Hvar

12th - 14th April 2010

We arrived into Hvar around 3pm and was met by the guy from apartment at the port. He drove us up to the apartment (which was good because it meant we didn't have to walk in the rain) and we were told that we were their first guests of the year. It was a massive apartment with a full kitchen and dining room, as well as two terrace balconies; one of which had a beautiful view of the sea.

After dropping our bags and getting settled we decided to brave the weather and go for a look around the town. We ended up getting pretty soaked, so we decided that it was a DVD afternoon, but picked up some supplies from the supermarket for dinner before we headed home for a lazy afternoon and evening.

It was still overcast and glum the next day but we still set out to check out city centre. Dan's first place of interest that we had to visit was an old castle, which is perched high up above the city. We walked up the massive hill to find that we were not only both stuffed, but had arrived at the back door. No way in. So Dan made me go all the way back down, to go up an equally tough path to the right door. When we get there, Dan notices that its got a 20kuna entrance fee (£2.50) and decides that its not worth it. So after an hour of up massive hills and then not even going into the castle, I cracked the s***s and stormed off down the mountain.

When he'd caught up to me again at the bottom, I made him buy me a coke at an expensive café so I could use the toilets. After we did a very long walk around to the swimming area of Hvar. A big fancy hotel has their own water park set up right beside the beach. But the hotel looked deserted and everything was dirty, obviously closed for the off season. We spent a while just walking around the beach, it was really nice, and could imagine that it would be a popular spot over summer, but we thought we'd better make a move for town as the big grey clouds were rolling in fast.

We had an indoor lunch (while the rain bucketed down) at a nice, yet expensive restaurant place. The options were limited (most places closed for the season) so they could pretty much charge us as we liked. I shouldn't complain too much, it was pretty tasty.

The rain had momentarily stopped after lunch, so Dan thought to celebrate with an ice-cream, before heading to do a dinner shop at the supermarket and back to the hotel. We made pretty good time, because about 10 minutes after we were back in the apartment the rain came down good, and it lasted all afternoon and into the night. We got a chance to watch a couple of movies (Funny People - was it two movies packed into one??) and cooked more Čevapčići for dinner. Dan accompanied his dinner with a 2l plastic bottle of beer. It was only now that someone told us if you buy beer in glass bottle you're charge 5 kuna as a deposit on the bottle. When you return it you get your money back. Up until that point we must've thrown out at least 30 kunas worth of bottles. Whoops.

We woke up for our last day in Hvar and Dan's 28th Birthday with beautiful blue sky and only a few clouds in the sky! He opened his couple of presents from me (book, DVD, and DS game - how original) and Skyped his family before we were both picked up by the guy who ran our accommodation. He took us down to his mate where we had decided to hire scooters for the day. We had a 3-minute course in learning how to drive the scooters (the guy was really hesitant to let us take them as we had never ridden them before and were a bit clueless). We paid up, put on our helmets (Dan ensured that I wore jeans for added protection) and made a wobbly start up the road.

The scooters were great fun, once we'd mastered the right side of the road, indicators and stopping effectively. We took the islands main road about 20km to the second biggest town, Stari Grad. The road was Hvar's equivalent of the Great Ocean Road, with big hills, bends and cliffs, all overlooking the ocean: It was beautiful. I really got a chance to take in all the sights sitting behind Grandpa Dan. He was a little terrified on the scooter and was scared to make it go fast. I think his top speed for the day was about 45km/h. I was continually worried riding behind him, he'd swerve out into the middle of the road all the time and never checked the cars coming up behind him.

Once we'd finally reached Stari Grad, we went for a stroll up along the port (it was nice to have 10 minutes off the bikes) before stopping for a coffee in one of the little cafes. We were back on the bikes and continued our journey across the island, this time taking some of the back roads.

We reached a junction at a small village, Dan was in front of me, and as I watched him take off to turn left I saw a van coming straight towards him. Instead of braking and letting the van past, he wobbled out of the way of the van (missed it by only inches) and continued on wobbling towards a beautiful stone fence. I was screaming at him to put the brakes on. I watched him still heading straight for this fence thinking that he was going to end up in the front yard of the church but he managed to pull himself up just in time - there probably wasn't enough room to put a piece of paper between his front wheel and fence.

After I'd pulled myself together we continued on down through more countryside going through a few villages. We decided that we'd better start making our way back to Hvar Town so we could make it to the ferry in time. We retraced our path back along the main road - stopping for a few photos this time - and found ourselves back in Hvar with about 20 minutes until we had to return the scooters. We went down around the other side of the port where we didn't get to walking (because of the rain) and ended up on a pedestrian path to a secluded beach. We thought we'd better get the scooters out of there and headed for the only petrol station in the town. Once we got there the man came out and tried to tell us that the pumps weren't working and we'd have to wait "20, 30, 40 or 50 minutes" until they were working again. We parked next to the servo and wandered on the beach for a bit until we saw cars filling up again. We filled up and made our way back up to the apartment where we dropped off the bikes, said farewell to our host and picked up our packs.

After a quick ham, cheese and baguette pick up at the supermarket, we only had to wait about 10 minutes for the Catamaran to arrive to take us on the 60 minute journey to the next island, Korcula.