Where were we?  I think we were in Split, Croatia.  The next day, we took a two hour ferry ride to Hvar island.  The sea was rough and some members of our group were sick.  Huge rollers.  We did okay but the only thing on the tv screens was "McGyver" and it was subtitled.  I might have spelled that wrong but then I never watched that show when it was on years ago. 

When we got to the ferry "landing", we were loaded into three vans and driven to the town of Hvar.  I think I rode with Mario Andretti's sister.  There were 7 of us and a woman driver.  Bright red hair, went about 80 miles an hour on a windy curvy road and gabbed on her cellphone part of the time.  I honestly think that if we'd had the windows down we would have heard the tires screech on the corners.  Stella rode in a large van that had a driver who wishes he was an American Cowboy.  He even had the hat.  Beverly was in that van also.  He played Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers music and they all sang to "Ring of Fire" and "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town."  We were just hanging on. 

Hvar is a small town right on the sea.  We ate lunch there and had 3 hours of free time, so we occupied ourselves with looking at tacky souvenirs and then sitting on a bench and watching all the people troop by us going to the beach.  Lots of sailboats there.  There is a large fortress on the hill overlooking the town but we didn't do the hike up about a zillion stone steps to get there.  There is a lot of limestone in this area.  The houses have changed from what we saw in the alpine areas to stone structures with red tile roofs.  The houses nearest the sea have red tiles that are rounded like we see at home, but farther inland the tile is flat, and in the area that was in the war, the new construction has corrugated metal roofs. 

We got on another ferry later in the afternoon and had a 1/2 hour ride to the island of Korcula.  Our bus met us there (it was on a larger ferry) and we rode over the mountains to the town.  It was very foggy going over the mountains but I could see that there was a steep dropoff on one side so it's probably better that we didn't know where we were going.

Korcula is the home of Marco Polo.  We didn't go to the museum but there is a lot of Marco Polo "stuff" here.  We even stayed at the Hotel Marko Polo, which was very nice.  Had a large swimming pool and was right on the water.  We had a tour of the "old town" which isn't very big but is in a "fishbone" pattern.  The main "street", which is a little larger than the alleys in the US, is the spine and all the side, alleys for lack of a better word, are the bones.  Some of the "bones" were straight and some of them are curved to break  the winds in the winter.  This is where we had a "free day".  Tuesday we had nothing scheduled and could do whatever we wanted.  We went shopping for awhile in the morning and took quite a few pictures.  In the afternoon, I went down to the beach, which is rocks, we haven't seen a sandy beach yet, and stuck my feet in the water so I could say I'd been in the Adriatic Sea.  I wished I had brought my swimsuit, the water was so nice.  It was cool to begin with but was warm.

That evening, we had a happy hour boat cruise.  There are 19 islands in this area but only one other is inhabited.  That lasted about an hour but just as we were almost finished, a "tall ship" was a little ways away from us and it had five masts.  No sails up but the masts had lights on.  It was quite a sight.  We think it was a British ship and the "captain" of our boat did not get close to it so it could very well have been one that belongs to the brits.