Croatia, aka Little Italy…
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Dubrovnik was our first stop in this amazing country. This enchanting city butts right up to the Adriatic sea, providing stunning views and a romantic vibe. It was love at first sight for Christy. The popular old city is surrounded by 26 meter high stone walls, which were built to protect the city against military attacks from the sea. There is even a draw bridge that can be raised to seal off the walls. It was incredible. Once we were inside the city walls, we understood why Croatians wanted to protect this city. The streets were made of marble! The shiniest marble we have ever seen, it appeared wet all of the time even though it wasn’t. Even some of the buildings and churches were made of marble. Since Croatia is over 80% Catholic, there were beautiful marble Catholic churches inside the huge city wall. And the gelato…fabulous!!! We really lucked out with our accommodation-we were able to rent a modern guesthouse with a small kitchen inside the city walls! Having the kitchen was helpful since the cost of eating at a restaraunt here can get quite expensive. The funny thing was, there were cats everywhere! Tons of cats running wild inside the city walls. It was crazy. We assumed that Croatians must love cats…
At the start of our big trip, Christy decided that she wanted to try hot chocolate in every country we visited. She decided this while sipping a frothy hot chocolate on a cold night in Iceland, however, she continues on her quest to find the world’s best hot chocolate. It is pretty amazing how different a cup of hot chocolate can be in each country. We had no idea! For example in Iceland, the hot chocolate comes in a mug like at home, but only with whole milk and of course, topped with thick whip cream. London was a little strange. The hot chocolate is very bitter, not sweet at all. Almost like they use straight CoCo instead. She wasn’t too crazy about it. In Amsterdam, you can be a little more picky and request low fat milk. It was also usually served in a tall, skinny, clear glass mug, not like the standard coffee mugs. In Ireland, like Icleand, whole milk was the only option, but other than that, not too different from U.S. hot chocolate. The more interesting hot chocolates were in Bosnia, where the hot chocolate is served in a tall clear glass (like a glass of water) with a straw! Who drinks hot chocolate with a straw? But the real weird one, hands down, was Croatia. The hot chocolate is again served in a clear glass, not a mug, and resembles something like hot pudding. Seriously, they give you a spoon, we assume to help eat it because it is almost impossible to drink. And, they give you sugar! It is already sweet, but they give you more packs of sugar, just in case. Very strange…
Croatia has a large number of islands off its coast and visiting at least one is an absolute must if you make the trip here. We decided to visit one of the larger (and more popular) islands-Hvar. We took a really fun five hour ferry ride north to this spectacular island. It was amazing sitting out on the deck of this huge ferry watching all of the islands go by. The weather was nice as well and the sun was out, which made Christy a happy little camper. We were in search of a sleepy island where we could get some R&R and we found it on Hvar…although we were assured that during tourist season, it was not so relaxed. Most of Croatia’s coastline is fairly rocky and there are rarely any beachfronts, but the coast is still breathtaking. The main old town on Hvar, which is also called Hvar just to keep it simple, has the similar marble square as in Dubrovnik, just on a smaller scale and minus the enormous wall. Around the island is a large boardwalk. We took advantage of this with a nice morning jog and once the boardwalk ended, a hiking trail began. So, later in the afternoon, we hiked the coastline of the island. We could definitely feel the difference in temperature here, warmer than some of the other countries we visited that were further north in Europe. Christy again had some of the strangest hot chocolate here, she swears it’s just warm chocolate pudding…
Steve