a tasty pizza 🙂

Post-pizza plotting of our course, since we had wifi!

Then it was back to the trail of tears (at least for Jess) as we peddled (wheezed) back to Korcula town. We picked a nice café for a fortifying beverage as both our legs and derrières were in of some serious soothing.

Then it was a ferry ride to island #2: Hvar! We arrived, checked in, and realizing it was already 9:07pm, made a beeline to dinner. Jess finally got her mussel fix and the ‘Adventure Pizza’ that combined pesto, the local prosciutto (pršut), and sliced pears. In one word, delicious.

Goodnight, Hvar.

-J & G

One of the “must do” things in Dubrovnik is walking along the top of the old city walls. Knowing this is popular with tourists (especially from the cruise ships) we dug deep and managed to get up and out by 8am. The walls had amazing views outside of the city, as well as into the city, including great views into the local backyards and patios!

Jess was overjoyed with all of this, and proved without a doubt that she is her father’s daughter by taking approximately one gazillion pictures.

After walking the walls, we also took a quick jaunt just outside the walls to climb all over the fort shown in a few of the pictures above that overlooks both the city and walls.

It was here, where Jess’ unstoppable desire to climb. every. single. stair. was finally thwarted!

After the fort we sauntered over to one of the two “buzas” located on the rocks just outside the walls. They are essentially very mellow bars balanced over the edge of the sea cliffs. We had a couple beverages and took in the view.

On the way back from the buza, Jess’ eagle eye vision spotted a wallet tucked into a window grate. We could tell it had been lost and took it upon ourselves to get it safely to the proper authorities. Fortunately, we could see it belonged to a nice Italian man, Luca, so Jess was able to append an Italian version of my email to him.

Luca – if you are reading us, write us back!

From there we hustled back to catch our ferry to Korčula, our first Croatian island destination. As soon as we landed our AirBnB host met us and walked us into town.  Seconds after walking in, we saw the main church bell tower and knew we had to climb it (per our personal rule of thumb).

From the tower, we also spotted this gem: Massimo Cocktail Bar. It’s a cocktail bar at the top of an ancient stone turret, with bumping music, and a ladder inside to get to the top. The drinks were tasty, the view was grand, and our safety was only somewhat questionable. All in all, a good time!

For dinner we followed our noses which led us to a spot with tasty charcoal grilled meats. A pre-dinner digestif, a mixed meat platter, and a bottle of the local red wine was all we needed to know Korčula was definitely a place we’d like to revisit again someday!

-G & J

After yet another lazy morning fortified by our beloved Armenian fruit/nut combos (if you can’t tell yet, we’re not exactly morning people), we headed off in search of adventure… specifically, we’d seen a barber that did “hair tattoos” in town, and Grant was more than delighted by the opportunity to satisfy a childhood dream of shaving lightening bolts into the side of his head!

Alas – we found out it was a dye job, not a shave, and so we opted not to have him get the wildest hairdo of his life. Lame, I know, but it was just too much – trust us.

After the aborted head shaving, we grabbed a quick bite and then hopped back into the VW Golf and cruised down the Dalmatian coast. While we could have taken the A1 main freeway and shaved ~45 minutes off our drive, we opted for the route along the coast as it had more scenic views.

Along the way, we stopped at a small town called Brela to hop into the Adriatic. We’d been seeing small inlets and coves for over and hour and a half, and could no longer resist. Plus, the backdrop of gorgeous mountains and pine forests was not to be denied! We hopped in for a quick dip, but we could not linger!

After our Brela stop, we were squeezed for time, and so instead of stopping for a formal lunch we decided to grab the fixings for adult lunchables and eat on the way. In said stop was the proof as to why this drive was amazing – even the grocery store parking lot had great views!

Little known fact: Croatia is actually not politically continuous! To drive from Split to Dubrovnik, you actually need to cross a small strip of Bosnia-Herzegovina and pass through both an entry and exit station on the highway!

However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows! About 30 minutes from Dubrovnik we were hit by a freak rainstorm that not only pelted down rain, but hail as well! Driving became fairly precarious as we couldn’t see the road/cliff side ahead of us. Fortunately, we were able to drive through it quickly – it seems storms are fairly condensed here. Then it was on to Dubrovnik!

When we finally arrived, we found ourselves staying in a old building in the heart of the old city. The apartment was 3 story, with a room on each story, making it interesting as we traversed from entryway/bathroom, to kitchen, to bedroom floor by floor. However, we were too pooped to care, and ultimately settled in for the evening as we had a big day of exploration ahead of us.

-J & G

After a lazy morning of planning the next phases of our grand adventure (fueled by leftover dried fruits and nuts from Armenia) we set off to tour Split’s most popular attraction: the ancient palace of Diocletian.

We started with the cellars below the palace itself,

and then continued up stairs to the grand entrance and courtyard.

We were then lucky to find, you guessed it, more stairs to climb! Inside the palace there is a church and cathedral, accompanied by a beautiful bell tower that overlooks the whole city. After several flights of very steep granite steps, the climb turned to minimal safety steel steps. The was possibly the most nerve wracking climb I (Grant) have been on, but Jess said the height and tiny steps “made her toes tingle”. We really should get her survival instincts checked out…

At the top we were treated to this glorious view:

After the bell tower we stopped for a quick beverage and strolled over to the former Temple of Jupiter which had been converted into a Christian baptistery. The most interesting part being split between a bronze statue of St. John the Baptist counting to 4 (why 4? We don’t know either. Everything we could find on it just notes that this is what he’s doing…) or the full-immersion medieval baptismal font with a relief of the social hierarchy of the time: the king and the pope with the commoner literally under their feet.

From there, we headed to the Green market to pick up a pair of “sultan” pants for Jess. Morocco is coming up and she needed hammer pants to keep from offending locals. Then, exhausted from all the shopping, we headed back to the Riva to enjoy the sea breeze and a few ice cold Karlovačos.

Then dinner at Konoba Matejuška!

First, aperitifs of local liquor (sour cherry for Grant and wild rose for Jess).

Then the daily catch, this time a whole sea bream, with a side of black cuttlefish risotto and roasted veggies. The fish was perfect with just a little lemon and olive oil, the veggies were butter with alite something we couldn’t put our fingers on, and the cuttlefish perfectly cooked (no rubberbands here). However the big shock was the beverage: white wine. We’re normally red folk, but decided to stray from our normal habits, and were neither pleasantly surprised nor disappointed. Tomorrow though, on to Dubrovnik, with plenty of opportunity for new reds!

– J & G