Saturday, May 25, 2013

The Island of Hvar part 2

The second day in Hvar was a full day as we anchored there for two nights. We woke up to a beautiful morning and a beautiful view.


We decided that we would rent scooters again and go explore the island a bit, so after a nice coffee in the main square we headed out to find some scooters to rent.


There were several different operators who rented to scooters, but we kind of liked these retro looking ones, so 5 scooters rented and we headed up in to the hills behind the town of Hvar.


The countryside was interesting with the landscape being covered with piles of rocks forming small fields as far as the eye could see.


The only thing that we could see growing in these small fields was lavender, but many of them seemed to be abandoned, though that must have been a lot of work to clear them. We went across the island for a little and then went down towards the coast again to a small town called Stari Grad.




This was a beautiful little town with some brightly coloured buildings along with the regular warm stone.  We sat in a lovely little square to enjoy another cup of coffee and rest.


Then buzzing like a small swarm of large bees we took off again for the even smaller town of Jelsa for lunch.  After a little exploring we settled on one of the few restaurants open as we were a little out of season.  I again ordered veal cutlets as did Nancy.


We both protested it was far to big, but I am ashamed to admit there were only bones left on our plate when we had finished.  Al ordered the seafood risotto, which was absolutely delicious.


After we were fortified by our delicious lunch and glass of wine we mounted up again and swarmed out of town and up and over to the other side of the island again.


The scenery here reminded me a little of Tuscany with the dark spiky trees interspersed with the lighter lower trees and of course the stone buildings. As we approached the town of Hvar again we decided to check out the castle overlooking the town.


The views were spectacular and we could look down on our boat anchored in the harbour.


After exploring around the castle we went down to drop off the scooters, where I did an amazing dismount which ended with me on the ground and the scooter on top of me. Luckily no bones or parts of scooter broken.

The next day was a "feast day" celebrating Saint Prospera and we enjoyed the home grown entertainment of locals playing in a band and singing traditional songs, that most of the locals knew the words of and sang along.


We bought some delicious mini home made doughnuts from a couple of women in traditional costume.


And we wandered around the back streets


Where we found some interesting shops and picked up some gifts for ourselves and to bring home for friends.  Hvar was a wonderful place to spend a couple of days and May seems to be the time to come, the weather was warm and sunny and there are not too many visitors. I imagine in the middle of summer it would be extremely hot and crowded.


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