Day 33 (Stari Grad, Hvar)

We woke up in our “free upgrade” room with a beautiful view. It is going to be 74 and sunny today. I am thinking that a swim in the Adriatic might finally happen today.

We headed down to the complimentary breakfast. I ordered Porridge because I had never had it before. I have always heard the term in old movies and just thought I would try it. Then Lori bursted my bubble and said “you just ordered oatmeal”. What? Porridge is just oatmeal? Another lesson learned! Breakfast was delicious. There was this chocolate pie that I could not get enough of. Hopefully it will be there tomorrow.

Today we are going to explore Hvar. It is about a 30 minute drive over the mountain to the other side of the island. It was a beautiful drive. Apple Maps took us right into the middle of town. Unfortunately once we arrived in town I shut off the GPS and started to look for parking. I must have taken a wrong turn because the street slowly began to narrow. Soon we were only seeing mopeds and pedestrians. It was so tight that I could not pass a pedestrian. I figured that I could get through some tight places with the green machine with no worries. We pushed on hoping for an exit. We slowly followed behind this guy that was walking trying to decide if we should push it a little further or not. Then the guy that we were following turned around and said in a Croatian accent “you are finished!” Crap! I pushed it too far and now I am going to have to back up what seemed like a good mile. Lori watched the backup monitor and I watched the mirrors. We were able to finally find a short driveway back in the car section of this road and turned around.

Now we only have to drive out of here hoping that we do not come across an oncoming vehicle. The roads/walkways are really narrow. We made to an intersection with directional arrows. The problem is that the directional arrows were all left turns with no way out and all the streets lead into this abyss. After driving in a complete circle I decided to guess on an exit. Well, I guessed wrong. The plan was that if this was a one way that we would drive as quickly as possible hoping that we would avoid any oncoming traffic. Well, all of the vehicles were facing towards us and there were no visible signs, yup wrong way. Again we ended up behind a walking pedestrian. She obviously thought that she was safe walking against traffic and did not know that the green machine was creeping up on her backside. When she realized it, Mrs. Obvious turned around and proceeded to scold us in her native tongue which definitely translated very clearly to me. I could only smile and motion for her to get out of the way.

We are still looking for the city center at this point and decided to drive closer to the shore. We have been getting pretty lucky with parking by pushing it further into town. We are just coming off a misdirection so my confidence is a little fractured. I pushed on and was able to find a parking space next to the city center and right next to the police station.

We left the car and walked a short distance to town. Lo and behold there was the Spartan Finisher competition that we kept seeing on people’s shirts. We found out that it is a 3 part competition and you can partake in 1, 2 or all 3 competitions. It was also the world championship competition so there were people from everywhere. One of the competitions was similar to an American Ninja Warrior. Another one was a 10k with 25 obstacles and the 3rd is a 5k sprint. The town was full of thin, ripped men and women competitors. I tried to buy a t-shirt but found out that you had to finish one of the legs to get a cool shirt. The official merchandise was lame and disappointing.

We watched a few events and then sat down for a drink near the area where we drove the car. We sat right next to where the runners had to complete some obstacles. They were exhausted by the time they came by us. While we were sitting there 2 guys sat down at a table next to us. Kristoff and Lukas from Poland. Lukas competed and completed the event in under 3 hours. He was done and looking for pizza. We sat and talked to them for about an hour. Lukas is a professional competitor and has done numerous competitions all over the world. We got that information from Christoph. Lukas said that this competition ranked at about an 8 on a scale of 1-10 of the hardest competitions that he has competed in. He said that they all started up on the mountain carrying a 60# sand bag as the first obstacle. It included running, climbing, scaling things and if you failed one of the obstacles then you had to carry a huge anchor chain around your neck and walk a maze to continue. It looked brutal!

We then headed to the walled city and walked around on the lower parts as we have had it with stairs and this town is all stairs. Afterwards we walked back to the car and started to head back to the hotel. I turned the wrong way ….again, and this time a cop yelled at me and with his finger made a motion for me to stop and turn around. Fortunately he looked like a seasoned officer and left it as a tourist correction.

We took a different way back over the mountain to the hotel. This led us along the ridge with views of both sides. We have been seeing rows of stones stacked all over Croatia and we have been curious. There were thousands of these stone walls everywhere on this mountain. We came across a sign that finally explained it all. Apparently they are protected as historical. They were formed by farmers that were clearing land for gardens and animal pens. As they raked up stones they would throw them on a pile eventually forming walls. We traveled down the mountain to Stari Grad, Hvar for lunch. This 2400 year old (384 BC) and was founded by the Greeks. It was originally called Pharos. I had Sea Bass and Lori had Risotto with baby shrimp. Mine was good and Lori’s was just ok.

We headed back to the hotel to enjoy our view. We sat at the bar and had 2 Old Fashioned’s and called it a night.

As a side note: Lori likes to take pictures of hanging laundry and alleyways.