Right then… I think I was in Trogir when we last caught up…. <scrolls down to check… oh yes, I had tired legs that evening>
From Trogir then on the 11th June I was all set to cycle the 30km or so back into Split to catch a ferry to Hvar and wasn’t really that excited about it – not particularly pretty roads and I came that way from Omiš… the night before had been a late one with beer and pizza so when Marin, my host, goes “why don’t you just take the boat?” my response was “there’s a boat?” followed by “ Oh cool….”. So I totally cheated and slung my bike on the stern rail of the little local passenger ferry that left Trogir for Split at 11am. It dropped me right on the waterfront in Split (another improbably elegant waterfront of white stone and terracotta) just a stone’s throw (or a pedal stroke even…) from the Jadrolinija ferry terminal at about 12.30pm. With 2 hours to kill before the next boat to Hvar I did what any self respecting local would do and retired to the cool shade of the nearest bar…. I had already eaten a sort of lunch in the form of a bag of figs courtesy of a chap on the boat from Trogir so all that was needed was liquid refreshment…
Bit of local info… bicycles get pretty heavily charged on the Jadrolinija boats…considering they don’t take up any room that would be otherwise be used for something else (i.e they just get shoved into whatever space is available at the side of the car deck) it seems pretty steep to have to pay about 40% more than a passenger fare for the bike only…i.e person + bike is roughly 2.4 times the passenger fare… I bought an onward ticket from Hvar to Korcula and was rather taken aback at the price… 77Kn for me and 121Kn for the bike… Ok it is still only a total of about £25 but still…it’s the principle :-)
Anyway, on the quayside I got chatting to 3 American guys (well, one guy, 2 gals but you know what I mean) who had been on a study field trip in Sarejevo for a few weeks and were heading to Hvar for some chill time. Nice guys.
On the ferry I spotted two girls… obviously cyclists despite attempts to disguise the fact… baggy shorts over lycra, flip flops instead of SPDs and so on but the sculpted legs, odd tan lines and Descente jerseys were the giveaway…took me a while to decide I was going to engage with ‘em… they looked kind of mean in their wrap-around shades, set jaws and in the case of one… a wicked set of dreads…. But as it happened they were nice as pie – Canadians you see, lol… and sisters no less making their way from Trieste to Dubrovnik on their bikes. To cut a short story even shorter we agreed to meet the following morning for coffee in Hvar Town as our plans for the island were different… they were off to the beach on some outlying islands and I planned to explore the island on my bike.
I found a room in Stari Grad, where the ferry comes in, right off the boat, 150Kn a night in a new apartment owned by a local lady . Nice room too, terrace, kingsize bed… Result. Stari Grad was nice, very mellow feel to it…completely unlike Hvar Town which I will mention in a minute. It was in Stari Grad that I really noticed the trend for new bathrooms in this part of the world to feature toilet lids/seats with a photo-printed marine theme… in Trogir the loo featured a rather happy looking Humpback Whale, here in Stari Grad my loo was of a tropical, sun-blessed flavour with dolphins frolicking gaily…Tacky anywhere else but here just a case of “oh look at that… how pretty..”. I await with interest to find a toilet featuring a Great White Shark… memories of childhood nightmares when, at the impressionable age of 7, I was taken to see Jaws at the cinema by a clearly unsympathetic father… bath time held a special fear for me that year… anyway, I digress.. Met the guys from Sarejevo for a very pleasant dinner interrupted by a local religious parade of some sort… it was a public holiday today apparently, no idea what for… Croatian Scientology day or something, effigies of Tom Cruise on a cross and stuff perhaps…
I rode a grand total of 4km today :-)
