Pharos and the empty taste

With momentum rolling we
made a plan to locally bus it to Stari Grad, Hvar but not before a quick discovery tour of more of my golden city albeit a bit fatter today with its swelled ranks of cruise shippers.

The local Franciscan monastery with dates in the 1500’s was reconnoitred and an angelic flamenco-style chorus could be heard harmonising which drew us further in. The full performance treat appeared to be only for cruise paying passengers, who champagne in hand gathered to enjoy.

Stari Grad: Very rocky countryside could be seen from the bus window: white limestone outcrops and ‘Van Gogh’ veridian green with the olive trees, dark cypress and pine.

Not much was stirring in Stari but a general feeling of ennui. A quiet but slightly run down collection of stone houses and fairly desperate looking shop entries. Locals, few in number, sporting the Croatian uniform of matching top and bottom side-striped trackie and closely shaved -headed en masse milled in bars and cafes. In our strolling and slight limping (in Rhonda’s case) we discovered a secret gem in the original and a-typically large block foundation of a 4th century site. In 384BC the Greeks from the island of Paros came, conquered and founded a town they named Pharos.

On return back to Hvar, a roof top pizza cafe was espied and warm sunshine accompanied our delicious pizza and ale, a cheeky young waiter adding to the enjoyment.

The Spanish Fortress: this inelegant landmark dominates the Hvar skyline with its long fortressy tentacles reaching down into the town. Previous research has left me less than impressed with Spanish occupation’s ‘pirate-like’ standard of taking what you can and giving nothing back. But still the limestone colours and test of time engineering were passably tolerable and we added more steps to our fit bit tallies. William was also successfully coerced into taunting the English from a parapet!

After a very cold swim on the roof top, we accepted an invitation to join the local high school’s home economics presentation of food and wine in the town square with ‘free’ being the draw card. We first queued to sample Milky Cocktails containing a strong mint/almond concoction which was enjoyed the most surprisingly by Eric. We then watched teams of slightly awkward school boys battle for a win in a gnocchi and sauce competition. The promise of free tasting was marred by the inability of the competitors to keep their spoons and hands out of the pots which resulted in only meagre scrapings on offer for the expectant bowl raised crowd.

The organiser’s microphone call for an English speaking volunteer was answered by our Rach by pushing Manan forward and a familiar voice could be heard over the square’s sound system giving praise and very sensible commentary on the event. This unfortunately did not result in any food and we left to find succour slightly shameful with our unfruitful ‘scabbing’ attempts 😏.

A local bus driver and her daughter run an excellent cheap pizza and homemade wine bistro but with the servings sizes not satisfactory for the boys, it was another trip to a family-run burger and chip shop closer to home. Our foreign-ness must be of some amusement to the staff who all crowded to listen to our orders with slight smiles in play.

We enjoyed a second dinner on our roof top cafe/pool/viewpoint followed by a nostalgic viewing of Narnia movie. It is very pleasing to this mum to see my young enjoying such an innocent diversion 😍

Tomorrow we ferry out to Korcula !Read more