Croatia: Makarska and Split

On July 4th we set sail for Makarska, a city on the coast of mainland Croatia. Makarska was one of my favourite stops of our tour. The city is beautiful because it is surrounded on one side by the sea and on the other by mountains.

We enjoyed the view of Makarska from the top deck of our boat as we sailed into the city:

Makarska offers lots of water sports including jet-skiing, parasailing and banana boating, but we decided to do something more low key, so we bought some beers and rented paddleboats. It ended up being one of the most fun afternoons of the trip – we spent the afternoon swimming, going on the slide and paddling around in the water.

After our time in the water, we went to check out a famous local statue. It is said that if you rub the statue woman’s breast then it will bring you good luck. So Paige and I decided to give it a go.

We had dinner that evening overlooking the water, where we enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

We said goodbye to Makarska the following morning and sailed back to Split – our final destination of our Croatian Islands cruise. It was a really sad day! We had grown so close to everyone on the tour, and we knew that after that final night we may never see some of our new friends again.

We made good use of the day though, and half of our day was spent on our boat sailing.

We spent the morning swimming, jumping off the boat and tanning on the deck. Unfortunately after the huge bruise I sustained while jumping off the boat a few days earlier I decided to refrain from jumping off the deck anymore, but I did get photos of others jumping.

That evening we had our final dinner with our group.

The past week had been so awesome, and it was so sad knowing that this would be our last night together. Of the group of 25 people on our boat everyone was so amazing, and I now feel like I have friends all over the world. There were 6 of us who got really close, and it was especially sad saying goodbye to them knowing that we all live in different parts of the world (Australia, USA and Canada). Maybe one day we’ll have a little reunion again somewhere else in the world!

The following few days in Split were spent mainly resting and hanging out with the remaining guys from our tour. Slowly as each day passed more people left.

We used our last few days to explore a bit more of Split. We discovered that Split has a small zoo at the top of a large hill. We decided to take a trip up the hill to get a good view of the city, and to check out the zoo. The views from the top were awesome!

While we were at the zoo we saw some Llamas! It was strange seeing them enclosed here in Europe when I saw them all the time roaming free in Peru just over a month ago!

Some of my other favourites from the zoo:

I really enjoyed my time in Croatia. I had only visited Croatia once before, for a very brief time with my brother about 9 years ago, but I had never visited the islands. This portion of my trip was amazing and extremely memorable. I will never forget the experiences, sites and new friends I made during my week sailing the Croatian islands! Now on to my next stop… London!

Croatia: Dubrovnik

We arrived in Dubrovnik on July 1st for our 2 day stay in this beautiful city. It took us most of the morning (from about 5am until 1pm) to sail there, so to break up the long boat ride we had some fun in the water during a swim break.

We also had a chance to admire some of the beautiful scenery and shoreline of Croatia.

Dubrovnik is not on an island, but is on the shore of the Adriatic Sea on the mainland. The city is famous for it’s association with the TV show Game of Thrones, where a number of scenes were filmed throughout Dubrovnik. The city, like other cities we’ve seen is surrounded by a high city wall.

The city has now grown outside the walls, and the total population of Dubrovnik is about 42,615, where only about 1000 of them live within the city walls. The city of Dubrovnik is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Because of this, the government has placed many restrictions on construction within the city walls, for example, you can not do renovations to the outside of your home within the walls because all homes must look alike on the outside, but you can do whatever you want inside. You are also only allowed 1 air conditioner per residence.

Since it was Canada day we wanted to show our support of our amazing country from the other side of the world.

Our first activity in Dubrovnik was to go Kayaking outside and around the city walls, and to a small island just off the shore.

We started our journey just outside the Dubrovnik city walls:

When we got to the island we ended up paddling right past a nudist beach! It was interesting to notice which beach users covered up when they saw our group of kayakers and which ones exposed more skin. Luckily the beach area is not extremely large and we paddled by pretty quickly!

We kayaked into a couple caves:

We made a little stop in the cave below to go swimming, eat some lunch, and admire the beautiful scenery.

I really enjoyed kayaking! It was pretty cool being able to kayak just outside the city walls, and view the city from the sea.

That evening we wanted to make sure we celebrated Canada day in style, so in preparation for our trip Paige and I bought a whole bunch of Canada temporary tattoos for the whole group. We made everyone an honorary Canadian and we spent the afternoon tattoo-ing everyone so that we could all celebrate Canada day together!

Our group showing off their new temporary tattoos:

The following morning we set out to explore within the city walls of Dubrovnik.  Below is a photo of the outer walls:

The entrance into the inner city:

The city is beautiful, and I loved walking through the streets and admiring the architecture and buildings.

The clock tower (in the photo below) is kind of interesting. It rings on the hour, but then it will also ring 3 minutes later. This is to remind people that 3 minutes have passed and if they were meeting someone on the hour then they would be late. They use 3 minutes because it takes 3 minutes to get from the city walls to the clock tower, and thus 3 minutes is the maximum acceptable amount of time to be late.

Within the city walls there are no cars allowed, and all the streets (apart from the main center street) are small and narrow, lined with shops and restaurants.

We decided to climb up the city walls, and walk around the whole city on top of the walls. It was pretty cool, and we got a great view of the city from up top!

At one side of the walls there is a tower on top of the wall, and once we climbed up the tower we had an even better view of the whole city:

After walking the walls we were exhausted from the sun! We had heard about a bar in the city, just outside the city walls, where you can have a beer and jump off cliffs into the water. A few of the guys in our group wanted to try cliff jumping, so we headed to the bar for some beers.

Since the idea of jumping off a cliff doesn’t exactly appeal to me, I decided to enjoy my beer while taking photos of the boys jumping.

Overall I really enjoyed my time in Dubrovnik. It is a beautiful city, with lots to see and do, and of course I will always remember it for the location where we all celebrated Canada Day in style.