Day 11

Hello it’s Adam. Today one of the longest but also most exciting days of the trip so far. We had an extremely early wake up call at 4AM so that we could check out of our place in Split and catch the first car ferry to the island of Hvar at 5AM. We didn’t have any issues getting to the port, buying our tickets and getting the car loaded. Although it was still completely dark and we were very tired. Once aboard, we immediately bought some cappuccinos. They didn’t do much good though because we both napped on the way over. In between naps, I popped up to the upper deck to catch the sunrise. 2 hours later we arrived in the small town of Stari Grad. Still early, there wasn’t much to do in the town except wander around. It was an extremely old and well preserved port town, so it was actually quite nice to walk around even though virtually nothing was open (except a souvenir shop which we went into and may have made a couple purchases). We drove to a few other small towns on the island – Vrboska and Jelsa. We stopped at a café an Jelsa to relax and pass some time before making the drive to largest city on the island – Hvar (and shares the same of the island itself). The drive was only about 45 minutes or so. We took the scenic route through the hills and saw a number of small towns along the way. Once in Hvar, we found a parking spot and walked into the main square. For being on such a remote island, the city was quite busy with other tourists. The island of Hvar gets the most sun of any place in the entire country, and it was definitely sunny – and hot!  All the building are made out of stone, so they just absorb all the heat and radiate it back out like crazy. We walked around until we found the agency that we had booked a sailing trip with to the nearby Pakleni Islands later that afternoon. Once we checked in with them and paid the balance of the sailing trip, we had a couple hours to spare before the boat departed. Looming over the entire city is a large fortress way up on the hill, so we figured this is what we needed to do with our extra time. We began the climb and slowly made our way all the way to the top. It was so hot outside, so by the time we got there, we were exhausted. We rested for a short time and then walked around the fortress and to the top where we had some excellent views over the entire city and the Pakleni Islands as well. Once we’d had enough, we walked back down into town. Along the way, we found a number of restaurants and wandered until we found one that was to our liking. It was before noon, so there wasn’t a lot of people out for lunch just yet. The waiter took us up to the terrace which had really nice window views over the town. Jessica got the sea bass with grilled vegetables and I went with the fried calamari and French fries. Once again, everything was amazing. The chef even treated us to some complimentary tuna pate and bread along with a chocolate cake dessert. Great meal! From there, we wandered our way through town some more and then made our way back to our sailing tour meeting place. We met our captain Kaja, and one solo traveler who would be joining us on the boat. Neither of us had ever sailed before, so we were very intrigued to watch the process of switching the sails back and forth as the boat tipped side to side. We relaxed on the boat for a few hours, and had some wine and snacks. The Pakleni Islands are a small chain of 16 islands right of the coast of Hvar. The boat went around many of these islands until we went ashore to one of them. The boat dropped anchor and we had so free time for swimming and snorkeling. It took a few minutes, but we both worked up the courage to jump in (the water is a bit cold), and after swimming around some, we were used to it. We put on the snorkel gear and swam around some more. The water was very clear, so you could see all the little fish swimming around and the many sea urchins on the bottom. After relaxing on the boat for a while longer, our time was up and we needed to head back to Hvar. The way back took about an hour. Back in town we said goodbye to the captain and our new friend (neither of us were able to catch her name). We walked back up to our car and made the short drive to our Airbnb in town. Our host was there to greet us and she even brought some of her family’s homemade wine for us try, and it was very good! Still full from lunch, we decided not to make any dinner plans, and just had some leftover snacks for dinner. Before long we were very tired and went to sleep after the long day.