24th June

The boat departed at 530am to head towards the Blue Caves. We all gathered downstairs at 7am as we cruised towards the drop off point for the Blue Caves which is a national park now.

The boat is allowed to dock for 5 mins for everyone to get off and board the small boats that take you into the caves. The boats hold 12, we went pass the place that a scene from the Hits Man’s Wife was filmed, in the movie he jumps off the cliff and into the caves.

You enter the caves on the tides, when the waves go low they speed through the small entry.

Once inside the caves open up to about 18 foot ceiling.

The caves were discovered 100’s of years ago but the locals didn’t let the world now. In 1884 an Austrian man, Eugen von Ransonnet, crawled in and painted the cave. He returned back to Austria and bought back his students and made it known to the world. The Croatians blasted an entrance into the cave only big enough for the boats to enter. The original natural entrance into the cave is below.

After exiting the cave we were dropped straight back to our boat and ate breakfast.
We then set ail for Hvar. At about 11.30am we stopped for a swim off the back of the boat.

We then had lunch on board and cruised into the outer harbour of Hvar, as the boat wasn’t allowed to enter the harbour until after 6pm as the ferries from Split have the rights to the harbour until this time. A water taxi came and collected us and took us into the harbour for our walking tour around the town.

The port of Hvar has 17 small islands protecting the harbour , the town has approx 4000 residence in winter and 20000 people in summer. It was originally inhabited by the Romans then the Greek’s about 200 years later and then the Spanish and there is evidence throughout the island of the different periods of occupation.
Stali Grad was the Capital until the 1300th century where it changed to Hvar. The main products of the island are salted fish, wine, olive oil and lavender.
It was a ship building location for many hundreds of years, and one of the original ship yards has now been turned into a museum and on the first floor of this building is a renaissance theatre.

St Steven’s square is the main square and is the 2nd largest on the Adriatic Sea behind St Marks Square in Venice.

At the top of the hill overlooking the square is the fort, it is now a museum. In 1571 the fortress saved everyone in the town as they hid inside for 3 days whilst they were invaded and everything outside of the fort was destroyed.

There is a Benedictine Monastery in town that is famous for lace made from Agave threads. Once the nuns enter the Monastery they never leave except for medical reasons. The lace work they make is so expensive and unique that it is under UNESCO.

Buildings from around Hvar.

After the walking tour we had free time so Kylie and i entered up in a waterfront bar having a milkshake and smoothie. It was needed to cool down as mid 30’s and so hot.

After a drink and rest we walked through the streets looking at various shops before coming back down to the waterfront to see where our boat would tie up. We ran into Sasha and asked him a nice restaurant to eat at for dinner and he walked us down to Mediterranean

It is a Michelle’s star restaurant and we were so lucky that they had a table on the small terrace for 2. The location was so pretty and the food was amazing I had grilled fish and julienne vegetables (it was so yummy) and we then asked what they had for dessert. There wasn’t a menu just a choice of 4 flavours
Dark chocolate and piso
White chocolate strawberry and coconut
White and dark chocolate with raspberry
Ferrero Rocher
Kylie had dark chocolate and pistachio I had the dark and white chocolate raspberry. It was out of this world and the way they presented the dessert was insane. The food comes out with smoke swirling in a dome above a plate. the waiter then proceeds to remove the dome a large raspberry shape with decoration (that you can eat) was revealed. He then went through every thing on the plate and explained it.
it was truly amazing and one of the best desserts I have even eaten in my life. The whole meal was very reasonable for the quality of food. About $50 euro for me

We then walked along the waterfront to the end to take photos of the sunset and then went back to the ship spoke with others and then off to bed,