Croatia (mostly)

Gidday,

Croatia was the next country on the hit list. We had just over 2 weeks here so I'd bore you all silly if I went through it all in great detail. Instead I'll try to be pretty brief about each place... Yes, I know brevity isn't exactly a strong point but I'll do my best!

Zadar: We had 3 nights here. Getting there from Piran in Slovenia was bit of a mish, involving a taxi ride, 3 coach journeys, & then a local bus out to our hostel. We had a couple of good beach days, & also did a full day boat trip out to the Kornati Islands national park.

Split: Just the 1 night here, but we managed to have a really good look around the old town that evening & also the next morning. It was lovely, our hostel was right next to the walls of Diocletian's Palace, with some nice Roman ruins. The highlight was dinner at a restaurant recommended by the Aussie girl running the hostel. Very good cheap food, & 1L of extremely drinkable wine cost less than 4 quid!

Hvar Island: Absolutely stunning, one of our favourite places. We had 4 nights here & it could easily have been longer... A lovely medieval town centre with no cars allowed. Lots of stalls selling jewellery & all manner of lavender products (for which the island is reknown). We had loads of swimming & sunning action on the rocky beaches, & also did a day boat trip out to the island of Vis. Discovered our favourite restaurant in the whole of Croatia! Delicious fresh seafood at very very reasonable prices, & more good cheap wine. We ate there 3 of the 4 nights!

Kotor (Montenegro): A HUGE travelling day getting here, we left Hvar at 11am, & arrived in Kotor at 11pm with no idea where our hostal was! Luckily we talked a very nice man at the bus station into giving us a ride there for a few euro... We had 2 nights here & it was another lovely place. Lonely Planet describes it as a big secret. A UNESCO listed old town, overlooked by a fortress up on a hill & surrounded by city walls, at the head of southern Europe's deepest fjord.

Dubrovnik: Back to Croatia to what is known as the 'Pearl of the Adriatic' for 5 nights. There is so much hype about this place, but it really is stunning. I'm sure most of you have seen that classic picture of the walled old town, surrounded on 3 sides by the Adriatic. It is a glorious sight. Walking the 2km or so all around the city walls was a highlight. We were actually staying about 10km out of town, near the beach. This was some of the best accommodation of the trip. We had a twin room with private bathroom & our own balcony overlooking the Adriatic, all for about 12 pounds a night! Again lots of swimming & lazing around on the beach... One of the more surreal moments was spending the day at the most beautiful beach, in the shadow of a huge, bombed out, derelict & abandoned hotel. While here we also did a day trip to Mostar in Bosnia-Hercegovina. This was fascinating, a place I have always wanted to go to since I saw the opening celebrations of the new bridge on TV a couple of years ago. The old town has almost totally been restored thanks to UNESCO funding, but you only have to walk a few streets back to see the scars of the war. There are bombed out shells of buildings everywhere, & some buildings look OK until you get a bit closer & see that the walls are covered in bullet holes. It's pretty scary thinking it only happened 13 years ago.

So there you go. At this stage I left Nicola & struck out on my own for the remaining 5 nights of my trip. The plan was back to Montenegro, then Albania & Macedonia, where my flight home leaves from. More about those adventures later, this posting is quite long enough already...