Split was really good fun. It was great to get back into what was basically a big city. It wasn't so big as some others, but far busier than recent places and with a much livelier vibe to it. We were looking forward to moving on though (we always do). We'd made our way through most of the sights and even explored quieter parts of the city. Now it was time to get onto our first ferry to the paradise island of Hvar!

The ferry was a bit of a disappointment. We were expecting to walk about on the deck and stand by the side watching the land and sea go by. Wasn't gonna happen though. There wasn't really any deck to walk on. It was fast at least. Hvar isn't too far away from Split and the ferry was a catamaran. Faster than your average boat.

Hvar has a reputation for being the sunniest island in Croatia. It didn't disappoint. It was overcast in Split when we left (only slightly too hot for comfort!), but as we stepped off the boat in Hvar harbour the sun was beaming. We broke a sweat walking down the ramp. Its a lovely harbour though. Quite small. Lots of very fancy private boats sitting along the sides. And a few nice restaurants.

This harbour doubles as the town's more expensive evening retreat. We are trying to have just one meal at each of the places we visit and it normally falls on our first night. The problem with that is that you don't really have the time to explore and find better, cheaper places. It's a bit of an effort to do shopping and cook a meal after you got up early and done some travelling though. We ate at the harbour. They weren't charging extortionate prices but we'd gotten used to eating cheap. But we're getting into more popular tourist scenes now and deeper into the tourist season. Katie hadn't had a salad for a while. She was feeling up for one now and she enjoyed it. Greek salad. I had a passable Thai Curry.

I'd give a mixed review for our accomodation. The guy came to pick us up from the bus station and the lady was very welcoming when we got there. We had a shared kitchen again. There were 3 rooms per building and the kitchen served those 3. There was nobody else staying in our building though so we had it to ourselves, for the time-being at least. We had our own bathroom. A fairly decent one too. The shower stayed up in its holder. We also had our own balcony. So far so very nice. The room was a decent size. We had Wi-Fi, however weak the signal was. And we had a well equipped kitchen. The room smelled a little musty though. The decor was aged. Maybe had a bit of an 80s feel to it.

Our first night was great. A couple days in and we were both having issues with our breathing through the evening. I think I got it a bit worse. The first time it hit I woke up in the middle of the night wheezing and having a pretty bad time of it. I lay for a while before asking Kate if it was cool to just open up the door a bit and get some fresh air in. It worked but we got a few more mossie bites for it. I was glad to get to sleep finally. Was worried but maybe it was just a one night thing. Not a chance. The second night was awful. We planned to get up early the next day for a bike ride (more on which later). I didn't even get to sleep before my lungs virtually collapsed! I was breathing like a reanimated corpse. My throat and lungs were dry and scratchy and really bloody painful. Sitting up helped very slightly, but wasn't conducive to a good night's sleep. Not even opening the window helped, or turning on the fan. As it was starting to get a tad lighter outside I finally decided to take a cover outside and just sit on the balcony. Maybe I'd just sit up and we'd at least get out earlier than normal. Katie always wakes early anyway. Well, the air open air helped a lot and it wasn't long before I dropped off. Katie hadn't the heart to wake me in the morning. It was almost afternoon by the time I got up. On our last night Katiedidn't want the window open. The mossies were horrible. We turned the fan on early and got into bed with it running. That did the trick and we had a decent sleep that night. Shoulda figured that out earlier. Overall, that put a bit of a downer on our trip to Hvar.

The pros of our time on the island far outweighed any crappiness brought on by the apartment though. Hvar is beautiful! Its not just green. There are many colours all over. Purple from the trees. I'm sure Kate would know what trees they were, but she's sleeping now. Anyway, purple all over. And fruit trees too. Oranges, plums, lemons. Far more than that, too many to list. Obviously fig and olive trees too. They're all over Croatia. The scents of the island matched the colours. Lavender is everywhere for starters. The smells of the trees and the plants all around. Lovely.

