Croatia - Part One

First stop on our Croatian holiday was the beautiful Split.

Split is not only full of history, but a beautiful city on the water.

The "riva" was lined with restaurants and cafes, 

while the streets in and around Old Town were filled with shops.

We had a private tour of Old Town and heard the stories of the emperor 

who retired to Split to grow cabbage! 

Had lunch at the infamous Buffet Fifa. 

We were slightly skeptical and it was pretty darn good and cheap!!
We also ate at a traditional family-run restaurant (stewed beef with gnocchi), 

as well as Nostromo just outside of the fish market.

Found a great wine bar in Old Town (Zinfandel - creative name, I know)

but Ian was all about learning more about Croatian wine

and this is where it all started... 

After a few days exploring Split, we jumped on a ferry

and headed to Vis.

Vis is the island located furthest to the west

and closest to Italy.

It's been a very important island to Croatia during its wars

because people could escape to Italy or Egypt

and even houses 170k meters of military tunnels and 3 bomb shelters.

Vis also is the only island in Croatia to have its own water source...

We found this out by kayaking to our own private cove

and realised there was something going on with the water...

it was swirling and we realised it was because of the temperature difference,

and one was fresh and one was salt!

Vis was full of friendly people, great food and interesting (not the best) wine!

It's a small fishing village, with only a handful of restaurants

and we think we found one of the best - it's known as Nonna's Restaurant.

To be honest, we never looked at the name... 

it was just good, and we kept going back!

We also celebrated Ian's 32nd birthday here,

and it was full of scooter exploring, green cove diving

food, wine and more food and wine!

We had a wonderful dinner at Barba, which included octopus peka.

 (octopus cooked in a metal "bell" with wine, herbs, veggies, etc.

then covered with coals so it cooks from all sides - liquid is absorbed and it's tender... YUM!)

 We truly loved Vis, and would go back in a heart beat.

Between the beautiful beaches, amazing seafood 

(we lived off octopus salad),

good wine and super nice people, we quickly fell for Croatia...

and I had high expectations.

It's been in my "top 3" for years and years.

It surely lived up to my expectations... and more.

Following Vis, we jumped on an early morning ferry to bring us back to Split

and we then had a 5-hour bus journey down to Dubrovnik.

It was a long day of travel and I get car sick on buses...

and to make it worse I sat next to the dirtiest stinkiest hippie of all time...

for FIVE hours. 

I wanted to die.

And with that... I'll leave you to wait for "part 2" of our Croatian holiday.

riva - split

old town

komiza, vis

green cove exploring

vis town

birthday boy dinner

secret private cove

 

 

We hope you enjoyed the pictures (lots of them) from Split and Vis...

more to come from Dubrovnik and Lopud.

 

And to the dirty stinky hippie - take a shower 

and be kind to the people you're on public transportation with... 

Yours truly,

smm