Hvar, Croatia - June 25 and 26, 2008

Hvar, Croatia - June 25-26, 2008

We are currently on a bus on our way to Sarajevo. We woke up very early this morning to shower and catch the 6:30 am ferry from Hvar to Split and then to take the bus from Split to Sarajevo. We are currently on the mountain roads between Mostar and Sarajevo. We have survived the temperature of our bus, the terrible traffic outside of Split, the twisty, turny roads around Markarska, the Bosnian-Croatian border, and the jarring views of the war torn city of Mostar.

As we have left Western Europe this past week and entered the Balkans we certainly have seen a transition in the conditions of the buildings, facilities, transportation, etc. Though I will admit we only viewed Slovenia from the lens of the train tracks – and I know how scary New Jersey can look from the train headed into New York City, I was a little surprised to see such a stark contrast in economies and living conditions between the West and Slovenia when Slovenia is a country who transitioned so well to the EU after 2004 that they were introduced to the euro in 2007 and are the only 2004 EU annexee to do so.

For lack of a better description – the Balkans have a “2nd World” feel to them. Brodarica was beautiful – a laid back Adriatic coastal town. The buildings weren't prime examples of sophisticated architecture – but neither are the buildings of Key Largo. It had a similar feel. It was a coastal town. The city in which the struggle to comfortably support the population was evident was Split. There were dozens and dozens of high rising apartments that were of a Soviet-met-Adriatic-style, the type of buildings you only see in communist or post-communist societies – the buildings are basically concrete tenements. I will admit that for a city that felt as dirty as Split did, there was little trash to be seen (nothing like the littered streets of Amsterdam). The tourist areas are very nice and well kept, but when you wander off the beaten path you get a much better idea of how the people are really living.

Wednesday morning we woke up and headed on to Hvar. We walked down our six flights of stairs (with only what was asbolutely needed for the night since we had the car...and six flights of stairs to hike up) and drove down to the ferry station to buy tickets. We safely returned the car and made our way down to the loading dock for the catamaran.

The catamaran was especially nice and only took an hour to quickly take us to the island of Hvar. Upon arrival we were bombarded by about a dozen different people all wanting to know if we needed accommodations for tonight. A lot of locals rent out their rooms and pick up travellers at the port – and some travellers rely on this to find a place to sleep for the night. After saying no about fifteen times and asking the right people the right questions I managed to find a man with our hotel shirt on who had a cart to drive our luggage arcross the harbor. The city is essentially a big “U” shape. The catamaran dropped us off at the upper tip of one side and we needed to walk to the upper tip of the other. Possible to do with luggage (we did it this morning), but much more fun to do without.

Hvar, Hvar is beautiful. It truly is right out of a postcard. The buildings line the U shaped harbor and hten stack up, as the island is mountainous. From our balcony we had a perfect view of the houses stacked up onto the hill and the city fortress on at the top. The Italian influence was undeniable as historically Venetian merchants had major trading ties with Hvar. I had been warned by a mainlander in Split that Hvar was more expensive, but as we set out for food it really wasn't any worse than Split.

Now, the ups and downs of Hvar. Ups? The city has a really fun spirit to it, very very pretty, and really felt like a vacation from our vacation. Downs? Our hotel had no air conditioning and it was 95 degrees outside with at least 90% humidity. We had a balcony but could not pick up a breeze to save us. We were on the top floor so the room was truly just baking and stifling. We went to reception to inquire about a fan and the clerk rudely told me (from behind a fan) that there weren't any available to guests.

So we set out to try to remedy our problem in some way. We checked another local hotel to see if we could save face and transfer over...but the next hotel was over 320 euros a night...far far more than our hotel or any hotel we have ever paid for has cost. We began walking to look for shops, if we could buy a fan, perhaps we could improve our situation...we stopped at the tourist info center to see where we could find a store to buy a fan – because stores are much more specialized in Europe. No Walmarts. (Not that that is a bad thing...)

The tourist office said it was actually Croatia's independence day and that all those kinds of stores were closed. Crap. We started checking the supermarkets – some of them have a beach section with touristy things in them – some even have flat screen TV's around the corner from the cereal isle. The third grocery store we found had a fan!!! They had three left and we bought one immediately for 14 dollars. (70 Kuna). Woohoo!

There was a little more than some assembly required, but Daniel managed and we decided that would have to do. If we got too hot otherwise we would take quick cold showers. We decided to get sunblocked up and head down for a dip in the Adriatic. The beaches here aren't our definition of beaches – picture Greece's coastline...jagged, rocky, sharp. Croatia's shore lines are the same way. We quickly discovered that trying to get in along the water's edge was a very bad idea. The rocks were sharp, the ledges were jagged, and after trying for a few minutes we relented and headed to the slightly more crowded pier. From the pier you could jump right in and then just pull yourself back out – so we settled for that.

