Split, Croatia, Country 5, Stop 11 + Cruise in Croatia

We have a small boat cruise scheduled for a week in Croatia, leaving from Split. I'm combining this all into one post and counting Split and the cruise stops as one stop.

July 9

Up and out early to get to the airport....to wait. Our flight is delayed from 12:15.....to 1:30.... 2:30.....2:35. The latest update has our flight leaving at 3. No matter. We find a priority lounge and set up shop and plan out future stops. It’s all a bit touch and go, with countries opening and lifting restrictions all the time.

After a 3 hour delay, we arrive in Split. It’s a new country for all of us! It is blazingly hot in Split. 95 degrees F. We arrive at our hotel and get the aircon going. Our hotel is this funky space called Split Industrial Hotel and we love the décor. Fire hats and a motor bike. Very fun!

We visit a couple Croatian grocery stores and stock up on snacks before we head out to dinner. Split is very cute and we walk around the Old Town area and eat at a restaurant with a white-lit garden.

***Dmitri: Where will we go after Croatia? We’re hoping to get to the UK, which is about as moving a target as you can be. You can get in from “green” list countries if you’ve been there for 10 days, or get in and quarantine from “amber” ones, which isn’t too appealing to us. Then they announce no, you can come in from amber countries if you are vaccinated, so huzzah, we’re all fine! Only no, we learn a day later that this only applies to vaccines given within the UK. Whatever! They will announce their next green list entries in a few days, so we’re in a weird place of if-this-then-that in our planning. If they open up to countries near us, we’ll go to them for 10 days, and the prognosticators are looking at data and saying Germany and Austria. So we’re looking at going to Slovenia and then on into Austria maybe. Eh, let’s see what the story is tomorrow...***

July 10

We head to the marina and look for our boat, the MS Katarina, our home for the next week. https://www.katarina-line.com/cruises/southern-explorer-kl-2-2020#!/itinerary Dmitri has organized a cruise of some of the Croatian islands and we are excited to be mellow and unpack for a week. We get on board and locate our cabins. It’s a small ship—with a max of 34 passengers. The crew is very nice and we meet some of the other passengers—one American family, a Spanish couple, a French woman, an Austrian man, a Belgian students, some Dutch and Danish girls; we are quite a happy mix. We sit down to lunch and Stan, the cruise director, tells us how the week will work. Each day we will have a swim stop and a stop in a little village or city. Mostly dinners will be on our own wherever we are docking for the night. Shortly after lunch we have our first swim stop and we think we will be very happy indeed on this boat for a week. The water is gorgeous, we are at a little cove and life is feeling pretty darn great.

The night stop is at Makarska, a waterfront village that is smaller than Split. We walk around the market and grab some dinner and enjoy the sunset.

***Dmitri: I booked this ages ago when they were (even more) desperate for tourism, and I think got about 75% off, making this both a cheap and wonderful week ahead. We’re on a really nice boat with good rooms. We’ve done big ships before, and this is a nice balance of community and amenities. #recommend***

July 11

We are up and out of Makarska bright and early at 7 am and headed to the island of Mjlet. But first, a swim stop and it’s every bit as charming as the one the previous day. Lovely water, happy people, warm sun to dry us off after.

When we reach Mjlet we walk to the national park and then take a solar-powered boat to an island within the lake within the larger island. We walk around the small island within the other one and it literally takes us 5 minutes. That done, we head back and take a dip in both the small and big lakes on the main island before heading back to the boat to get cleaned up. Dinner is close to the boat and all the local restaurants have on the Italy vs. England soccer match. Sadly for Dmitri, England loses, but we imagine how fun things are in Rome at the local place we watched the last match.

***Dmitri: The lakes are saline and we are super floaty. A larger one flows to a smaller one within a man-made channel and you can float that like a lazy river. Cheap thrills. The small lake also apparently features a unique species of giant mussel but the water is too opaque to see them. Whatever is buoying us up is lousy for viewing. That’s OK.***

July 12

Our swim stop today is before lunch, as we will be headed to Dubrovnik. This is our first big city of the cruise and we comment how relaxed this has all been. While we like exploring big cities and all they have to offer, we are happy with our daily swim stops and small villages.

