Making a Silk Purse out of a Sow's Ear!

So, Monday afternoon, Toni (our taxi guy) picked us up and took us over to the ferry dock for our 4:30 departure to Hvar on the Krilo catamaran.  The journey would take 3 hours and go along the coast for over 100 km.  The boat was quite crowded but we managed to get a seat in the front row.  It turned out to be less than ideal because there were some young people near us drinking wine and playing some trivia game.  They were quite loud. Linda went on a reccy and found us some seats at the back of the boat. Much better. The scenery along the coast was spectacular - from both sides of the boat.  On the starboard side we could see the mainland and to port was an archipelago of islands .  I read somewhere that there are something like 1200 islands in this country but I think only about 50 of them are inhabited.  It was difficult to get many good photos on the trip because there were only a couple of places on each side of the ferry that were open to the outside.  The scenery was very much like the coastline along the south of France near Bandol.

 

 

We stopped at several islands before reaching Hvar – Mljet (Pomena) and Korcula.  They both looked like good stops. 

 

Mljet

Korcula

Island off the coast of Hvar Island

We arrived slightly past the scheduled arrival time, found the tour office where we were supposed to go, and then walked – quite a long way with no help at all from the woman – to the bus station where Jove, the apartment owner (who turned out not to speak any English and who smelled like he hadn’t showered in a month or laundered his clothes ever!) drove us in his beat-up VW to our apartment.  This was not looking good.  The apartment had been advertised as 2 bedroom and 2 bathrooms.  As it turned out, the second bathroom (which was really only a WC) was being renovated and there was no way it could be used as the new toilet was sitting on the floor still wrapped in plastic.  I was not impressed.  Further, the apartment is a bit “tired”, our beds were not made, and the floor in my room felt gritty.  There will be some comments on Trip Advisor about all this, believe me - and they will not be positive!  The one good thing was that the view from the balcony was fabulous and the sun was setting just as we arrived.  I got some fabulous photos from it.  Maybe we can find a silver lining in all this.  Something like making a silk purse out of a sow's ear!  We can do it!  The glass is half full, right?

 

By the time we got somewhat settled, it was well after 8 so we walked toward the town.  The apartment was supposed to be on the promenade leading into the town but the first bit is along the road - not exactly as advertised.  I guess we will be able to cope with that.  The first people we stopped to make sure we were heading to where there would be a restaurant was a chubby fairly drunk 20 something Brit (not the first we encountered that evening).  It seems there are a lot of young people here and all the ones we saw that evening were “well into their cups”, as they say.  The first restaurant we stopped at was called Il Porto and the menu looked pretty good.  This is where the evening, aside from the amazing views from the balcony started to turn around.  The gal serving us was lovely, the menu was good (I had wiener schitznel and it was freshly prepared and the fries served with it were very tasty).  Linda enjoyed her dinner as well.  The only blot on the evening was that “Chubby” and some of his pals, including a Canadian girl who was better behaved than the rest, showed up and were loud and got louder the more and more bottles of wine they consumed.  We are determined to make the most of our stay here in spite of the not so wonderful apartment.