June 25-27, 2015

We woke up the morning we were packing up to leave to another island and it was pouring rain outside.  The boat taxi would not launch (thank heavens) in that kind of weather so we had a very lazy morning waiting out the storm.  However, as soon as we got to the next island, the sun came out and it was absolutely beautiful for the hardest biking I’ve ever done, physically.  It didn’t help that I was getting a cold and felt like I was coughing up a lung – but I decided that I didn’t want to miss anything so I toughed it out.  If you count swearing and complaining while biking as toughing it out.  We were also told that there was a place with amazing dark chocolate gelato in town – and I decided that was going to be my sugar exception on the trip.  We checked 4 different times over 2 days and they were always out of it…which put me on a mission to find some before the trip ended.

This was literally moments after my hatred declaration after what I considered my hardest hill – I was mostly kidding but maybe not in that moment.

Can you blame me for swearing a little? This was actually the second hill of the day. Not the one the I proclaimed my hatred for Croatia. Views, views and more views

The van driven by Marco – that we could get in if we wanted to..but the shame associated was too much for any of us. At the end, Marco said he has very few trips that someone doesn’t get in the van. Go us!

We were on our own for dinner this night and B and I went off on our own, watched the sunset and listened to some live acoustic music

We met up with everyone to watch a dance of swords performed in this town for over 400 years. We were sitting in the back row – everyone else was sitting on the ground right next to the dancing…I’ll be honest I was dozing off a little because I couldn’t see that well so I had to take their word for it that it was pretty cool.

The next day was hiking up to another restaurant that lives completely off their own land and cook almost everything in a dutch oven

Dutch oven octopus and goat..I officially became a vegetarian that day – as did Diedre and Melanie. Cherie and the guys are much more adventurous with their taste buds. But oh the bread was delicious!

mmmm octopus…B cut the suckers off of a piece and I tried it – but it just didn’t taste worth the effort and I couldn’t get the vision of those things out of my head.

Aside from the goat and octopus lunch and my worsening cold, I loved the hiking.

I wish I had this view hiking every day – I would hope that I wouldn’t take it for granted like I do our amazing mountains.

These tours know all of the best restaurants. It makes it so nice not to even think about it or worry it’ll be good. By now I figured out how to order..

The next day we rode our bikes over to pick up dune buggies and rode around the island to this cool beach

We rode past this old woman on a hill carrying her firewood up. I told B we should stop and help her and he said it was probably keeping her alive to work that hard – apparently all of us couples had a similar conversation and none of us stopped. I hope I can carry my own firewood up a hill when I am her age.

Almost every single place we ate served us anchovies as an appetizer. The lunch on this day, was anchovies, fresh baked bread and olive oil, salad and more anchovies. After lunch the rest of the group went biking around the island and I went back to the hotel to take a nap. My cold was kind of doing me in. This was the only part I missed and I felt so much better after a 3 hour nap. B also got in a good hard ride speeding past everyone without me holding him up. The guides were very impressed as they didn’t know he had it in him.

Our last dinner in Korcula….I never got the dark chocolate gelato..here