Good Croatia

OK, now that all the getting settled BS is out of the way, it's time to speed through a month's worth of excellentness in a few measly paragraphs interspersed with a few really awesome photos.

First up, our place was located 10 meters from the Adriatic Sea, as you can see in this picture from our window.
Plus, Angela and Nik had small gardens in both the front and back of the house. They made their own olive oil from their own olives and were always giving us extra lemons, cucumbers, and tomatoes (not to mention the occasional grilled or salt-cured fish) to supplement our meals.

This was awesome as we embarked upon a steady regimen of eating multiple Greek salads every day. We also made a whole bunch of pasta and other delicious goodies, but the main culinary highlights came every Friday night at the weekly Fishermen Nights down in the town square.
While the octopus salads, kilos of mussels, salt fish, and amazing desserts were all, well, amazing, the stand that really stole the show only sold two things: grilled octopus and whole grilled fish. Ridiculously scrumptious and surprisingly cheap - about $3 each, which compared quite favorably with the local restaurant fish prices of about $60/kilo as our friends found out.

For you see, Avi et al continued on down to Korcula for a night after staying with a friend of a friend's on Hvar for a few nights. It was actually quite a hairy meet up - we said we'd wait at one beach all day but they never showed so we went home for dinner and, after the last bus, we decided to go back into town to
check our email where we saw that he would be arriving right about then exactly. So we hurried back to our place (about a 20 minute walk from the town center) and decided to check the local restaurant for them... we got lucky and saw them polishing off what had once been a mountain of food bought to chase away the demons of a failed meetup. We joined them for a little wine then headed off to show them the best beach to sleep on... and ended up joining them on the sand underneath the stars... only being woken up once by a rather vocal couple down the strand.

The next day, we woke up to the beautiful sight of Prizina beach - one of the best in all of Croatia, supposedly. We chased the shade for a couple hours before giving up and taking a morning dip. Once the first sunbathers started rolling in, we packed our bags and headed into town to get some food before heading out for a picnic where Kate and I were able to show off our favorite beach on the island.

While the jagged rocks weren't the best spot to lay out, the water at this spot is absolutely crystal clear, the views over the Adriatic show you about 10 islands plus the mainland, you approach the secluded area by way of a pine forest, and the beach is clothing optional, making for quite the ideal picnic spot. After lunch and a round or two of cards, we all jumped in (swimsuits on, perverts) and went for a most relaxing swim.

Though Avi, Ava, and Richard left after just that one night, most of our days followed a similar pattern: get up around 10,
breakfast and relax, walk to a beach, relax, get some food to eat on a beach, relax, head home to our nearby beach for a swim, then relax some more.

The only things throwing monkey wrenches in this otherwise idyllic life were a) the cracked computer screen which put our writing plans on hold and b) the fact that our planned farmstay in Croatia (the reason for going there as opposed to elsewhere) fell through when we found out that the guy running it was really shady.
He wouldn't even tell us our hours or where we would be sleeping and called our questions "tedious," Because of this double whammy, we seriously considered going back Stateside for a couple months to get the tech stuff sorted out and maybe pick up some temp work for some extra cash. But in the end, we decided to suck it up, by a computer on eBay, and book a flight to Ireland where we set up a couple more farms. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

Part of the reason we chose Korcula as our base was that it had a historical old town. We were actually staying in Lumbarda, about a 15 minute busride outside of Korcula town, but we mostly walked the 45 minutes when we wanted to go in. Korcula is supposedly the birthplace of Marco Polo (I say supposedly as this is disputed by Venice, which also claims him) and the town dates to the middle ages. Definitely a good place to wander the cobbled streets, grab a gelato or two, and either catch a water polo match or a movie at the outdoor summer cinema.

We happened to see two movies while there - first was The Happening, which is one of the worst movies i had seen in recent memory, and second was Indiana Jones 4, which was good fun and got bonus points as we'd been wanting to see it. The theater itself got further bonus points by being set in an old, open-air courtyard which had hundreds of bats circling the screen.

We went back into Korcula our last night on the island as this happened to be the day of the biggest festival of the year. We watched the preparations and then saw a massive religious parade with enormous candles carried in a processional accompanied by chants. Pretty sweet.

Time to wrap up, but first, a quick list of some other cool stuff we did on Korcula: swam across a channel to another island, hiked out into the wilderness where we got lost when the terribly
marked trail ended and had to go crosscountry in our sandals, found more hidden coves, walked through vineyards, picked hundreds of wild blackberries, and had Kate cut my hair in perhaps the most beautiful setting anyone has ever received a haircut - ever. And this is the picture to prove it.