Croatia – Retrospective Light

I’m calling this a retrospective light because we pretty much flew through Croatia.  We wanted to spend a lot of time here and planned to spend a lot of time here, but somehow it took us longer than we expected to get through Albania and Montenegro and we found ourselves under the gun a bit to get further North to Venice.  Why Venice?  Janet and the kids had flights to catch to visit with friends in England at the end of August…leaving just a couple of weeks to get there.

The Good:

• Cavtat.  Pronounced Csavtat this incredibly friendly and picturesque town sits just a 30 minute bus or water taxi ride away from Dubrovnik which has been called the pearl of the Adriatic (with good reason).  What’s better, Cavtat had a lovely and free anchorage where we could catch our breath and settle in a bit.  Unfortunately, Cavtat was the scene of a bit of drama involving our boat, an errant anchor and catastrophe averted by an alert Janet and some quick action.  More on that in a blog post to come very soon.

• Dubrovnik.  Game of Thrones anyone?  Dubrovnik is a lovely medieval city in excellent state of repair/maintenance.  It was a fascinating look into life in Europe in the middle ages and fun to wander a bit with the kids through the tiny cobbled alleys.  We even found a playground!

The Bad:

•  Camping Gaz.  Actually, the lack of Camping Gaz.  For some reason, in spite of being a cruisers playground, and host to more charter boats than I can count, it is impossible to get gas canisters refilled or purchase new ones.  Now this is fine if your canister is full, or you have spares, less fine when you run out.  On a positive note, I now know that I can cook just about anything on a barbeque, including pasta, grilled cheese and pancakes.

• This place is ridiculously busy.  And to make matters worse, it seems that not all of the people out on the water have actually got any experience, training or common sense.  More on that in the upcoming blog post noted above.  The plus here is that this is largely a July/August phenomena as there are literally thousands of tourists who descend on Croatia for a sailing summer vacation.

The Ugly:

Nothing that can be blamed on Croatia.  I’m expecting big things when we head back in September.

The Bottom Line:

We’re heading back and expect to spend 3 weeks or more exploring what we can.  Nuff said.