CAVTAT, CROATIA JULY 21st- AUGUST 31st 2018 part 2

The last four weeks of our time in Cavtat have been spent truely relaxing with just the odd day trip to tick off a few on the nearby “to do” list.

This meant taking the local bus one Sunday morning to Cilipi a nearby town where every Sunday during the season they put on a folklore morning. For a small price you get a welcome drink, ticket to the local museum and the folklore dancing show. It was well worth it and we would highly recommend it if you’re in this neck of the woods.

Many of our days were spent waking up going through emails and Facebook from home, then breakfast before heading to “our” spot on the beach as they call it for the next 6-7 hours. This entailed swimming, reading, napping, chatting to our regular Croatian buddies, coffee and lunch after the noon bells from Saint Nicolas church ring out, watching the different boats and ferries come in and out and just soaking up the ambiance oh and the occasional ice cream. It’s then home for beer/ gin o’clock, dinner and often a walk around the peninsula in the evening with the occasional cocktail before home, tea and perhaps a tv series on the iPad before sleep time. Bliss Bliss Bliss.

If you asked me was 6 weeks too long the answer would be a definite NO.

This has been the most wonderful summer holiday in such a beautiful location that we would happily return each year.

If property wasn’t so expensive here on the Croatian riviera and rules for foreign ownership not quite so difficult we’d be buying in.

Saying that we have been extremely spoilt with our hosts Michael and Mira.

They come in once a week to do a thorough clean and top up soaps, dishwashing liquid, toilet paper and change bed linens. Other towels and tea towels changed every three days.

They are becoming like close family friends and we had a delightful long lunch with them at their villa upstairs eating great food and drinking probably too much wine and different limoncello’s. Oh well none of us were off to work after so all good.

My lilo got a hole in it 😞 but luckily someone finished their holiday and left one shaped and decorated like a pizza slice at the beach so after two days we claimed it and I’ve been floating around on it ever since. Even the girl at the ferry ticket stand when we went to take the ferry to Lokrum island asked why we weren’t taking the pizza slice with us.

Lokrum island is just off the old town of Dubrovnik and we’ve passed it many times and finally on one of our last few days we visited it. What a treat.

As a National Park it’s beautiful and there is just so much more to this island than just the most incredible coloured waters and great swimming. There is an old monastery which also had links to those Habsburg’s which are everywhere in Europe, an old fort, a botanical garden with even a few “exotic” gum trees and bottle brush from Australia, and so many other incredible little bays and areas to discover oh and a nudist beach. A few restaurants and bars help make it a great visit.

But Lokrum wasn’t the only trip we did these last few weeks we took a full day trip to the island of Mljet island and national park as well. This was an early start and a fairly long ferry ride from Dubrovnik main port.

We had a very pleasant day there and enjoyed all that the trip offered but feel Lokrum was probably better value unless you stayed a few days at Mljet which is not an option for Lokrum. On Mljet you can hire push bikes or scooters so you could really explore the island over a few days as it really is quite large.

Another day trip which we thoroughly enjoyed that also meant an early start was a fabulous day going to Korcula island via Ston with its walls similar to those of the Great Wall of China, its salt ponds and with a wine and grappa tasting on the way home it was a real winner.

Korcula was just the loveliest town and we would again recommend this at the least as a day trip if not overnight or few days visit.

Marco Polo was born here so of course there is the museum etc to visit, lots of great little shops, narrow lanes where people live and many restaurants enjoying the beautiful views from almost everywhere and that was just the main town of Korcula. This is a pretty big island and you could probably spend a fair amount of days tripping around to the other villages.

We also finally got to the house of Cavtat’s favourite artist Vlaho Bukovac whose family home is much larger than it appears on the outside and is now fairly empty apart from some furniture from back in the day and his paintings some which actually decorate the walls as frescos. There was fairly large grounds for this area as well.

The artist is buried in his family’s tomb at the gorgeous Cavtat cemetery.

And I finally took a peek in The lady of the snow Church and Monastery here in Cavtat. It actually had some pretty amazing art work and one wall structure that took my fancy. I’ll post a photo and I’m sure you’ll see which one I think was amusing.

As our days run out we will remember always this great visit with much happiness and hopefully we will return.

One things for sure I’ll never get sick of looking at the photos of Cavtat and know that I left a big chunk of my heart there.

Our next plane ride is to Frankfurt with a three night stop staying with Andrea and Thomas those lovely dear friends whom put us up late last year when we visited Germany for the Christmas markets. Will also catch up with son Scott who will be in Frankfurt as well that weekend before we all fly home to Australia on September 3rd from Frankfurt.