Hvar, Croatia
After a quiet night “on the hook,” we awoke this morning anchored just off the medieval town of Hvar. Although it’s become a bit of an international hotspot in the last several years, it was lovely and quiet today.
We began our walking tour with a visit to the Franciscan monastery, then strolled the limestone promenade along the waterfront back to the medieval piazza. Our guides, Zrinka and Jo, told us of the island’s long Venetian history, as they showed us the arsenals, old city gates, narrow medieval streets and the town’s beautiful cathedral.
As we stopped at one of the town’s many sculptures of the Lion of St. Mark, symbol of the Venice, we learned to tell whether the building it adorned was constructed in peace or war time by the presence of an open or closed book within the frieze. We also learned about the nuns that crochet lace out of superfine agave fibers. Although the tradition arrived over two centuries ago from Tenerife, Hvar is now the only place in the world where this handicraft is painstakingly produced.
Our noses discovered olfactory evidence of the island’s principal agricultural product, lavender, as we passed booths filled with vials of lavender oil, fragrant sachets and bouquets of dried lavender stems, pausing just long enough to ask “koliko koshta.”
We reluctantly left the island at lunchtime, though many commented that they’d love to stay a week.
We hoisted the sails with the afternoon breeze, bound for the tiny island of Vis. The island was completely closed to foreigners until 1989, and has retained a wild and unspoiled ambience. We anchored for an afternoon of kayaking and one last swim in the Adriatic, deciding that it was worth packing a wet swimsuit in order to fully enjoy this last day of our voyage.
We’ve grown richer with the experiences of the past 10 days – sights we’ve seen, towns we’ve visited, people we’ve met and cultures we’ve come to better understand – and are perhaps returning home with a deeper appreciation for this poorly understood part of the world.
