Hvar, Croatia – 205 km

Tonight we find ourselves on the Island of Hvar, in the town of Hvar. The ride today consisted of four parts:

Start of the ride

      A. The busy coastal road which runs north of Dubrovnik back into Bosnia for 14 km then back into Croatia. The busy border crossing was a fiasco as our guide decided he would try to expedite matters by cutting into the waiting lineup to get us through. This incensed the people that were waiting in cars who took out their anger on us. Remember these are people who know all about war. Very uncomfortable feeling. We didn’t even show passports, were just waved through.

      B. The 35 minute ferry trip to Hvar Island. The

Ferry

same guide parked very close to us in the line-up so when the ferry worker called to load Doug straightened the bike to ride off and just touched his top case and over his bike went. His first mistake was to park so close. And he must have incorrectly set the side stand.

       C. The first half of the trip on the island road was a tortuous 2 lane road which was about one normal lane width with NO shoulder and a deep drop off on both sides. It wound its way through rocky vineyards. See GPS for example!

Wiggles

      D. The second half of the island highway was in direct contrast to the first, a beautiful modern winding highway just made for motorcycling. We fell behind the group as we stopped to take pictures and chat with the California couple who also were dawdling.

Our coffee stop this morning was at Mali Ston, which is just a little piece of rock on the coast. It was surrounded by oyster farms with big signs all along to try an oyster farm tour or the products of the farms. It was a bit rushed as we were on a time crunch for getting through the border and catching the ferry to Hvar.

The ferry ride was a very pleasant trip with Primoz 2 passing out fresh fruit, oranges, yummy strawberries and apricots. We are really going through fruit and vegetable withdrawal.



Ride to Hvar

Once we got off the ferry we stopped for lunch at Sucuraj in a great outdoor restaurant on the bay. We had the best salads so far, Doug octopus and Norma cheese, which is very much like a Greek minus the olives. Maybe it is that we are finally feeling like eating. This lunch stop allowed all the traffic from the ferry to go so when we hit the road it was clear sailing with no need to pass on the roads already described.

Water Taxi to dinner

We find ourselves in the Hotel Croatia. It is a very old building with small rooms and very small bathrooms. It smells like they have just painted the cupboards. We were a bit surprised with this as the accommodation to date has been tops. Won’t pass judgement yet as we are here for two nights – tomorrow is a rest day- so we will see.

The town square is a very pleasant 20 minute walk along the ocean where we walked to find a market. We walked there again to meet everyone for a drink before dinner. They had reserved a water taxi to take us to the restaurant. During the 30 minute ride the guides treated us to champagne. Not sure what that was for but it was a nice touch. The water was relatively calm and the scenery was lovely so it was a very nice start to the evening.


Dinner was at this lovely outdoors restaurant in the middle of an olive orchard. The olive trees were in full bloom so the table was full of flowers and you needed to check your drink for fall out. The start was an introduction to the grappa they produce there. They make olive grappa as well as wild rose petal (not rose hip) grappa. They also produce their own wine which was provided along with the very nice seafood dinner of octopus salad, shrimp, calamari, and sea bass. You could see the cook in his outdoor kitchen preparing the large shrimp, etc. over a wood fire. Our return trip was by mini bus.