Saturday 11th May
We arrived in late on the ferry to the beautiful small old town of Korčula on the island of Korčula.
We walked the short distance to our accommodation, which was a really cute guesthouse just outside of the Old Town walls right in the middle of some cute streets with restaurants with live music. Our room was on the third floor and was so cute with a window opening into the little street. There was also a communal roof terrace with fantastic views over the town. The host was a really lovely local lady who made us feel so welcome.
After unloading, we popped downstairs to the little grocery store and found enough bits and pieces to throw together a pasta concoction consisting of spaghetti, sausage, salami, corn, and an eggplant, garlic, and capsicum sauce of some sort! It was actually pretty good, our experimental travel food continues!
We fell asleep to the sound of "The Scientist" by Coldplay on repeat from the bar across the street and the pattering of rain on the roof.
Sunday 12th May
We woke up to the steady sound of rain so had a lazy morning and eventually made ourselves an omelette for brunch.
Well, it absolutely bucketed and stormed the whole day. It didn't let up at all, so we had a cozy Sunday tucked under the blankets and chilling out.
Monday 13th May
Today my friends, is the day we got stranded on a Croatian island.
We were leaving Korčula at 6:30pm tonight, so we checked out of our lovely little guest house and our host very kindly let us leave our bags in her office for the day until it was time to leave. It was also still raining so she lent us a nice big umbrella! (Everyone that we come across keeps telling us that it's not meant to be this wet and cool, that it's a very unusual May this year).
Right, it's 10am so we have the whole day to explore until our Ferry arrives, so umbrella in hand we head out to the Old Town.
Korčula town is absolutely beautiful, we entered the Old Town through the city gate and just wandered the streets. I think it may have been the rain but it felt like our own private town! There was no one about!
After we had wandered every nook and cranny of the city we ended up back in the main street and saw a walking tour group so just slowly wandered around where they were to overhear some history! It was very interesting to realise how many times Croatia has been invaded, and that Korčula was the birth place of Macro Polo!
The ringing of the bells tells us that it is now 11:30 (yes, Korčula Old Town is much smaller than we realised). We had seen online that there was meant to be a fortress up on a hill out of the city, so we decided to go and have a look!
We left the Old Town and followed the bay round, before starting the ascent up the many stairs through the houses and apartments and then eventually through the forest!
The smell of the rain in the forest is so gooood! We slowly made our way up the forest path to the top of the hill and could see the fortress tower! I was under the impression that it was open to visitors and there would be a great a view over Korcula town, but it was bolted shut, and honestly didn't look like anyone had visited in a verrry lonnnnggg time!
We had a walk around the outside of the fortress and then followed another path through the forest for a bit but that just ended up leading to a road so we back tracked to where we came from and just explored the forest for a bit. It was so nice to wander through the forest, and be surrounded by green vegetation even if it was raining!
On our way back down out of the forest we saw a carpark and a road that continues round, so we followed it and found a little white wrought iron filigree bench on the side of the road with the incredible Old Town views that we were looking for!
After standing in the rain for a good while just marvelling at how beautiful it is here, we eventually started to head back down to the town.
We started to get hungry so to fill in time, instead of going to our little "Studenec" grocery store below the apartment, we ventured out into the suburbs and found a shopping centre that had a large "Tommy" supermarket! We've missed Tommy!
We picked up a few bits for lunch from the bakery in Tommy and then walked back over to the Old Town to find somewhere dry to sit.
We found the only place we could that was dry, a little square undercover with some stone benches to sit on (that we later found out was town hall whoops!), and decided to have our picnic lunch here. Lunch consisted of a pizza slice to share and a burek each. Burek is a traditional balkan food and is a crunchy flaky pastry filled with spinach and feta (or meat, we had spinach and feta) rolled into a spiral. It was delish!
We also found the most amazing snack in this Tommy which we had with lunch. It's called Choco Lols (weird name I know) and it's basically a white chocolate malteser with bits of freeze dried raspberry on it! They are amazing!
After we'd had our lunch, it was still raining so we decided to sit undercover for a little longer and watch the new episode of Game of Thrones! What a place to watch it!
In the time that we were sat watching Game of Thrones, we noticed that the walking tours all started and finished in the square where we were sitting. We continued to sit in our little spot for a while discussing everything from the episode, and in that time there were a few tours that started and ended so all in all, we got to learn a bit about this beautiful island from a number of different tour guides!
