Beautiful Hvar

John woke up today feeling worse - won’t go into the details but he was self diagnosing whooping cough, pneumonia, pleurisy or the like. He has a nasty cough and very little voice.

Again we had our continental breakfast on board. Each morning we have cereal with long life milk and juice to start. The basket of freshly sliced bread is on the table along with single serve sized packets of cream cheese, sour cream, pate, Barby (a very sweet type of nutella), honey and jam. There is a jug of coffee and also a jug of hot water with a selection of tea bags. Liz usually goes for the green tea, the rest of us have either black tea or coffee. One morning we had slices of cold meats and cheese as well.

We have had lunch on board each day. Lunches are 3 courses of homemade cooking. Today was entree of mussel and prawn risotto, main of fried calamari with creamed spinach / broccolini / potato with a cucumber side salad. What a shame Ron doesn’t like cucumber - or at least what cucumber does to him. Desert was a delicious apple strudel. All food is freshly made on board for the 20 passengers.

We have had a stop at a beautiful swimming bay around mid morning each day. We then head off and continue sailing throughout lunch. After lunch we again anchor in another equally beautful spot for more swimming. We can either dive in off the platform at the rear of the boat or for those of us like me who don’t want to get their hair wet you can walk down the steps and delicately glide into the water. The water temperature is still what I would descibe as ‘fresh’, but soon becomes fine when you have been in for a while. Today, enroute to Hvar, we swam to land and got out on a rocky shoreline (which seemed to go on forever - the sandy section was a long swim away.) You do have to be careful where you put your feet as there are black coloured sea urchins. One clever person in our group waited until a lot of us were in and then joined us in reef shoes - that was John of course! - certainly made it easier for him to climb up on the rocks.

Hvar is the longest island in the Dalmation group. Our second swimming stop yesterday was in one of the Hvar bays. After this stop, it took us about an hour and a half to sail to our dock in Hvar. What a superb scene it was, sailing in. Where we ‘parked’ for the night was along a beautiful stretch of restaurants, shops, markets and bars. Fortunately there was a doctor’s surgery so we headed there. John saw a very thorough female doctor who spoke quite reasonable English. She diagnosed a virus and put him on antibiotics due to the possibility of secondary infections. She also prescribed a cough medicine like Bisolvin as well as cold and flu tabs - with all that, hopefully he will improve dramatically very soon.

(As I am sitting on the deck typing this up Liz is trying to put up a deck chair - they are quite challenging! Marie has come to her assistance - then John. How many people does it take to put up a deck chair?)

There is yet another fort / castle on the cliff near where we docked - many of our group took the walk up but due to John’s ‘state’ we just went up a few alleys and walked around about half way up to the fort. Of course the bells rang out every hour as we have experienced everywhere we have been. The atmosphere on Hvar is wonderful. After all of our eating John and I only felt like a light dinner. We settled on pizza and salad in the plaza.

(Also as I sit here - it is almost 10am - we can all smell the delicious aroma of lunch being cooked.)

After dinner we went for a long walk around the winding pathway along the water's edge - just stunning. It is not getting dark here until about 9pm. We discovered a 5 star+ hotel on our walk. The pool was amazing - waterfalls, little ‘bays’ within the pool, fairy lights and it was huge! The hotel building was also huge. Must look it up on the internet. It’s name was someting like Aforma.

We met up with Liz and Ron who were having an ice-cream and sat with them for a while. A cute dog came past and I called it. It came over - enjoyed a pat then walked around next to Ron to check out his ice-cream. It did one almighty sneeze on Ron’s leg - Ron was not impressed and gently chastised me for calling the dog over. As if understanding what he was saying it sneezed again down Ron’s leg and came back to me for another pat.

We strolled back to the boat about 11.30 pm after we too indulged in our obligatory ice-cream - John is making sure he tastes the ice-cream everywhere we go - so “whats new?”, I imagine some of you are thinking.

When the boats dock, they are often 3 or 4 deep - we were number 3 this time. A group on boat number 4 were having a bit of a loud party. We laid in bed and read until just after midnight. The party settled and we went off to sleep in our comfortable bed.

As I am not an early riser (when given the choice) I again woke about 7.30.We departed Hvar at 8am - this seems to be the pattern for our departure time . We are on our way to Trstnik today. Apparently it is a small island with only one restaurant - this, I guess, is why they have put the Captain’s dinner on tonight. We had the choice of fish or meat. Both John and I have chosen fish. Not sure what time we will arrive, but we should be getting close to our swim stop now. As I type all of our group are relaxing on the deck reading - we are currently in a large expanse of sea and there is quite a cool breeze. I can see 25 other sailing boats of various types in the distance. Where is our sheltered little swimming bay?

Steve has just come up from the bar with a beer. He was also given some homemade grappa to sample. It is made from sour cherries. We have had this in many places on our Slovenian / Croatian travels.

It is now 10.30 am and the boat appears to be slowing down perhaps we are nearing our ‘swimming spot’.

Yes, another picturesque bay!

After our swim we had lunch which consisted of vegetable soup, shredded cabbage, onion and paprika side salad, veal goulash with gnocchi and veges and finished with a cherry strudel. Yum!

We arrived at Trstnik about 4pm. This is a very small island. The tiny port only had a few places open. One was the bar / restaurant, a very small general store, wine tasting in a type of grotto and another wine tasting at a winery a short walk away. We met the elderly wine maker who happens to be quite famous in California and here. There were numerous certificates and framed newspaper clippings proudly on display in the tasting room. We only tried one white and one red wine and didn’t feel ‘we just had to buy one’.

The captain’s dinner was a very nice meal - I’m sure you don’t want a ‘blow by blow’ description of everything we have eaten so I will leave it there. We are on the Katalina Lines boat called the ‘Papa Privi’. Another of their boats was moored next to us last night enabling a shared disco / dance after dinner. Everyone had a great time. Due to John’s ‘Flu’and the fact he has shared it with me, we didn’t party for long.