The Croatian holiday, Part two (Hvar and Split)

Part one of my Croatian holiday, about Dubrovnik and Korcula, can be found here. This post starts with our arrival in the island of Hvar. However, I've already covered the beautiful city beach in Hvar here, my tongue in cheek take at Hvar street style here and an extraordinay evening in Split here. So, now for the rest:

From top of the Hvar city centre, looking up at the old fortress

Hvar Harbour

Korcula was a quiet, litte island seemingly full of backpackers, sailors and a handful of other tourists. Hvar, in comparison, while being nowhere near as commercialized as some of the other Mediterranean hot spots, clearly held an attraction with a larger number of tourists, some of them of the very affluent kind. The vessels moored in the harbour sometimes gave the impression that this island is the millionaires' playground, as witnessed by some of the yachts:

Huge, some of them even with their own uniformed security staff

"Mine is bigger than yours....ha ha"

Sailing boats for charter

The hill in the backgound of the harour is where we rented an apartment

There were more shops here, larger hotels and the nightlife more action filled. Apparently, Hvar is supposed to be the Croatian island with the highest number of sun days. Also, it only takes an hour to get here by catamaran from the city of Split, which with it's international airport and huge ferry terminal serves as a feeding point for a large number of visitors to Croatia's attractions.

As soon as we had found a place to stay, we started out by doing what we did in the other places, namely finding the closest beach:

B. with the everpresent floating mattress

The huge hotel situated above the public beach. They had their own pools, so the beach wasn't crowded...

...there was more than enough space for me to happily float about

Every afternoon when returning from the beach, we would sit down in the piazza in the middle of the city centre, having our traditional "after beach"  small beers while engaging in some people watching as they walked along the harbour, across the busy piazza, or were just running their errands or "walking" their dogs...

.

...while just enjoying our surroundings...

At times we also made it into some of the small charming stores or stalls in the narrow streets:

I didn't really buy a lot, but one little souvenir was too cute to pass by:

After several days at the beach, I felt the need for some action. So two of us left Hvar and the hill that we stayed on behind for the day...

 and booked a sailing trip to the island of Vis and the blue (or was it green?) grotto with a company called Hvar Adventures:

The skipper talking to some of our fellow sailors

B. enjoying the elements - only the sound of the wind and the waves

While I enjoyed chatting to the skipper...

...and the view of the grotto:

Afterwards it was time for lunch and a swim:

Whaaaat? No floating mattresses on board? I actually have to do the work myself? Scandalous!

On our last night in Hvar, we all went out for a "farewell" dinner. The others chose to stay behind for the rest of the holiday, and only B. and I would be going to Split. We also had some beer:

One metre, to be exact! (No, I did not drink it all by myself even if I look pretty happy)

The morning after, we had to leave at around 7 AM to catch the catamaran onwards. The normally busy piazza was like a totally different world at that hour:

Ah...here's our (space) ship coming to take us away on new adventures

Split

Coming up later...