Yesterday was once again a travelling day. We left Zadar to travel south. In Split we boarded the car ferry to Stari Grad on the Island of Hvar. The 2 hours spent on the ferry were an interesting experience of a Croatian Friday afternoon, as many of the other passengers seemed to be older Croatians travelling to the island for the weekend. They started their weekend celebrations on the ferry and danced and sang and played accordion.
From Stari Grad it was another 30 minute journey to the other side of the island to a small village called Ivan Dolac where we had arranged to stay. The north side and the south side of Hvar are divided by a steep mountain ridge and to get from Stari Grad to Ivan Dolac, one has to travel through the Pitve- Zavala Tunnel, the narrowest, darkest tunnel I ever travelled through. The tunnel is about 1.4 km long with an unsealed, damp road and only 2.3 meters wide, so cars can only travel in one direction at the time. It is completely black with a small dot of light in the distance which increased in size as we came closer to the exit on the southern side of the island.
On the other side, a steep, windy road with magnificent views onto the Adriatic sea and the island of Korcula in the distance took us down to Ivan Dolac and the little apartment by the beach where we are staying.
We arrived just in time to admire the sunset before settling into our accommodation and enjoying some Croatian Karlovacko “Radler” and sampling our host’s own red vine of which

she had kindly given us a bottle of to try. After dinner we spent the remainder of the evening playing cards and looking forward to spending the next day in this beautiful spot.

Maria