When J&I were planning our invasion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, we knew that we wanted to visit Split and Dubrovnik during Part B of our adventure (Part A being the bike trip along the Danube to Vienna with F&J2). These were the two most obvious highlights of Croatia’s Dalmatian coast.
But when you look more closely at a map of the Dalmatian coast (such as the 1911 map from Baedeker, below) you can’t help noticing all the islands lying just off the Croatian mainland. They beckoned.
A bit more research revealed that many of these islands were served by regular ferry service, which led to the bright idea: we could island-hop to get from Split down to Dubrovnik! And this is what we’ve done.
At the end of the previous episode, J&I were boarding the M/T “Zadar” in Split harbour, bound for the port of Stari Grad on the island of Hvar. We’d allocated a mere two nights of our month-long itinerary to get ourselves from Split down to Dubrovnik, and had opted to spend both nights on Korčula, and just a single day on Hvar. This was hardly fair to either island, but it was the best that we could manage this time around.
What follows is a brief account of our brief encounters with those two Dalmatian islands (from a total of what Wikipedia claims is seventy-nine Dalmatian islands—and ~500 islets).
Hvar
The crossing from Split to Stari Grad takes about two hours, and a bus will take you across the island from Stari Grad to the town of Hvar—which is where all the action is.
The harbour of Hvar is ringed with what feels like countless restaurants, all of them offering outdoor tables and a gorgeous view. There are even more restaurants and shops in the narrow streets which step up from the waterfront towards the fortress.
At Hvar’s harbour front you’ll also find half a dozen boats tied up and waiting, each one with a tout encouraging you to hop aboard for a 3-hour cruise of the Pakleni Islands, the chain of small islands just opposite the harbour’s mouth.
All the hubbub and the activity around the harbour, and all the products on offer in the local shops, quickly confirmed my first impression of Hvar, which is that this part of Hvar, at least, is aimed entirely at tourists; I kept wondering where the locals lived and where they ate, or where they took their coffees. It’s the standard traveller’s conundrum: how to avoid the machinery of mass tourism when you’re part of it?
Korčula
Our first impression of Korčula—arriving in the port at dusk; seeing the sunset and the streetlights reflected in the quiet water; walking through the empty streets to our sobe with a view—was: “We love it here!”
And after our first night on Korčula—waking to a view of dawn breaking behind St Mark’s Cathedral; watching as sunlight slowly illuminated the water just across the road; a morning swim—we’d begun to daydream of spending an entire winter on Korčula. I could picture Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller holed up in side-by-side stone houses, halfway up the hill behind the town; Korčula just felt like that kind of place.
Talking with some locals helped to temper this rosy bit of self-delusion, and perhaps we’d been swayed by this unusually long stretch of fine weather. The streets of Korčula were quiet, and you could always find a table at a good café. But we’d started to notice that the local restaurants, cafés and shops were shutting down. We learned that many of the locals head to Zagreb and elsewhere in search of work when the tourist season ends. Now, at the tag end of the tourist season, we could almost persuade ourselves that there were relatively few of “us.” But you gradually accept that a winter on Korčula wouldn’t be quite the same as our idyllic two-night-and-one-day stay. Still: the daydream was lovely while it lasted; and: you never know!
The final stage of our prolonged invasion of the Empire begins when we catch the morning catamaran from Korčula to Dubrovnik. We’ll meet you there.
Danube to Dalmatia 
I think the idea of a winter like that is an excellent plan! We’ll come and visit so you won’t be too lonely.
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That would definitely be an added attraction! We’ll keep the dream alive…
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