Korcula (Kor-choo-luh), Croatia, was a nice town on an
island in the Adriatic Sea. When the cruise was scheduled this stop was
supposed to allow us to get to the small country of San Marino, then updated to
Rijeka (also Croatia), and finally updated to Korcula about a month ago. We
didn’t have any tours scheduled. That said, Marco Polo may have been born here,
but the building on his possible birth site wasn’t where he was born as it was
built a few centuries after this death. There was, however, a square with a
bell tower and church (surprise).
Tracy, a new friend from Victoria, happened to be on the same
tender from the ship to the dock so we agreed to explore together. We found a
few caches, dipped our hands/toes in the Adriatic, and decided to rent bicycles
for an “excellent and hill-free route”
of 6km with fantastic coastal scenery and roads that lead through the stunning vineyard
to the town of Lumbarda. I will grant that the ride was not the Himalayas, but we
would not define the route as being anything resembling “hill-free”. Indeed, by
the time we arrived in Lumbarda we were rather tired, eager for lunch, and not
looking forward to the return trip even though we would find a few caches on
the way back.
Alas, this is the end of the season
(our ship will begin its trans-Atlantic crossing immediately after our cruise),
and as such only a bakery and a single restaurant were open. I poked my head
into the bakery which seemed to have baked goods but not sandwiches, though
admittedly it was hard to tell since the one Croatian word I know is “hvala”
(thank you) so I was unable to understand the tags below each item.
So we ventured to the
restaurant. We ended up next to a very friendly foursome from our ship who used
to live near each other in Tennessee but now one couple live in Montana and the
other in Arkansas. They saw how tired we were and mentioned that they’d come by
“tugboat” and offered to ask the captain about giving us a ride back. Um, ok,
sure, I’m not going to look a gift tugboat in the mouth. So after Tracy and I gulped
our overpriced Oranginas – a European brand of orange soda – we walked our
bikes over to the boat.
The boat wasn’t a tugboat,
though it was hardly a luxury vessel. It seated about 30 people. The captain
and crew couldn’t have been more gracious. They loaded our bikes and gave us the
best seats -- outside, behind the cabin, in the fresh air, where we didn’t have
to listen to the tour guide. They didn’t offer us water – bottles of cold water
simply appeared. They checked to make
sure we were ok (we were). After a lovely ride on calm blue seas where we
admired the beautiful scenery, the crew unloaded our bicycles. They didn’t
mention anything about charging us for the ride, though we did give them what
we intended to be a generous tip.
After that we returned our
bicycles, re-boarded ou rship, visited the pool again, and got to tell our story
of the 6km bike ride with a return boat trip to others from our group.
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