The island of Hvar has church bells and cicadas in the morning and nonstop partying at night. Get use to the thump-thump-thump of bass all night. Get lucky.
We’re up all night till the sun,
We’re up all night to get some.
We’re up all night for good fun,
We’re up all night to get lucky.
– Daft Punk
After staying in our old town AirBnB with an awesome view in Split, we decided to escape to an island. One of the guide books recommended HVAR with the caveat that you might want to avoid it in high season. Alas, since we started our trip in May which is low season and have been on the road for so long, it is hard to avoid high season at this time. HVAR is the island name, and the major city is also named HVAR.
In the morning, around 8am, I went to the parking lot where our rental was stashed and drove it to the Split car ferry station. To call it mayhem, might be a bit over dramatic, but finding someone who knew exactly where the HVAR line of cars was suppose to go was…er…interesting. I eventually parked it and went back to have some breakie and coffee with Lisa back in our apartment. An hour later, we trekked back to ferry, and waited with our car in what could be termed a secondary loading zone.
After a 2 hour ferry ride, we eventually arrived in HVAR and instead of following everyone to the more touristy areas of the island, we took a left turn. HVAR is a lovely island with just about every geographic land feature possible, plains, mountains, beaches, hills, lakes, coastal areas, etc. We headed to a nice winery, http://www.bastijana.hr/index_eng.html. We even saw the owner, Andro Tomić, working. Here are some photos.
Afterwards, we checked into our hotel in HVAR (not too shabby http://www.suncanihvar.com/adriana-hvar-spa-hotel.html ) and did a little daylight exploring of the old town and grabbed a bit to eat. BTW, Stari Grad literally means ‘Old Town.’ We are pretty sure some scenes from Game of Thrones was filmed on this island. It seems like a piece of that show has been filmed on every inhabited island in Croatia! Alas, this isn’t the Thrones tour. BTW, our hotel was the only one in old city that had a roof top bar, so it would be best not to get a room on the 3rd floor- duh! er…Doh!
This town didn’t seem like a giant party town, we thought to ourselves….until… the sunset and feeding time began. It was like waves of drunk late teens and 20’s-somethings began pouring into old town from the beaches a couple of bays over. Particularly from the Hula Hula Beach Bar http://www.hulahulahvar.com/ Wave after wave of staggering, singing, silliness that can only be created when mixing sun, sand and booze for several hours. Below is a quick snap of an ‘all-white’ wedding reception at a harbor bar, and a really cool restaurant based on the idea that Champagne and Burgers do go together.
One morning we needed to recover and nothing says recovery like hiking up a mountain to a fortress to explore, to have a cold beer, and relax:
Here are some photos from a pair of the local churches. The statue of St. Benedict, the patron saint of Europe, is at the Benedictine Convent where a group of sisters spend their lives making lace from fibers of the agava plant.
So long beautiful harbor:
