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Deb tells me we have just hit the start of our forth week away. That’s gone way too quickly.
Today we left Korcula and took a catamaran to Hvar for the next 4 nights. We had a late checkout, noon, and a quiet morning.
We checked out at midday, I felt the young guy who brought our bags down from the 2nd (or 3rd for any other hotel) floor, no lift remember, earning every euro cent of the tip we gave him.
We got picked up in the “resort style buggy”, same as when we arrived, at 12:25pm and we reached the wharf at 12:30pm.
Our ferry arrived at 12:38pm,
and after everyone getting off at Korcula were off we boarded and the ferry catamaran left on time at 1pm. It was interesting seeing the old town from the water (no pics. We were on the wrong side of the boat). The ride was pretty smooth all the way to Hvar. We passed a beach with lots of kite surfers out on the water, looked like fun. As with the ride to Korcula, there are large portions of the islands here that are uninhabited and covered in woodlands.
The ride was about 80mins and we landed in Hvar Harbour at 2:20pm. We were meant to be picked up, but there was no one there. We saw a transfer guy from our hotel, he didn’t speak English, but luckily someone else from the hotel who spoke English was there. He directed us to the taxi area around past the Cathedral, a good walk from where we were, thankfully they took our luggage. We eventually found our ride, he was very apologetic, saying he was a late call after the first driver never showed up. We arrived at our hotel around 2.45pm and checked in. Our room has a balcony and obscured sea view (half the view is blocked by another part of the hotel!). The room is on the small side of things. But it has a good sized window!
After we settled in we went for a walk into town to check everything out, and see where we have to go for our tours tomorrow and Friday.
It’s a beautiful walk along the foreshore to town, only took a bit over 10 minutes. The first thing you notice about Hvar is the number of boats on the harbour. Boats of every shape, size and budget- from your weekend runabout to toys for your up and coming Oligarch. Something for everyone.
There are lots and lots of eateries along the harbour foreshore, some bursting with people, others not so much. Then there are the trinket booths, lines of them, selling every bit of must have souvenir goods of dubious quality you could ever imagine.
We walked around the far corner of the harbour and found our tour office for tomorrow, we confirmed we were at the right place and the meet up time. The girl gave us a good idea of what to bring (and so, what not to bring) for the tour.
We then had a little stroll around before dinner at 6:30. It was quite warm so Deb thought she might check out the restaurant and find a bit of shade, and I went for a look in the Cathedral. The restaurant wasn’t open yet and all the outside tables were reserved, and down at the Cathedral there was a sign outlining all the things you couldn’t do inside, including take photos, as this was a religious sacred place, then they wanted to charge 2 euro to go inside, I thought not. 
I met Deb near the restaurant, outside a Benedictine Monastery. There was a cool looking statue outside it,
a sundial on the wall of the Monastery, that looked like it spent a good portion of the day in shade, and just inside the Monastery it looked like a religious gift shop. Everyone is in on the tourism thing!
6:30pm came and we went in for dinner, at Macondo, 
we shared grilled squid, a plate of muscles and clams in white wine and garlic, and a simple salad. While the squid and clams all tasted great, the only thing that wasn’t over cooked and rubbery was the muscles, disappointing. The restaurant had great reviews.
We walked back to the hotel, hoping to get a gelato on the way. Unfortunately as the sun was setting, all the street vendors had shut up shop for the day, so we went without.
When we got back to the hotel we had a bit of a walk around to see where some of the eateries were and have a look at the view from the main deck. The remain restaurant was a buffet, to me it smelt like an old school buffet, we’ll be giving it a miss. The main bar had food, but we forgot about that when we saw the view, the sort of view promotional material is made from. Stunning in a word. 
We’d had enough, and headed back to our room to put our feet up.
