It’s not very often that I get two weeks off from weddings in the summer months, but last August I did, so me and Rachel made the most of this by heading to Croatia for 10 days. I decided before going that I would try something slightly different to what I am used to, and video the trip, rather than carry about a big DSLR photographing everything I carried my gopro everywhere we went. If you couldn’t be bothered reading my ramblings, feel free to scroll to the bottom and have a watch of the video.
We started the trip by flying into Split airport where we were greeted with really heavy rain, we felt like we were still in Ireland. Our first stop was in a small town called Trogir, a fantastic picturesque historic town if it is sunny and you know where you are going to. We spent the first hour of our time there walking the same streets in the pouring rain looking for our hostel, none of the locals seemed to know where the hostel was, with each person sending us in a different direction. After finding the hostel we went straight back out and treated ourselves to a massive feed of seafood and wine.
The next morning we had the challenge of trying to get to Skradin, having thought I had done enough research on bus times it turns out I hadn’t. We got to the bus station and didn’t have a clue what was going on, so after a few minutes some locals approached us after seeing our confusion offering to take us as they were ‘taxi drivers’. After a few minutes of negotiating a price we were on our way. Skradin was fantastic! We had booked to stay with a family 1 mile outside the town centre, after walking in the blistering heat and arriving an hour before we were supposed to, we were greeted by the family offering us homemade booze. This was the nicest apartment we stayed in during our 10 day trip! One of the sons of the family took us back into the town so we could get the boat out to Krka National Park. Having only taken hand luggage and with the rain the first night and next morning we didn’t have any suncream, this was a bad idea for going swimming, but we had our fun!
The next morning we travelled to Split to get a boat to Hvar, again I thought I had done enough research on boat times thinking we would get a full day in Hvar, but I was wrong. We spent the day walking around Split severely sunburnt from the previous day at Krka National Park waiting to get our boat. We eventually got to Hvar and got to spend about 10 hours there before our 6am boat back to Split to get a different boat out to Vis. For some unknown reason there was only one boat a week from Hvar to Vis and of course we were in Hvar the day after its sailing. Vis is by far my favourite stop we made on the holiday. The family we had booked to stay with came to meet us at the boat to walk us back to their house were they had a plate of fresh figs sitting out for us. We then spent an hour or two exploring the section of the Island that we were staying in while it rained, but after the sun came out we went for a well deserved swim. The next day we had an early start to go see the green and blue caves, these were fantastic, but what made the day even better was meeting Alan, Janice, Thomas & Jo. The craic we had was brilliant, hopefully we’ll meet on another trip soon.
After spending 2 fantastic days in Vis we headed to Dubrovnik to stay for 2 days. We spent the first day walking around the old city in the rain, seeing the occasional fork of lightning. Walking about 7/8 mile in flip-flops was a real daft idea which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Lucky for us our second day here was a lot warmer. We got to walk around in the sunshine, go for a swim and take the cable car up Mount Srd to have a beer at the top. On our second night here we went to the other side of the city which felt as though you could have been in any holiday city in Europe, but we did get to have a beer in a cave bar which was cool.
On our last day we headed back to Split. Having spent one of our previous days exploring the city, we decided to leave our bags off in the apartment and find a concrete beach to chill out and swim. It has only taken me the best part of 6 months to get the video put together but here it is. I can’t wait to go on another holiday like this!
