Hvar, Croatia

So the day after Plitvice Lakes we took the ferry to the island of Hvar. That morning we got up really early to buy our ferry tickets, because they sell out quickly and are only sold the day of. They told us to get there around 6:30. Another early day! We then got breakfast-a croissant and a large hot chocolate. Now, I ordered a large hot chocolate because the small was extermely small. I'm pretty sure the "large" was a small in a large cup. and the guy coughed in it. We wandered around Diocletian's palace for a while, I bought some gifts and then we headed to the ferry. We got some seats by the window. The trip was short, about an hour, on the wonderful blue water and past a couple other islands.

When we got off the ferry, we bought our tickets to Dubrovnik for the next day then went to the bus stop "right by the ferry" to be picked up by our hostel guy, Dino. And by "right by the ferry" he meant pretty far away across some very bumpy/difficult to navigate with a suitcase cobblestone streets, that were extremely crowded with people getting on and off the ferries. We checked in to our hostel, which was very cute. and very large with no other people. We had a 3 room apartment complete with kitchen, 3 beds and a bathroom all to ourselves. For 20 dollars each...kind of amazing. We then walked down the road below into town. It was soooo beautiful!

This yacht kind of took away from the beauty of the harbor, since it was gigantic and you could see it from basically every point on the island. It was called the Sea Force. They lit it up that night and had a party. Slightly ridiculous.

The island was amazing. It had a castle (turned night club) with old walls that cover the hill (kind of in the way Diocletian's palace covered most of downtown Split). There were sooo many beautiful churches and beautiful buildings, stairs, cute alleyways and views.

Afterwards, we attempted to walk up to this church, but soon discovered you can't get near it due to the castle walls blocking our way. But it was old and beautiful from what we could tell and the view from up there was amazing.

So after we wandered around for a while, we decided to go swimming. It was quite hot on the island. The water was beautiful and clear as usual. There weren't any shark rocks, but there were a lot of sea anenomes and I kept thinking I saw giant crabs, but I of course did not. I have discovered that water in Croatia lets you float without even trying, which is good because it very quickly goes over your head even when it looks really shallow. I can swim so it's not a problem, but it is a little disconcerting. We got ice cream and then watched the sunset, which was beautiful. We hung out on the walkway benches just enjoying the scenery! I was glad to finally see a sunset in Croatia since we'd missed the others! In Split the sunset was behind a hill and it was behind the bus when we went to Plitvice Lakes, so kind of difficult to see. But I enjoyed my time in Hvar a lot! We took the one ferry to Dubrovnik the next day!