It was about time to collect our bags and head to the ferry. The rain had had just stopped so thankfully we wouldn't get wet waiting for the boat. We headed back to the guest house and thanked our lovely host, returned the umbrella, collected our bags and walked down to the port to wait for the ferry.
We saw another couple waiting and had seen a ferry pull in this morning, so we were happy that we were in the right spot, as this is also where we had arrived into. We popped our bags down and chilled out waiting for our boat. As it got closer to the time, we started to get a little stressed, it's fine though people didn't show up until five minutes before the ferry the last time we caught it to come here. We'd spoken to the Airbnb hosts for our accommodation tonight, earlier in the day and they said that this ferry was often late as well so not to worry.
It was getting closer and closer and we were starting to get a little concerned, when we saw a boat on the horizon and I thought, great here it comes. Sam is sure it shouldn't be coming from that direction though, but it's the only boat we can see so it must be it. As it gets closer it doesn't slow down and keeps going around the island, so we pop our bags on and quickly walk around the edge of the island try to follow and see where it goes. The other couple are doing the same thing. Is this our ferry? What's happening? Do we leave the port and see where it's going or wait at the port in case this isn't ours and ours arrives? We speak to the other couple and none of us know whats happening. The other guy was walking ahead a bit and then starts waving to us all to run, right so this must be it. So here we all are, running as fast as we can around the island, in between tables of guests drinking cocktails at open restaurants, with our bags bobbing on our back, trying to squeeze our way through an elderly tour group and as we round the bend we see another port! What?! And pulling out at full speed is the line that we thought we were originally waiting for. WTF. It's fine, the other ferry has just pulled up, we can make it, Sam and I are faster so run ahead of the others to try and get there in time to get it to wait.
Phew, we made it, out of breath, but we're here and everyone is disembarking. We went up to one of the staff to check whether this is the boat we want, or if the other ferry is stopping at the other port now, only for him to tell us that this ferry is docked here over night and the other ferry has left, gone! Our ferry is gone!
So what? I hear you say, just get the next ferry, well my dear friends that's the thing, there are only two ferries a day. One at 6am which we opted not to get, and one at 6:30pm which was the one that just left.
So while I start to have a mini freak out in my head that we're stuck on this island, Sam is trying to figure out what the story is from the guy who tells us we'll have to wait until morning and that we needed to have checked which port to go to because apparently it changes.
Right ok, so we're stuck here for the night. Sam calls our Airbnb host and tells them what happened. They are so lovely about it and just move our booking forward by a night and tell us they'll see us tomorrow. That's sorted. Next, we need to see if we can use our ferry tickets tomorrow. All four of us head to the ticket office to sort out our tickets. The guy in the office informs us that yep there are in fact two ports, and that we needed to have checked which port the ferry leaves from because it changes. We explained that we arrived in at the (main) port, and saw a ferry arriving in there this morning as well so why would we have thought that it wouldn't arrive into the ferry port! Well apparently there are two ports (as we now know) and the ferry comes into a different port depending on the wind...apparently the wind was blowing in a different direction this afternoon...what?? We were honestly so baffled that it just became funny!
Right ok, so we bought new tickets for tomorrow, found out for sure which port to go to, and were told we could get our original tickets refunded via email. Great that's sorted. Now, where are we staying tonight??
We headed back to our lady, with our tail between our legs, and knocked on her door, she was so surprised to see us and then it turned to concern. We told her what happened and asked if she had a room we could stay in for the night. She had a look at her books, then popped them down, ducked out of the room and spoke to (we assume) her husband and then told us to follow her. She took us all the way to the top floor and gave us her best room for the night and for cheaper than the last room we were in, telling us that we're her guests for the night!
She was so incredibly kind! A massive thanks to her for looking after us.
Anddd breathe outttt, hilarious crisis managed. Well almost, Sam realised the new tickets we just bought were not the right tickets, so he runs back to the ticket office and sorts it all out (again)!
This is all so hilarious, I can't believe that happened! And you know what? Everything has honestly worked out better this way!
Everything sorted and just feeling exhausted from the last hour we headed back to the Tommy supermarket to grab a pizza and garlic bread to throw in the oven for dinner! This room also had a washing machine in it, so we took advantage of it and threw a load of underwear on overnight to hang up at the next place tomorrow to get us through the next week!
We had a chill evening on the sofa and then headed to bed early, ready for our 6am ferry. It's so funny that we spent all day out in the rain waiting for the late ferry so that we didn't have to catch the ridiculously early one and now we are anyway!
And that is the story of how we got stuck on a Croatian island and ended up staying an extra night in Korčula!
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