Croatia

Friday 4th July
Arrived in Split, Croatia for my Topdeck Croatia Sailing tour tomorrow. Explored around this afternoon and saw the 'palace' that most of the city is based on. More Roman history, this time with a bit of Egyptian influence. Split has become very touristy, being the port for most of the sailing tours as well as the main ferry connection between Croatia and Italy. Between Topdeck, Contiki, Busabout, Sail Croatia, Fanatics, Yacht Week, not to mention the private yachts and island ferries, the place was pumping!

Saturday 5th July
Sailing time! My excitement to have 1 place to unpack for a whole week was short lived when I saw the size of my cabin (I would have struggled unpacking if it was just me let alone with a roommate). It was cozy but fine, can't ask for too much on a boat. We had a relatively small boat as we only had 14 on our tour. Not sure how Topdeck works that because there was 4 tours doing the same route but all the boat numbers were different. Randomly we had a group of all females + our male tour leader. Tours generally have more females than males but that was a bit ridiculous! Thankfully everyone got on well and it ended up being a nice, chilled week.

We started sailing straight away, off to Milna on Brac Island. We didn't see much of the island but we did do a quick wine tasting with a crazy little Croatian lady (she was lovely but funny, too much product sampling maybe)... the wine was pretty bad but it a nice way to start the tour.

Sunday 6th July
Sailing to Hvar today. Our days this week consist of swim stops and sun baking! A nice change of pace from exploring a different city every couple of days.
We did get into Hvar though and climbed up to an amazing lookout, then around to Hula Hula beach for cocktails before dinner and drinks... definitely a lifestyle I could get used to!

Monday 7th July
Today's journey is to Korcula. They believe Marco Polo was born here (a claim they fight with the Venetians) but they have gone all out and everything here is named after him. A nice little town and they have a cool bar in a fort where you sit on the rooftop and they bring your drinks up by pully. Not a bad drinking spot (but very hot).
This little town actually has quite a night life, the highlight though was at one of the main bars. The bar itself was terrible but outside they have a projection of a live camera feed from the dance floor. That has to be one of the most entertaining things I've seen in a long time! Until everyone caught on at least.

Tuesday 8th July
It ended up being one of those random nights that turn out to be the best ones. We got back to the boat not long before sunrise so decided to stay up and watch it while we set sail for the day. It was a slow process as we were hidden from it by the island cliffs but it was beautiful to watch the world come to life at sea.

We made it to Dubrovnik with time to explore the city. Again the main tourist area is within the old town walls but here it is all intact so you can actually walk around the entire area on top of the city walls. The city is beautiful and there is absolutely amazing views from the wall. They really know how to do destination bars in Croatia... in Dubrovnik it's the Buza Bars, set amongst the cliff front!

After dinner we headed to a bar to watch Brazil get humiliated in the soccer while drinking from buckets (toy sand pales - again they like their novelty drinks here... or the tourists do at least). Then we went to Revelin Club which is literally in an old castle!

Wednesday 9th July
The wind has picked up and we have had pretty choppy weather so our travel route is changing. Our next destination was meant to be Mljet however they don't think we'll make it to the following place if we stay there tonight. So we went there for a quick swim stop and then it was back to sailing, heading back towards Korcula. It actually ended up being a good thing because we had our Captains Dinner and actually stayed the night in a little cove offshore. It was a very quiet night but it was fun swimming off the side of the boat as the sun went down!

Thursday 10th July
We made it to Makarska today as originally planned. There are some other tours that are meant to be elsewhere here too due to the weather. One of those very almost capsized with a girl almost going overboard! Glad we had a conservative captain that avoided that!

Markaska is on the mainland and reminded me a little of the Sunshine coast, there was more families and resorts as there is actually a bit of a beach here.

Tonight we had our Pirate party (a theme that pretty much all of the sailing tours do) and went to the club Deep, literally a bar inside a beach cave! Croatia has definitely catered for tourists with all their novelty bars, clubs, drinks etc

Friday 11th July
Zip lining this morning! Our tour leader says this is the best one he's done around the world so had to give it a go. It was absolutely amazing, flying between the cliffs and across the river!

After the excitement of zip lining it was time to head back to the boat and make our way back to Split for our last night of sailing. This weekend in Split is the Ultra music festival (apparently one of the biggest in Europe) so most of the group got tickets for that. Not my scene though so the rest of us had a quiet night in the city. We found the nicer area of the city that I had missed before tour so I'm glad I saw that.

Saturday 12th July
This morning we had to disembark early so it was up for breakfast and farewells. A couple of the girls who weren't flying out early and I decided to do a day trip to Krka National Park which isn't far out of Split and is famous for it's waterfalls. It was a bit of a mission as it's easy to get there but of course not so easy to get back, especially for a specific time (the other girls had busses to catch). We made it though and it was beautiful!

Sunday 13th July
Now I have a few days to kill before I have to be in Athens for my next tour. It's actually impossible to get directly from Croatia to Greece so I decided to take my time and get the ferries down. The first one was an overnight to Ancona. So today I wandered down to the Split beaches but it was terrible weather after a morning storm.

Monday 14th July
Arrived in Ancona. There really isn't much here. Not a great travel day today, just walked around looking for something to do and failed. Also failed finding any decent or even half decent food... I was so excited to have 1 day in Italy to get some amazing food but Ancona disappointed me. I tried at both lunch and dinner without any luck. I never thought it could be so hard to find some pasta in Italy!

Tuesday 15th July - Wednesday 16th July
Had last night in Ancona and today have my next ferry down to Greece. 24hrs of travel time with not a lot to do = a very chilled day/s with lots of reading and a chance to catch up on this!