We swam for quite a while – Daniel was pleasantly surprised to discover that some stretches of the beach (and don't forget by beach I mean rocks) are nudist beaches. Mainly cute topless girls and hairy, overweight old men in speedos. I think I got the short end of the deal. Because it's not sandy, the water is crystal clear and you can easily see 20 or 30 feet down, probably even deeper. When we swam in to get out, I tried to sitck my foot down to see if I could touch – big mistake. While I had looked to see if there was a rock beneath me to touch, I didn't notice that there was also a black/dark purple spiky sea urchin and I stepped right on top of it. I pulled my foot up right away and as I was trying to pull out some of the bigger spikes that were in my foot, I almost slammed my body into the pier – which I simultaneously realized was covered with a vertical wall of spiny sea urchins. I had a bit of a panic moment as I blurted out explitives and tried to swim away from the wall of spikes and nurse my foot. Daniel came to the rescue – although he took two little spikes to the toe and helped me stay afloat while I got the big spikes out and then helped me navigate to shore – because since we couldn't get up the pier we were going to have to climb out on the rocks without stepping on more urchins. The funny part of the story is actually when I was like..."Daniel, it got me, help!" (and showed him my foot) and he was like..."Beth, how on earth did you do that, here let me help you...OW!" (and then held up his foot to reveal two spikes in his toe)...

When stuck by sea urchin spines within a few minutes it starts burning and stinging – a lot like a jelly fish sting. So we weathered the burning and stinging sensations in my foot and Daniel's toe as I limped back to the hotel to tackle my foot with a pair of tweezers. I would love to say the spines just come right out but they don't. After picking for half an hour I had kinda gotten two or three out and decided to abandon the project. We had planned to spend the late afternoon walking through Hvar, but weren't really able. I took some IB profen and worked on some things and took a few hours off. We looked up info and online and decided not to side with the people who said rush to the doctor immediately, but rather the people who said - eh, leave em in, no big deal. I also read somewhere that not every mark is a spine (b/c I have ten to fifteen dark spots in my foot), but that a lot of the marks are just stains from the spines.

I will say that ultimately my foot is fine (by day 3 it didn't hurt at all) and it certainly didn't slow us down more than the few hours that we took off that afternoon. We went out that evening to watch the soccer game between Germany and Turkey and found ourselves at a tuna party. The restaurant had caught a forty kilo tuna that morning and had a special on tuna steaks so Daniel was sold. We spent our evening in a small room with our little table and a large table of ten or twelve Germans, all cheering Germany on – watching their very very exciting win of 3-2 in the last two minutes of the game. Watching the EuroCup in Europe has really been a lot of fun and it's been a great thing to do in the evenings. Daniel had some of the best tuna he's ever had in his life and I actually had my first real steak that I've ever gotten in Europe. On several occasions I have ordered things called “beef steak” but I've never actually gotten steak. I was very pleasantly surprised.

On Thursday we woke up pretty early because we were very hot and had not slept well. We ate breakfast and decided to look into some kind of boat excursion. After asking around we decided to rent a boat for the day! We went out to the store and bought a few snacks, two masks and a snorkel, went back to our room and did some serious sunblocking, and headed out for the day. The boat was due back by 7 pm. Our rental guy showed Daniel the basics, how to drive, anchor, etc, and a map of the local islands, inlets, and bays. We left his drivers license as collateral, paid the guy, and drove off.

The boat couldn't go very fast but we definitely enjoyed puttering around. We anchored off to the side of the main traffic lane and swam around for a little bit – althought getting back in the boat was very tricky (no ladder) – and actually took a fish flopping strategy. After getting in and out three or four times each by the end of the day we have found ourselves full of little sore spots and bruises, but it was a lot of fun. One of the times I actually slammed my forehead into the pole that held up our awning -- Daniel likened my expression to a bird flying into a window. The next stop was an inlet that had several really neat restaurants and a sand beach (the only in the area). Yay! No sea urchins! (Even though they are evidently a delicacy to the Italian families). We spent a few hours here and a few hours at another location snorkeling and checking out the few fish we could spot in the Adriatic. It was a really nice afternoon and the freedom to explore the different coves was really fun. We returned, de-salted in the shower, and headed downstairs to the sports bar and grill in our hotel to watch the semi-final football game between Spain and Russia. This game wasn't as exciting and once Spain was winning 3 to 0 we actually left to work on packing and organizing stuff in our room since we were leaving at 5:30 am.

Hvar? A wonderful, warm, friendly, laid-back, Adriatic port city. A city which would be even more wonderful if there weren't spiky sea urchins along every square foot of the coastline and if there were air conditioners or at the very least fans in the hotel rooms, restaurants, shops, etc. But, we really were glad we had decided to visit – the atmosphere was very unique and fun. And the view of the harbor at 5 am was very serene...and yet anticipatory of yet another vacation day as youth from the night club poured out into the streets at 5 am, loudly laughing and talking about their amazing time while fisherman prepared their boats to head out to find another tuna for another restaurant to have its own tuna party.