ESCAPING FROM HVAR TOWN

We caught a ferry from the Bol port across the channel of ocean to the island of Hvar. After a short thirty minute ride with beautiful sunset views we arrived on land again in the little town of Jelsa but there wasn’t any time for getting acquainted. We needed to make our way to the other side of the island to Hvar town and check into our hostel. I had fleetingly read somewhere that there was a local bus leaving at 7pm and we only had 15 minutes to get there. We rushed through the streets, dragged down by our heavy backpacks, I spotted signs pointing this way and that. We finally stopped to ask a kind local and after some confusion at our terrible pronunciation of Hvar town (we were saying ‘ha-var’ when it’s more of a ‘far’ sound) he pointed us to a carpark behind the supermarket where the bus were to arrive. There were a few other travellers from our ferry waiting there and some locals too. We set our bags down and waiting by the big “BUS” writing on the road. Not long after a bus arrived without any markings and pulled up on the other side of the carpark, no where near the bus sign or the people waiting. I had a gnawing feeling in my stomach, was that our bus or not? But before I could make my way over there he was leaving!

Well, it turns out that may have been our bus… because forty-five minutes later we were all still waiting there! It was quickly becoming a mob of unhappy people… We noticed a van taxi, one that usually drives you to your destination for $10 a head. So we waved him over, explained our problem, asked to be driven to Hvar town and jumped in. I looked sheepishly to the other people waiting and a few other tourists came over hurriedly and jumped in. We couldn’t all fit, but the locals didn’t seem keen on paying so much and were adamate that the bus was still coming. So once again I learnt, don’t trust everything you read on the internet, be prepared to have to pay extra $$$ sometimes, and just go with the flow. Oh and be a little selfish every once in a awhile 😉 Think on your feet!

 

Okay so we were off to a bit of a rocky start… and things didn’t really get much better. In the spirit of honesty, I didn’t really like Hvar town one bit. I could try to always paint a beautiful story of how I love every single place we’ve been to… (and I mostly do!) but Hvar town was one of those rare occasions that we just didn’t have the best time. In the grand scheme of things, it really is a nice place! But it just wasn’t for us.

To explain some of the reasons why we didn’t enjoy Hvar, let me start by explaining when we arrived at our hostel we were greeted by a cheerful American guy who pulled out a map to show us all the ‘best clubs’ in town, explained there was a “full moon party’ tomorrow night (even though it wasn’t the full moon?), led us to our very small and cramped room and advised us that we shouldn’t expect to get any sleep before 3am because the hostel was located above the “hottest club in town” that sounds like a rave is happening in the bedroom with you (no exaggeration). He said we could get a free shot on arrival and he’d urged us to go saying he’d be back later that night to get us to come down. The hostel had no common room, no kitchen and the wifi only worked on the stairs. Okay, so it wasn’t looking great… but it was just our hostel, we’d probably had worse problems so we headed out to get some dinner.

Upon looking at the menu’s for three or four different restaurants we soon discovered Hvar town has cleverly placed a ‘price lock’ sort of thing on their restaurant prices. For example, you’d be hard pressed to find a meal under $20 (aud) which was just plain crazy compared to the rest of Croatia. And our food budget was only $18 for the day… oh a slice of pizza? $5. Even the most dodgey take away place was about $14 a meal and it looked awful. We walked into the supermarket discouraged but hoping to find some pre-made sandwiches or salads as most supermarkets have. Of course there was none. Zero! Something fishy was going on, possibly all the restaurants are owned by one company or something? I’m not sure. So we bought a packet of wraps, some salad, mayonnaise and Martin grabbed some deli meat. We sat outside on a bench near the main square restaurants making wraps on our knee with our hands. It was a sad sight, my tummy hungry for a warm meal but not wanting to waste so much money as it was already getting very late. I looked around and realised that I didn’t actually see any Croatian people, everyone was a tourist and mostly English speakers from America, Australia and the UK. Every shop and market stall was selling tourist items, there wasn’t any normal shops for everyday life. Had we walked into some kind of tourist constructed monopoly?

Disappointed we made our way home to the hostel. On arrival the club was now in full swing (about 10pm) and there were a bunch of clubbers out the front singing Britney Spears at the top of their lungs. Our room was on the top (third floor) and even with the windows and doors closed I could hear every word of their sing-along as if they were laying beside me. The cheery American dude from reception showed up again and asked us when we were coming down to the club. We said we were going to watch a movie and hoped he’d leave us alone… but sure enough he came up another time to try and get us to come ‘party!’. We had a sneaking suspicion the bar was either owned by the hostel, or they get a nice payout for every hostel guest that drinks there. It just didn’t seem like a genuine invite at all, it was very pushy and not that friendly. Martin and I enjoy getting to meet people, having drinks and even partying but this really wasn’t our scene. Luckily we had two quiet girls in our room who looked just as exhausted and appalled as we were.

I was grateful it was morning and we could get out of our party hostel in one piece. One night down and one to go. We bought some bananas for breakfast and more sandwich supplies for lunch. Hvar town has a beautiful old town, the buildings are just gorgeous and the old cobbled streets very charming. But honestly, there are so many beautiful old Croatian towns that still actually have a cultural feel and local people. If you haven’t seen any other towns in Croatia, you could easily fall in love with how cute Hvar is, but for me it just can’t compare to the rest of Croatia. Hvar town was strangely empty of that traditional feeling. I love to learn about different cultures, eat new foods, meet local people, we couldn’t do these things in Hvar. But we made the best of our day, made our lunch by the seaside, swam in a cute bay near a Monastery and walked far enough away from town that we couldn’t hear the tourists anymore.

For our final night in Hvar town we caved and bought dinner out at a restaurant but I ignored the price and was grateful for the warm, filling meal. We tried to forget about the tourists, the unfair prices, the missing cultural feeling and the odd overwhelming party atmosphere. Boats line the harbour blasting music and hosting pre-drinks, it definitely looked like fun but I find it odd that someone would come all this way to the other side of the world and decide to holiday somewhere that is just like home? The clubs could have been taken right off the streets of Melbourne. It didn’t feel like we were in a European country, but maybe Martin and I have been so spoiled with the places that we’d seen so far that Hvar paled in comparison. After dinner we hiked up above town and watched the sunset, it was quiet and beautiful. Even though we didn’t enjoy Hvar and counted the hours until we could leave, it was mostly just because we knew what Croatia had to offe. We were excited to move on to somewhere else because we knew just how much we would loved it. Croatia is my favourite country we’ve visited on this trip, even with the Hvar hiccup. So we survived one final night in the rave hostel, woke bright and early, high-tailed it out of there and boarded our ferry escaping to our next destination.

❤