Hvar town is a very old town. The alleyways are similar to those we've seen in other Croatian towns. Its clearly expanded outside of the older area of course. But what's very nice about Hvar town, as opposed to some others, is that the new buildings are built in a similar style and layout to the older ones. You can see this from above and it has a nice effect. This is practical only due to the fact that there isn't much industry here other than tourism. I guess they have to keep it pretty. The tourism has perhaps spoiled it a little though. The big private yachts are always present. Always blocking the view unles you walk around the coast. The streets around the harbour are crowded with stalls selling lavender in all its forms too. As well as other locally made merchandise. Thankfully those stall are all centred in the one area though. Away from the harbour you still have all the big hotels, apartments and bars. You have to walk a little way out of town to find proper peace. Bustle is great in a city, not what you want around you when you're trying to take in an island like this.

The fruit and veg market is great. Always cheaper than the super market from our experience. Hvar's market perhaps isn't so good as the others we'd come across, though we generally got there quite late in the day. We had to walk our shopping uphill and all the way to our apartment, so buying early wasn't really an option as far as we were concerned.

We enjoyed that walk to and from the apartment. The town is built quite low down, but once the centre stops it just goes uphill. This gives you a great overview from the road on the way in. Often in a city we would have to find a tower to climb or a hill on the outskirts. Hvar town's location allowed us to get these views just by walking a minute or two out the front door.

On our first full day we spent a lot of time wandering around the town. Just exploring. Its a small place, it doesn't take long to get a good idea of where things are. Our backup plan for any sense of boredom for the past couple of weeks has just been to get to the coast and walk a while. Its a great way to find new places. You could walk for hours along coastal paths and you'll never run out of things to see. This time we got ourselves an ice cream each. I haven't said much about ice-cream. We're getting through a lot of it! Katie had her two scoops and I got greedy and had three. I just love the straciatella and the hazelnut flavours. Couldn't do without them, but these guys were rockin' a Ferrero Rocher flavour! Couldn't resist. And it was lovely. We ate these while walking around and once we finished we couldn't walk much further. Was time to go back, we'd go further round next time.

Our second time around that coastline was slightly more successful. We avoided the ice-cream stand and managed to walk a good way round; finding a nice little rocky area with a natural pool to have a sit-down and a paddle in. We let the shrimps chomp away at our feet for a while, did some crosswords, and read a bit before heading back away. This was, of course, after a little more walking around town. We walked back to the apartment via the coastal route too. Passed a hotel with an incredible looking swimming pool and through a popular bar where people go to watch the sunset. We meant to stop there for a drink ourselves for one night but could never really be bothered. Their drinks were a bit too costly anyway.

Aside from pottering about the town we had two very different days while staying on Hvar. We wanted to do a nice bike ride to see a bit more of the island so thought we'd get bikes one evening, keep them for 24 hours to bring them back late the next evening. Before picking them up we took a taxi boat to one of the nearby small islands. There was a beach there called Palmazana. Apparently very popular.

The boat ride was pretty cool. Very cheap for a return ticket and it didn't take much longer than 15 mintues. The beach there was quite lovely. The pebbly beach areas weren't exactly crowded, but we moved further round to the empty rocks. Flat rocks are more comfortable than pebbles and we'd gotten used to them recently anyway. There were a lot of sea urchins in this water. I'm glad I bought my beach shoes. This would be my first opportunity to use my snorkelling gear too. I'd bought it ages ago but the water was never warm enough to go swimming for more than a few minutes. This water was very warm. I was disappointed by my snorkel though. It had a valve on the bottom that was supposed to allow water to go out but far more came into it than anything else. I couldn't hold my head under for long. I resorted to just using the goggles. That was fun, but yeah I would have preferred a better snorkel. There's only so long you can hold your breath. And it just gets shorter the more energy you use.

I got a good idea of where the urchins were and kate said she'd have a swim if I gave her my shoes. That was hilarious. Not only was she freaked out by urchin after my little problem, but the rocks didn't exactly allow you to dip yourself in slowly. You just had to go for it. Well, Katie had me to hold on to. I think even after coming off the rocks she managed to keep out the water for a good little while, clinging on to me for dear life! After a deal of thrashing about she finally settled in and had a swim. I say this water was warm. By that I mean comparatively. Katie didn't stay in too long. I just kept myself moving til I was a bit exhausted. I get bored sunbathing too long. Katie had a nice time lying in the sun. She's got a very nice brown colour to her these days. A few white spots remain, but not as much as before. She still has tan lines from her sandals though. Think they'll last a while.

