We awoke at 6.00am to the rumble of the yacht’s engines as she put to sea once more towards our next exciting port of call. Going back to sleep, we got up at half past seven and got washed and dressed before making our way upstairs to the dining room for breakfast.
As we walked along the tiny ‘promenade deck’ we were once again accosted by squalls and gusts of wind, and the motion of the Solaris was very noticeable. We’d so enjoyed our brief bout of sunshine yesterday afternoon, and we hoped we’d experience some more gloriously warm weather later today.
We were not due to reach Korčula until after lunch, so we just spent the morning pottering about; reading, browsing the internet, chatting and looking out of the windows at the rain. As we glided along in the choppy Adriatic, there was still lots to see; mountains, rugged coastline, little towns and villages nestling in the hillsides and many other yachts and catamarans.
Lunchtime came and went and we washed it down with a cold beer. They do keep you very well fed on the Solaris and it was another substantial three-course lunch; we did feel as if we had spent a considerable part of this cruise eating and drinking! We were sharing our table this time with a pleasant French couple and it gave me a chance to practise my somewhat rusty French; I studied French for five years at night classes in the mid-90s and used to be fairly fluent, but it’s a case of “if you don’t use it, you lose it” and I spoke hesitantly, conjugating the verbs carefully in my head beforehand.
Eventually the rain stopped and, looking skywards, we noticed a break of blue in the clouds. We went onto the upper sundeck where the carpet, and most of the cushions on the sun loungers, were soaked through. We waved to the captain in his wheel house as we walked past, then stood at the bow and watched as the Solaris headed to an island which the MarineTraffic app told us was Korčula. By now the sun was out – hooray. 🙂
It was about three o’clock before we made our way into port and it was a case, once again, of all the yachts mooring up abreast of each other. In fact, we ended up seven deep! We had to ‘mind the gap’ through six yachts before we eventually reached the gangplank to shore. 🙂
Our first impressions of Korčula were that it looked an interesting place, with castle fortifications, ramparts and church belltowers just tempting you to start exploring. We decided to look at the Geocache app to see if there were any caches nearby and indeed there was, about 400 metres away. We thought we’d have a look for that first, then explore at our leisure afterwards. 🙂
We walked through the stone-flagged city, following the GPS trail to the cache as watching as the distance to go counter (in metres) counted down. We needed to look at the hint to get a clue as to the whereabouts of the tiny cache, but eventually we found it and I wrote my user name and the date in the ‘log book’ inside it. Just as I was putting it back, along came Jerry and Gaynor with the same idea! 🙂
This is how a Geocache app screen looks before you navigate to the ‘treasure’. It really is good fun and a great way to get some interesting exercise. 🙂
We then set off at a slower pace, and walked all around the main town and foreshore. What a gorgeous place, and so typical of the Adriatic countries.
After we’d walked the full circuit (Korčula is a lovely compact little town), going up and down lots of sets of stone steps, past little narrow alleyways and small souvenir shops with their locally hand-crafted wares, we decided that the inevitable cold beer was in order. We set off to find a suitable watering hole (the ones on the seafront are more expensive than those little tucked-away places in the narrow alleys) and on the way we stopped at a shop selling home-made produce, honey, candles and fruit liqueurs; we bought four bottles of the latter to take home as gifts. 🙂
We found an attractive little bar and took a seat at a table under a canopy before ordering a glass of local beer called Tomislav. It was a dark beer, a bit like porter, and it was strong at 7.5%! I followed it with a refreshing aperol spritz and we just sat there, enjoying the sunshine and the laid-back ambience. Lots of swifts were swooping in all directions overhead; we were surprised there were no mid-air collisions. 🙂
We didn’t go back on board until bed time. We just wandered around, bar-hopping and watching dusk, and then darkness, descend over the charming little town. We couldn’t see the sunset because the sun had gone down behind a mountain, so we just gazed at the twinkling lights reflecting on the rippling sea as we breathed in the salt air and wondered what it would be like to live here, and own one of the many boats we could see in the harbour. I should imagine that boat ownership would be essential on an island like this.
Around 10.00pm we decided to have a nightcap and found a little bar tucked away near some steps. The proprietors had the great idea of tempting passers-by inside by placing those electric tea-lights at the side of each of the steps, lighting the way. The night air was perfectly still as we sat there enjoying our beers. A few minutes later, who should come along but Jerry and Gaynor, who decided to join us. We partook of another drink; it would have been rude not to. 🙂 🙂
Afterwards we took a slow stroll back down to the Solaris, stepping through the other yachts to get there. Another great day; it didn’t take us long to fall asleep in our comfortable beds in our neat little cabin.