Korčula island

At breakfast I chatted with the landlady. They have visited Sydney before during the 2000 Olympics. They know Croats in the my home suburb and the next one. And then my usual question: Why didn't Serbia let Croatia leave Yugoslavia peacefully? Well, she said, they were used to lording over us and they wanted the coastline. Yes, terrible crimes were committed by both sides.

At the rental office they wanted to hold Diana and Laurie's passports as security and that was not acceptable so they went to another car hire company. They first drove me out to Lumbarda where I had difficulty explaining to the matriarch at the Pansion that I wanted a room. I found that German worked better than Italian. Anyway I'm booked in for 3 nights.

Lumbarda is at the south-eastern tip of the island. We drove west along the southern coastal road and reached a vantage point where we could see Lastovo island, and in the distance, Mljet island.

At the western end we found a nice restaurant in the postcard scenery town of Vela Luka. (Luka means port in Croatian and similar languages, so it's common in place names.) 

On the way back, we wanted to take the northern coastal road, and succeeded, after a few false starts. Unfortunately the road petered out after Babina and we had to retrace our way to the backbone road. The maps we had were too optimistic.

Back in Korčula Town, we enjoyed an afternoon break of coffee and cake at a cafe. These cute kittens were playfully tussling on a nearby window ledge. We enquired at a travel agency about excursions to Mljet. Yes, they did run on Wednesdays, such as the day after tomorrow, but the agent could not sell us tickets until Tuesday.

The view from my Pansion is so clear and the air is so fresh that I can understand why German tourists want to come all the way here.

Dusk slowly descended on the town and tranquility ruled.

After dinner at a nearby family restaurant, I settled to reread Jan Morris' Fifty Years of Europe. I enjoyed her delightful observation about European eating habits: The Italians eat most sensibly. The British eat most unhealthily. The Spaniards eat most abstemiously. The Scandinavians eat most fastidiously. The Greeks eat most monotonously. The Belgians eat most indigestibly. The French eat most pretentiously. The Germans eat most.

Korčula

That c with a háček is not unlike the English ch, and that's why I was very tempted to correct the tourist who read the čokolada on the label and asked for a scoop of cokolada ice cream in Ljubijana. But that's later.

Korčula is alleged to be the birthplace of Marco Polo, but that debate is not settled.

On the ferry I met Diana and Laurie, an Ozzie couple from Margaret River who were also disembarking at Korčula. They had driven down from Zagreb and were now travelling up the coast. We lunched together in the town and then started our search for lodging. I took one B&B that was closer to town that they had passed up because I wanted to be within walking distance of dinner later. This is the view looking back toward the town. Note again the crystal clear water.

In the middle of my afternoon siesta, Diana and Laurie called by my place to say that they had arranged for a hire car tomorrow to sightsee the island and would I care to join them? Of course, if you'll let me pay a third of the costs, accepting with alacrity. They can also drop me off at the end of the day in Lumbarda, a village a few km outside of Korčula Town, where I have decided to spend a couple of days.

This feral cat was worried I might want some of its dinner. I was actually quite far away, this was a telephoto shot. And the fish was wrapped in an Italian newspaper, wonder how that happened.

There is actually a restaurant inside this remnant of a tower, but I settled for one inside the old town. The tall blonde Croatian waitress laughed at me when I finally plonked myself down at one of her tables. "I saw you walk past a few times," she said. True, there were many choices and I am fussy. I had mussels with chips. It's magical, eating by candlelight in the street on this breezy evening. I'm sure the other diners in the old town felt the same way. In fact I must have been so diverted that I neglected to take any photos of the old town that evening.