En Vacances…Part Two
This blog post is rather late. I started it in Croatia, but we didn’t always have access to wifi, so I’m only just getting around to finishing it.
After leaving Italy, we flew to Croatia and spent 10 days making our way up the coast.
We flew into Dubrovnik and stayed within the walls of the beautiful old fortress town. It’s hard to believe that over 50 per cent of it was bombed and destroyed during the 1991-92 war. After walking around the city walls (and realising our apartment was very close to the wall and our washing on the line was on display!), we rode up the cable car then visited a war museum. The museum was in a bunker type of building at the top of the mountain and described how poorly equipped the town was to fight during the Homeland Wars of 1991-92, but also their belief that Old Town would be left untouched. Dubrovnik was shut off as the enemy came over the mountains as well as having ships based along the coast, so the town was bombed from both sides, with inhabitants facing starvation until humanitarian aid could get through.
The following day we caught a ferry to Lokrum Island (just seen on the left of the photo above) which is a pretty national park, with a natural swimming pool, friendly peacocks and long haired rabbits. A shot of the island’s botanical garden is below.
We then caught the early evening ferry to the island of Korcula. Our apartment was a 20 minute picturesque walk into town, with several swimming areas along the way.
Croatia’s coastline is very rocky, so sandy beaches are uncommon (we didn’t come across any and the best beaches had pebbles) so their solution has been to create concrete pads along the water’s edge for sunbathing, with a pool ladder to hop into the water. The water is crystal clear though along the entire coast and really stunning.
The island had a very pretty Old Town, but three nights there was too long as there wasn’t much to see or do within walking distance of our accommodation or town. Perhaps we should have rented a car and explored further.
Our next stop was Hvar, where we spent a day exploring the town and climbing up to the old fortress (it seems impossible to go anywhere in Croatia without lots of stairs and walking involved).
The following day we went out to the Blue and Green Caves. They’re stunning and the reflecting light that comes through gaps in the caves shines onto the stones at the bottom making the water appear green in one cave and blue in the other. The Blue Cave is a national heritage site and the government has applied for it to be a UNESCO Heritage Site.
From Hvar we moved onto Split, our final destination in Croatia. Like all the other towns we’d visited, there was a pretty waterfront, which is also the main tourist destination. We saw on a map there was what appeared to be a park, so decided to go for a walk through it in the afternoon. I was imagining a Cornwall Park, Hyde Park type of park but it was basically a forest on a hill with a road going up and down. It was another good workout for the legs though and gave a good view of the town below. We only stayed in Split for one night, before flying out to Paris.
I’d include some photos but something has gone wrong between my iPhone and my laptop and not all my photos are coming through.