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Escaping COVID: Our Next Move
Our regular readers will know that we retired at the end of 2019 to pursue our long held dream of full time travel. Unfortunately the obvious intervened and we were forced to abandon our trip after just 7 weeks of what should have been endless exploration. UK lockdown followed. As the slight easing of restrictions started, we took full advantage of the so called travel corridors and have just returned from 5 weeks touring Croatia, which was more than fabulous. We’re now nearing the end of the 14-day quarantine which was imposed just a few days before our return from that trip. These 14 days have naturally felt pretty dull…
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Last Days In Croatia: Back In Split
For the last time until we start the journey home, we don the backpacks and trudge through the streets, this time in the half light just before dawn. Korcula rubs its eyes and awakens, swifts and swallows start to swoop and call, the Adriatic is as calm as a lake as our catamaran pulls away from the quayside. Korcula Town looks beautiful as we wave goodbye to the islands, as alluring at dawn as it is as evening falls. Just under three hours later we are in Split ferry port, breakfasting alongside the ferries for the third time in these past five weeks. It feels good to be back here.…
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Split: The Role of Hajduk
Being a big football (soccer) fan, I’ve always been fascinated by the role of a football club in cultural history: there are great histories here which tend to pass unknown to non-football fans, stories which far transcend the game itself. The reason Barcelona became so big, and the part Espanyol played in that story, is a stirring tale on its own. The history of Hajduk Split tells a parallel tale to Barcelona, in as much as, during times of extreme political oppression, the football club became a critical point of identity when such individual nationalism was prohibited. During the long years of communist rule and the enforced unification of Yugoslavia,…
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Croatia Island Hopping: On To Hvar
Our departure from Bol is so cool that we can’t stop smiling. The only boat service from Brac to Hvar is a catamaran which sails in the evening, a bit later than we would like, and with no outside deck to enjoy. But our wonderfully helpful hosts tip us off that one of the excursion boats, the Andrija, is skippered by a guy who lives on Hvar, and so, each afternoon when his excursions for the day are done, he heads home with his boat. If we can catch him, he’ll give us a lift. And so it is that we find the Andrija, cadge a cheap lift on a…
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Croatia, COVID and other tips
Entering our fourth week of this Croatia odyssey, we feel qualified to offer some advice to anyone thinking of heading out here, so here goes… COVID If you think you’d feel threatened or vulnerable due to a lack of COVID rules, then it’s probably best you stay at home. If however you feel there is some overblown mass hysteria afoot, or just want to escape the “new normal” for a while, then Croatia is for you. It’s masks on buses and trains, and inside shops and public buildings, but otherwise life is absolutely normal. Locals do have a tendency to wear the mask only over the mouth, and leave the…
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Island Hopping Croatia: Brač
Some of the inter island ferry services have been scaled back due to an expected drop in visitor numbers during COVID, so to hop from Šolta to Brač we have to go back to Split and on again from there. So it’s an early alarm, the 7:20 bus from Maslinica and the 8am ferry, breakfast in Split harbour and then a second ferry over to Supetar on the island of Brač. Brač a much bigger and more mountainous island than Šolta, in fact the third largest Adriatic island; our next billet means travelling some distance to the south of the island, and we’ve been recommended that the best option for…
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First Taste Of The Islands
Island hopping is going to make up most of the rest of our time here, but the island wanderlust kicks in early, and for our last day at our Šibenik base we take a Jadrolinija ferry to Zlarin, just a 30-minute boat trip away. All we can say is, if the remaining islands on this trip are as good as Zlarin then we are in for a treat. With only an afternoon to enjoy it, we don’t venture beyond the eponymous port town, a pretty collection of old stone houses clustered around a horseshoe harbour with five or so seafront restaurants. Crystal clear water laps the pebble beaches, both the…
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Krka National Park
As well as the many attributes of its own, the city of Šibenik is also a gateway to the Krka National Park, another spectacular series of waterfalls as the Krka river crashes down the mountains towards the Adriatic. To access the park, we drive to the small town of Skradin, from where we take a river boat to the falls: a wise decision, as Skradin turns out to be a charming and peaceful place in its own right. Krka is markedly different from Plitvice. Plitvice was largely unspoilt, and clearly less popular, perhaps due to its more remote location. Around the sixteen lakes there were only three modest cafes, spaced…
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From Plitvice To The Wonders Of Šibenik
The time will soon come when we run out of superlatives for this country, such is its propensity to thrill, surprise and charm. Day 9, and we leave Mukinje, Plitvice and our host Kristina with heavy heart and head westwards towards the Adriatic and the Dalmatian coast. The lush and dramatic Lake District scenery soon gives way to a spectacular mountainside drive as our road perches on a ledge way above the land below, dropping eventually to the outskirts of Zadar. From here the E8 turns south, now hugging the beautiful coastline for a different type of incredible scenery. We pause for lunch at the ridiculously quaint seaside town of…
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Plitvice: Deep Gorges and Gorgeous Villages
About a 40 minute drive north of Mukinje is the incredibly picturesque village of Rastoke, which is so utterly charming that it’s difficult to know where to start to describe it in words. But we’ll give it a go…. Two rivers converge in the village, but one, the Slunjcica, enters at high level from the mountains; the other, the Korana, flows in from the bottom of the deep gorge and therefore at a much lower level. Consequently, the waters of the Slunjcica cascade down a series of waterfalls and rapids, flowing into the larger Korana in multiple places throughout the village. In fact, much of Rastoke is effectively built on…