We arrive in Dubrovnik and have a very informative walking tour with Stan. He is full of funny stories and it’s not the usual tourist spiel. He points out a lot of Game of Thrones filming spots and we are delighted. We have long wanted to visit Dubrovnik and it does not disappoint. It lives up to the hype and then some. We are also feeling lucky, as tourists have not come back en masse. Stan tells us that usually during his tours of Dubrovnik it’s so crowded that they can’t really stop to talk a lot without people squeezing through the group. After the tour, we walk the walls of the city. We have another wonderful dinner in a little square near the “Shame” steps. Dmitri has a truly delicious pina colada and Mia’s peach mojito is out of this world. Dinner is pricey but we are happy. A stop for ice cream and we head back to the boat.

Those who are looking for paradise on Earth should come and see Dubrovnik-- George Bernard Shaw

***Dmitri: For me, the highlight is the view from the city walls. These are big, thick walls surrounding a decent-sized city, and you can walk on them all the way around. It’s about an hour to circumnavigate, and while the views out to the coves (Hello, Blackwater Bay!) are fun, it’s the views from the back walls of the town itself that are truly amazing. We see all of those orange rooftops and really get the sense of scale. It’s like a view you normally only get from a drone, but it’s for us and live. I don’t know if our photos and video will do it justice.

Dubrovnik is a postcard tourist stop and I can’t imagine staying long, but our brief stop is just perfect. I celebrate with some local ice cream. I think it’s my second of the trip, and I’m trying to moderate because Jesus, food while traveling requires extra effort to not just be terrible for you every day. The travel world is designed to give you carbs, sugar and fat and not much else. I’m starting to actually want vegetables, which is not a phrase I thought I would ever type.***

July 13

The little head cold I thought I had gotten rid of is back, with a cough. Grrrrr. I sleep in and miss breakfast. The rest of the gang also decides to sleep in. We don’t leave until noon so they wander out and pick up some pastries. The extra sleep helps and I’m starting to feel human again. After lunch, we once again are spoiled by a gorgeous cove near a little beach for our swim stop. The family warns me not to overdo, but I cannot help getting in the water. It feels great! We continue on to Trstenik. Stan tells us that we will dock at 6 and have time to walk around before the Captain’s Dinner at 7:30. He also tells us that the village is very tiny and so an hour and 1⁄2 should be plenty of time to walk the village 4 or 5 times over. He also keeps telling us about Croatian wine and how this specific area is famous for it. We look forward to trying it.

Trstenik is very tiny and it takes us all of 5 minutes to walk around. Jack, having seen enough, heads back to the ship, while Dmitri and Mia and I do a wine tasting. It’s not the famous Mike Grgich wine Stan has gone on about but it’s good nevertheless and we buy a bottle of the sparkling rose.

The Captain’s Dinner begins with a shot of this cherry liqueur which is not bad. It’s very good and Mia is happy to have Jack’s in addition to her own.

***Dmitri: Trstenik and Mljet remind me of an Onion headline during the Bosnian war: Clinton Deploys Vowels to Yugoslavia.

The pace of our trip has slowed down and is reminding me that we need to go to fewer places for longer times so we don’t burn out. This week of not packing and unpacking is feeling like a gift, and it strikes me that we should feel this way more often. I’m going to start stretching things out. Marathon, not sprint.***

July 14

Another day, another gorgeous swimming spot.

And then we head to the island of Korcula. We are spoiled yet again. Stan takes us on a tour and points out some local spots—including the birthplace of Marco Polo—and gives us history of the island.

After that he leaves us to wander on our own and we are happy to do so. There is even a small beach near where the boat is docked and so Dmitri and I cool off with a pre dinner swim. Jack has an early dinner and heads back to the boat while Mia heads off with Anne and Sara.

