Day 56 - Mljet Island, Croatia

Today we had no wake up from the engine, instead it was have majority of your riding pack ready, get a coffee at 7:30 and breakfast bell was rung at 8am.

8:45am we were ready to head off on bike ride number two! The crew had all the bikes out on the deck before we even had coffee in our hand! We saddled up and started riding towards the famous National Park. First stop was the little town of Polace which we stopped near a Roman Ruin and had a walk around the waterfront. After this was our first uphill, seeing I had so much fun on the downhill, I knew exactly what was coming… Katie on the other hand glided pass with a massive smile…
We then had a nice down hill towards the start of the national park! (Remember this for later…) which apparently we had to show someone tickets for the park but got waved through. We did a ride 3/4 of the way around Veliko Jezero which is the large lake of the National Park that is a mix of fresh and sea water, there is a canal inlet at the bottom of this lake to the ocean. Not quite half way around we had to push/lift the bikes over a step bridge, they do have a bike runner on the side of the steps that helps the wheels but I was a gentleman and took Katies bike with the two packs while she handled my light bike.

We came to an area we stopped at and took an electric boat over to Saint Mary’s Island which has the old monastery on it and a cafe/bar on the island. We should of just went for a swim…

On return to the bike track we had half n hour to have a swim. We swam at Mali Most, a bridge that has the current that switches either way every 6 hours due to the tides. Once we were called back on the bikes we had a ‘short uphill’ 20minute ride back to the boat… This short uphill in full sun wasn’t the funnest thing in life… well for me, Katie was up the front brown nosing the guide!

Once on the boat a quick freshen up and lunch at 1:30pm, another healthy 3 course meal!

While we were having lunch the boat was sailing towards Korcula Island, we are making port in Korcula township tonight. Before we made port, we were able to have swim from the back of the boat, even Katie slipped in from the back!

We made port and had a walking tour with a local guide, it is a small town with old city walls that got halved in size due to cost in the early 1900’s. The town in set up with a Main Street through the middle for wind access, The Eastern side streets on a curve for the very cold winds that come & the Western side streets straight to help cool the town through Summer. We also learnt, that when this vibrant town was at its peak, it could hold 4000 residents inside the walls. The average building would have a shop at the bottom, living quarters on the second floor & Kitchen on the third floor - main reason for this was in case of fire so it would only (hopefully) burn the top of the building.

After the walking tour we had a quick walk around, as it was very windy we stayed on the Eastern side of the town for dinner. We had dinner and an Aperol Spritz at SILK, an Asian infusion restaurant, I had octopus seeing we were on the Ocean. Katie tried the local wine which is Posip, a very dry White wine that in our opinion was too dry for us.

After dinner we went for some Gelato and headed back to the boat to rest for our big day tomorrow!もっと詳しく