The calm between the storms

From Hvar we took a ferry to Korcula, a less populated (and less popular) Croatian island. It turned out to be a good break from the party-centric scenes of Split, Hvar, and Dubrovnik.

Korcula Town

Enjoying Korcula

Korcula island is long and narrow, and for most of its length is very close to mainland Croatia. Like most of the other Croatian islands it lacks decent beaches, though we found a sandy one, but it more than makes up for that with scenic hills and vineyards. We stayed in Korcula town, a compact town whose old town sits on a peninsula surrounded by large walls. It was a gorgeous town to walk through and around, but without much going on other than tourist shops and tourist restaurants.

Korcula streets

Without much of a tourism industry, there were no hostels on Korcula, so we stayed in a guesthouse owned and operated by a single lady. She was welcoming, helpful, and absolutely incredulous that anyone would ever work as long of hours as New Yorkers. Her hours at her shop were 9am – 2pm. Her shop wasn’t the only place that had, to our American sensibilities, extremely inconvenient operating hours. Contact solution proved hard to purchase, since it was only sold in a pharmacy, and the pharmacy’s hours on the weekend were restricted by late openings, long lunches, and early closings. It seemed like Korcula residents lived a great, slow, peaceful life.

On the walls

We got a taste of that when we rented a scooter for the day to check out the island’s scenery. The drive was gorgeous, with hills of vineyards, lavender bushes and quaint small towns moving past us as we hopped from beach to beach.

Best beach on Korcula

View from the hills

Beautiful vineyards

Jami the motorbike rider

Just chilling