***Mia: Towards the beginning of our cruise, I met two Danish girls named Anne and Sara. I got to know them during our daily swim stops and when we got to Korcula, they invited me to grab a drink with them. We went out that night and I very much enjoyed a social interaction outside of my family.***

***Dmitri: Korcula (Pronounced like Core-Choo-Lah) is maybe the best stop so far for me. It’s like a min-Dubrovnik. Cute, small-scale but plenty to see. It’s a circle and you can walk around it in 15 minutes. Lots of fun restaurants and shops and every street is lovely. If I were to come back to Croatia, this would be one of the few places I would want to revisit. That’s no knock on Croatia—which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. It’s just to note that there are places worth seeing that you don’t need to stay in, like Dubrovnik, and others where I could imagine parking for a while and just being.***

July 15 Hvar

I enjoy my daily swim stop and wonder what the heck I am going to do when it’s time to get off the Katarina and I am not being delivered daily to gorgeous little coves.

Today we stop in Hvar and have another Stan tour. After the tour, Mia and I set off to do some shopping. She is going to head to Carpe Diem beach tonight with Anne and Sara and she needs night club attire. After much browsing, we find a mini skirt that will work. We join the guys for a sushi dinner and head back to the boat so that she can get dolled up. While in port, we spy on a super yacht moored next to us. It’s like Below Deck Med being played out right in front of us and we are very amused by it all. https://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-24714/rarity.htm

***Mia: That night Anne and I took a boat from the main island of Hvar to a smaller island off the coast to get to Carpe Diem Beach. I'm pretty sure there's nothing else on the island other than the nightclub.This is supposed to be one of the top 50 clubs in the world, so we didn't mind paying the $30 US entry fee. This club truly lived up to all of the hype and I would go back in a heartbeat. There was loud music, fire-breathing stage performers, and surprisingly decent music. It's a good thing everyone entering the club had to show proof of vaccination, because we were all packed on the dance floor with no wiggle room. I am not a fan of cigarette smoke but I inhaled a fair amount that night from people smoking around me whether I wanted to or not. We got back to the ship around 3 or 4 in the morning, which would've been fine except that we had to be up early for the swim stop. I would've liked to come back sooner, but the club doesn't even open until midnight. I slept through breakfast the next morning, but it was worth it to experience all of the craziness that was Carpe Diem Beach. ***

***Dmitri: Croatian food is good, but we aren’t seeing a lot of it in the towns. They’re giving us some local foods on the boat, but in every town the menus are essentially the same as part of some kind of agreement. It’s like 15 items, fixed everywhere, and they are what Croatians think tourists want. They’re probably right, but we’re all craving variety. So when I find a good sushi place using local fish, it’s manna from heaven. No doubt at some point in Japan we’ll want kebabs rather than sushi, I know. Anyway, it’s a reminder that we don’t have to be pure tourists all the time. There’s no right way to do what we’re doing, and what works, works.***

July 16

We are all up early today, as we have breakfast scheduled at 7:30, with our swim stop beginning at 9:30. Today we arrive at the island of Brac and the boat anchors near one of the most photographed beaches in the world, Zlatni Rat. Here it is from above.

Not my photo--just one we found online.

Unfortunately, our drone died and we were not able to get great photos of this beach. We decide that it’s the most spectacular seen from above at a distance. In person it’s very pebbly. No matter. The water is cool and clear and we swim until it’s time for the tender to take us back to the boat.

After lunch, we arrive in Split and are on our own. Mia heads off to zip line with Anne and Sara and so Jack and Dmitri and I walk around Split and also start to pack up our things, as this is our last night on the boat. We walk along the Riva and find a pizza place for dinner.

***Mia: Back in Split, Anne, Sara, and I went ziplining. We took a bus inland from the port and got set up in harnesses. We did a total of 8 ziplines over some beautiful scenery. After that, I went to get dinner with the girls in Split.***

***Dmitri: I’m super over the loud Slovenian family on our boat. Their toddler screams and runs around the ship and the mom is one of those “isn’t she cute while she’s bashing that person’s face” moms. This may be ethnocentrism or rigidity or worse on my part, and I don’t care. When you’re on a small boat and your kids are menacing everyone else and commandeering every good space and moment, you suck!

Also, pebble beaches are for suckers. Today, we are those suckers. Europeans do so many things better than we do. Paying their employees. The environment. Community. They really make us look bad in many ways. And yet. The are fans of lying on small rocks by the water. Rocks, people. Rocks are not comfortable. Zlatni Rat is a gorgeous beach from the air, but uh, no one uses it from the air.***