Ciao for Now

Now begins the Croatian island hopping portion of our trip.  First stop, Korcula!  Legend has it that this island is the birthplace of famous explorer and awesome pool game inventor Marco Polo.  To be honest, I don’t know why he ever left the place.  It’s amazing!

Korcula Town, where we based ourselves, has actually been dubbed “mini-Dubrovnik” because of its walled old town.  Unlike Dubrovnik, however, there were hardly any tourists.  While we thought Dubrovnik was beautiful, we spent much of our time in its old town dodging the hordes of tour groups and cruise ship day-trippers.  In Korcula’s old town, you truly felt like you’d taken a step back in time.  It’s hard to explain in writing, but Anna and I just felt an instant connection with the place.  It was just so mellow and casual…just our style.  Also, while we had to walk 356 steps down to the sea in Dubrovnik, here we only had to walk about 10.  The place we stayed, Villa Depolo, may have been our favorite yet.  For the equivalent of about $50/night we had a huge, clean room, air conditioning, en-suite bathroom, fridge and an enormous deck right on the water.

View from our deck

Korcula’s old town from our deck

Did I mention we had a super sweet deck?

Entrance to Korcula’s old town	Awesome dinner at U Maje i Tonke

Beauty everywhere you look in Korcula	Ditto

Johnny’s a.m. buoy swim

One day, when we weren’t bouncing back and forth between our deck and the sea right out front, we took a taxi boat over to the small fisherman’s village of Lumbarda where the island’s only sandy beaches are.  I didn’t think Korcula could get any more beautiful, but it proved me wrong.  We swam in some of the warmest, clearest, bluest water we’ve ever been in on a sandy beach lined with ancient walls.  Oh, and the Lumbarda area is know for its Grk wine which is grown in sandy soil, so there were vineyards coming straight down to the sea.  Incredible!

Vineyards all the way down to the crystal clear Adriatic

Vivid blue and green everywhere	Johnny, ancient walls and vineyards

You get the idea	One more, for good measure

Korcula was just perfect.  Look for Anna and me on a Korcula episode of House Hunters International in about 20 years.

Posted on August 31, 2011 at 10:13 am in Croatia   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL