Island Hopping

Yesterday was our last morning in Dubrovnik.  We got up early, ate some yogurt and packed our stuff, ready for our cab to take us to the bus depot.  Ivo was a saint and we were sad to say goodbye to him.

The cab dropped us at the Dubrovnik bus depot and we bought our tickets for the island of Korčula.  Our Rick Steves guide book tells us that there are two main tourist islands - Korčula and Hvar, the former being a sleepy vacation away from your vacation island, the latter being a little more pretentious, rich, glitzy island, so we decided on Korčula.  We loaded our luggage on the bus, got our seats, and we were on our way.  The bus and its lack of airflow started to rub Kelly the wrong way, so some gravol was required (Kelly loads up on both the drowsy and non-drowsy just in case).  The 2 1/2 hours bus ride took us up along the coast, through little Croatian villages advertising available sobes and wineries.  Finally at the ferry terminal, the bus clunks on to the boat, and away we went to Korčula.

  Korčula was meant to be a mini Dubrovnik, and the old town peninsula designed with a practical purpose: the Venetians who built it constructed it to look like a fish skeleton, with a main spine down the middle and little lane ways that lead to the sea on either side.  The lanes that face west lead straight to the sea so the wind comes through, and the lanes heading east are curved.  Our pansion at Apartments Lenni is in one of the east lanes, so we dropped our things off at the spacious apartment and enjoyed our view, our front door literally steps from the sea:

We then decided to nestle in to one of the many sea front restaurants for some lunch.  Unfortunately for Kelly and Ron, many of these places serve heaping portions of fresh and reasonably priced seafood - mussels, swordfish, octopus and crab.

We had some tasty non-seafood lunch and Ron had a refreshing lemon beer.  After lunch we poked around, looking around the alleys and lanes and watching the sailboats.

The relaxing and sleepy island is exactly what the doctor ordered (well, not the REAL doctor) for all of us.  We decided that we could do our walking tour the next day to learn about the historic little churches and the island's alleged native son, Marco Polo, so we did a few much needed loads of laundry, watched some BBC News to catch up with the world and explored the town a little more.  

 Ron decided that he wanted pizza for dinner, so we hit up a nice looking little pizzeria and snagged a booth by the ocean.  The pizza was absolutely delicious and fresh (Judy had pasta), with a nice thin crust and tasty cheese.  Judy was the first to try Croatian wine, and had a superb, super-dry white.

CAVEAT: Croatians operate on Croatian time, so whenever I talk about us having a meal, it usually takes a few hours, all said and done.

Our bellies full of food and drink, we headed back to our apartment for the evening, falling asleep to a nearby local band covering Prince's Purple Rain.