We picked up the bikes after coming back from the beach. The dude had kept his two best bikes back just for us as we'd reserved them the day before. Apparently people were asking for them the whole day. They were good looking bikes. Pretty much brand new. Awesome gears, brakes and everything else. Great size and comfortable to ride. Probably the best bikes we'd got a hold of to date. I especially liked the gear system. Better than my own bike. The guy didn't have any chain-locks sitting about so we kept them inside the apartment for the night.

We'd planned to get up early so we could spend more time riding nice and slow. Also to avoid the high afternoon temperature. Unfortunately this was the night my lungs decided to stop working. I didn't get any sleep at all and Katie felt bad waking me until it was very nearly the afternoon. She wasn't feeling to great either, but the best thing to do would be to get out the house and into the fresh air, which we did after a quick brekkie.

We headed off on the bikes. We knew we'd initially be going uphill. Katie decided she'd walk it awhile. It wasn't too steep though. Then it was down steeply along a pretty small but fast road, into the town. We headed off in a new direction from here to get into the countryside. This was going to be a lot of uphill riding. We were getting into it though and we were ready for a bit of hard biking. We didn't realise just how difficult it was going to be. We cycled for hours. Covering a fairly huge distance and the road never even flattened off; never mind going downhill. We just went up and up and up for what seemed like forever. In the boiling heat. There were moments as we came to what looked like a peak, I thought 'this must be it now'. But it just went up again after that. We eventually came upon a little village. Had a quick break for some water and a bite to eat. The town was built on a flat just above a steep road. It had to get easier from here...

It didn't. It was a good few miles before we reached our target. A place called Velo Grablje, an old farming village that was at one stage completely abandoned. This has happened to many villages on this island, mainly due to money issues I guess. All the money is in the bigger areas where the tourists are. The local council are, however, attempting to bring about a revival in some of these places. V. Grablje now has a population of around about 5 people! It was quite a nice little place. Some very old buildings. Very quiet, obviously. The best thing about getting here was that it marked the downhill stage of our cycle.

A mixed blessing really, as this meant cycling on the 'Mountain Bike Extreme' route! Well, we weren't going back the way we came. That would be boring. The mountain bike route was fun. It was steep and very gravelly. We had to get off and walk at some parts, but I was fairly determined to stay on the bike as long as possible. Almost came off once. All part of the fun. We stopped for a quick snack break. It was very quick though. The track was heaving with flies and wasps. The sound of buzzing insects filled the air. We've never heard a sound like that before. Quite an ominous racket. One of the b*****s stopped on my leg at one point and gave me a nasty nip.

It was about this point that I noticed my rear tire didn't have any air in it. We were miles from home, on a steep gravel track, and time was getting short. And this was the second time this had happened to me! I nearly threw the bloody thing off the road! Well, I couldn't ride with the bike in that condition. Katie was happier walking down the gravelly bit anyway so we started pushing. There were signposts telling us that Hvar Town was only about 2.5kms away. This gave us some hope. We finally reached the end of the mountain bike route. Turns out the signposts were only leading us into the road going to Hvar Town. We still had another 5 Ks to go. And we were going uphill again! We reached a small town on our way. We thought that maybe we'd find some bike rental people with a repair kit. No such luck, but some real friendly guys got the foot pump out for us. Maybe it was just a slow puncture. We got back on the road. Tyre went flat again so we heaved the bikes up more hills along the narrow, busy road. It was quite some time before we got back into town. We'd run out of water hours ago. The sun was hammering down on us the whole way. The sweat was running off of us, our legs were on the verge of giving in. We must have been quite a sight as we stumbled up to the bike rental counter. "Have fun?" asked the guy. Well, in retrospect, I guess we kinda did. At parts at least. And it was an adventure. We wouldn't be hiring bikes anymore though. I guess bicycles just don't really like me. The tyres don't anyway. Maybe on the next holiday I'll just bring my own repair kit with me.

Those were our two big activities on Hvar Island. We had a great time. Difficult at parts, but well worth seeing it. Of course, the only way off was by ferry. So we'd be going to Dubrovnik by boat. It was a long ride but this time we got a proper ferry. We sat outside almost the entire time, watching Croatia slide past. We had lunch in the restaurant too. They made it look quite fancy, but we ordered basic pasta dishes. They were cheap. Cheaper than anything else on the menu. But it was only lunchtime and it was a perfect portion for us. The boat ride was great fun.

We've heard a lot about Dubrovnik. It sounds incredible. Coming into the port was really nice.