London Calling

Hvala, Hrvatska!

Ok, so it's been a long time since the last update. It's been summer, work's been busy, we've had a lot going on, choose your excuse. But we all know what they say about excuses...

So as many of you may know by now we went to Croatia for our anniversary/honeymoon. The trip and place can easily be summed up in one word, WOW.

Croatia is an amazing place and is now certainly at the top of our most favorite places visited, to be honest neither of us expects it to be unseated, it was just that good. The words will not do it justice but I will link to pics here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/8394484@N07/sets/72157601307218294/ - once I've uploaded them to flickr).

Summary for the ADHD sufferers amongst you: a 7-day, 8-night cruise up and down the Dalmation cost with 26 others (on a boat that had a max capacity of 50).

We landed in Split on Fri night, dropped our stuff off and had a wander around the Diocletian Palace. Our boat didn't leave until Saturday so we had a little time for sightseeing the night before. Our hotel was built into the Palace walls so we were well positioned to meander about the narrow alleys and discover the bars, restaurants and shops scattered throughout. We found a lovely little pizza place that we would end up visiting 2 more times before we departed this beautiful place. Anxious for what the next day would bring we called it an early night (after a few of Crotia's finest local brew of course) and went back to get a good night's sleep.

The pictures honestly tell a better story than a blog entry ever could, so here was our itinerary followed by some of the highlights. It's worth noting that between each stop for the night we found a cove for the daily swim...

Split (7th July) -> Makarska -> Sipan -> Dubrovnik -> Korcula -> Mljet -> Hvar -> Split (13th July)

Makarska - the Croatian Riviera (???) - most notably this is where we met up with the boat after taking advantage of an offer for a white water rafting trip. Really it was just a 3km paddle down a river with some fast moving water every now and again, but at least we got a work out.

Sipan - a quiet little fishing village inlet with a top notch hotel. We decided this would be our anniversary dinner and splurged. The outdoor restaurant was a gorgeous little setting and we were the only ones there 90% of the time. Kirsten had the cuttle fish in squid ink risotto (go on girl!) and I dined on the much safer lobster (had for the price of a 12-lb. Maine lobster - out of season - in the Arctic). We enjoyed a local bottle of red and the retired back to the ship for a good night's rest. It's worth noting here that the rest of the ship tended to be Aussies and Kiwis and they were usually up for a late night. We were the old souls on the boat, in bed before everyone else, up at breakfast in the morning, and generally shunning the group activities - hey it was all about us.

Dubrovnik - what a special place. We walked around the entire palace wall which offered some stunning views of the entire city and out over the bay. The water was sparkling blue in the hot Croatian sun. Sadly we didn't bring our suits so missed the opp to do some cliff diving from the outer edges of the wall on the seaside. We stopped into a museum and were fascinated by a picture frame hanging on the wall with a big hole in it. Apparently during the war (12 years ago) a missile went through that very spot. As if that wasn't amazing enough, across the room was the dent it made in the opposite wall and lo and behold there was the missile sitting idly on the ground, right where it fell 12 years ago...we quickly exited. From the top of the wall you could see the tile roofs, the red ones had been replaced since the war, the browner ones were undamaged - only 25% of them were brown. In the evening we joined some of the Aussie girls for some drinks at a new 5-star hotel as the sun was setting and then headed into town for a romantic dinner of spaghetti Milanese and Bolognese. We finished up the evening by having a night cap at a bar on the sea facing outside of the walls, our table just a few feet from a 30-foot drop to the water.

Korcula - this town juts out into a channel and gets the full impact of the wind being funneled through it. The windward side had waves smashing against the concrete wall while the leeward side just had a slight breeze passing over. There was an amazing fruit and vegetable market where we picked up a week's supply of various things for the equivalent of a few dollars (half that in pounds). Dinner consisted of pizza (ahem) and then another early night. Apparently we missed the late night party that our boat-mates hosted - oh well...

Mljet - the national park with two "lakes" in the center. We joined several of our boat mates, rented bikes and pedaled around the island down to the lakes. After missing a short cut sign and pretending like we were in Le Tour, we made our way down to the lakes for a swim. The lakes emptied out into the sea so they must have been Croatian lakes, nevertheless we took the time for a swim in a couple of places and then made our way back to the boat to shower and dine, on what else - pizza.

Hvar - the trendy spot where celebs often go. This would have been our night to go out on the town and indeed we planned to, except we came back to the boat for a rest before meeting up with the others and never did see the nightlife. During the day though we hiked up to the castle on the hill with some tremendous views over the harbor. We passed a little Croatian tapas bar on the way up that we planned on coming back to for dinner. It was one of the best and most unique meals we had. The restaurant was under a pergola with halved wine vats serving as tables. Dinner consisted of meats, cheeses, olives and some very nice Croatian table wine - who needs to go out until all hours and do shots wearing a WWII soldier's helmet...

Split - we returned to Split for the final evening on the boat. As such we got roped into playing some drinking games with the rest of the passengers, let's just say it's been a long time since I played "circle of death" - and there's a reason for that. From what Kirsten tells me about the rest of the evening, we returned to our original pizza place, wandered around for a few hours and then someone came back to the boat and passed, who says I'm not a romantic?

Saturday saw us all disembarking to catch flights or trains at various times. Ours was later in the evening so we had the whole afternoon to relax and enjoy some more time in Split. Aside from the minor inconvenience of tripping and falling off the boat and into the harbor with several bags we spent a low key day reminiscing about the wonderful trip and laying about in our final moments of sunshine.

After that it was back to London, experiencing the rainiest May-July since they began keeping records in 1766 - no wonder the pilgrims left.

More updates to come, that's it for now.

posted by Brian and Kirsten Hennigan @ Monday, August 06, 2007