Croatia - Split

After hopping around all of these islands, it was back to Split (mainland Croatia) for an evening before catching our flight back to London. After being underwhelmed on our first night, we were totally overwhelmed this time.


Located inside the walls of Diocletian's Palace, Split has a really lovely atmosphere of lots of little shops and restaurants, with people enjoying drinks whilst perched on one of the many steps, listening to music and chatting away.



I loved the maze of tiny narrow streets, so easy to get lost in!


We of course embarked on the long journey up the clock tower..


But only I made it to the top!



We had an amazing traditional meal at one of the restaurants buried within Split, a lovely last evening to say goodbye to Croatia. It was definitely one of my favourite holidays ever!

Croatia - Jerolim

We decided to branch out a bit, and explore another island near to Hvar towards the end of our holiday, Jerolim. A 40 kuna (£4) return water-taxi ride away, it was my favourite place in Croatia. 

We also got a slight surprise... 

Nudism wasn't compulsory, don't worry! (Although there were a few fully nude fellows dotted around the rocks, and me and Lisa came very close to an old fully nude couple trying to take over our sea raft!) 

The island had roughly 20 people on the entire thing, and was serenely beautiful and unspoiled. There were two bars/restaurants on Jerolim, the first being a hippy shack complete with hammocks and homemade ships hanging from trees!

and the tiny beach was insanely beautiful, with the clearest, calmest water ever

In between lounging around on hammocks reading our books (I read The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris which was an amazing book, but made me constantly crave chocolate!) we discovered the other restaurant on the island - Amo. It happened to have the best massages i have ever had - I was sold even before trying their incredible food. 

We all booked a ridiculously cheap massage (£25 for an hour long full body massage?!) which was by an incredibly talented girl called Tina, to the sounds of the waves crashing against rocks and crickets buzzing around happily. 

Then we wolfed down our meals - we had tuna pasta, seafood risotto, spinach linguine, ribs - everything was amazing. The best meal I ate in Croatia. 

We eventually forced ourselves to get up off our sunloungers/hammocks/sea-rafts and head back to Hvar, relaxed, well fed and tanned from lounging around in the sun and swimming. A perfect couple of days on paradise island. 

Croatia - Palmizana

We quickly discovered that whist surrounded by incredibly clear water, Hvar does not have the best beaches. Conveniently, there was several water taxis waiting to scoot us off to some deserted islands for the small price of £3 - about the same as a bus trip in London!


So we hopped on to our little speedboat and were whisked off to the island of Palmizana - pristine, beautiful and near empty, it was like our own little slice of paradise.


Jelly shoes are a good idea for Croatia - although the water is amazingly refreshing to swim in and the clearest I've ever seen, there is a lack of sand and quite a few sea urchins bobbing about inbetween the rocks, as I found out! (but they only live where the water is cleanest!)

There was a small sandy section on Palmizana though, and I recommend getting down there early to secure one of the sunbeds - or reserving ahead for Langini beach bar which looks incredible, but all the sunbeds were booked up a day in advance!


We soaked up the sun before retiring for my favourite lunch of the week, at Zori - one of the three restaurants on the island.






Cheap prices for incredible food, whilst overlooking your own (relatively) private island - what's not to love? A definite must stop if you go to Croatia.

Then it was back to Hvar for another night of dancing under the stars before jetting off to an even more amazing island tomorrow - more next time :)

Croatia - Hvar

It's not that often that you get to go away for a completely stress free holiday, with your best friend, where everything is really cheap yet amazing (yes I am talking about food) with (near) perfect weather. A couple of weeks ago me, Lisa, Chelsea and Nicole packed our bags and jetted off to one of the most beautiful places I've ever been - Croatia.

Our main base was the incredible Hvar island, reachable by a one hour, £12.50 catamaran from Split.


It is what I imagine St Tropez or Monaco would look like - a harbour dotted with independent restaurants and shops, unimaginably huge yachts, with lots of glamorous, good looking people milling about with their well behaved dogs.







It looked like something out of a story book.


We spent a lot of time at Hula Hula Bar, where the atmosphere was buzzing every night without fail as people gathered around to watch the sunset from the best spot on the island whilst sipping pina coladas and dancing the day away.



And of course visited Carpe Diem - the club which has it's own island, reachable only by water taxi (aka boat).



We may or may not have made friends with some lovely Mexican fellows who decided to buy us our own VIP table and not even harrass us at all... gracias!


Breakfasts were usually spent at Hello! bar, with sandwiches bigger than your face and fresh juice (like the rest of the island - food is ridiculously cheap and excellent)


Also... we found the most incredible bakery I have ever been to. EVER. In fact, we stopped there everyday for cake and their incredible cold chocolate drink, munching away greedily on the steps outside.


Chocolate mocha cake and triple choc cookie

This was also on top of the amazing gelato on sale in the harbour, a 'scoop' (as below) is the equivalent of about three gigantic scoops over here, and at 80p for the most incredible chocolate gelato ever it would be a crime not to eat it as often as possible.


We made friends with the local goat, Frederick..



And worked off all our indulgences by going on a huge hike up to the fort to watch the sunset, amazing!




Without a doubt one of the nicest places I've ever been, yet perfectly positioned for island hopping - more on that next time!