The streets of Vis, Croatia

On a recent sailing trip we did in Croatia, we also spent a night and the following morning in the town of Vis on Vis island.


The whole island has almost 4.000 inhabitants and lies the farthest from the coast of all inhabited Croatian islands.
In the time of Yugoslavia it was one of the countries main naval bases and only partly accessible to public.
During World War II it was heavily mined and still in 2008 34 mines were cleared from the island.


Vis is a picturesque Mediterranean little town, offering many opportunities for a good photo or two. So I took the chance and went on a slow stroll through the narrow, stone cobbled streets. These are a few of many nice ones I took in a quarter of an hour.

The first one is taken from the boat moored on the seafront of Vis. A Franciscan monastery looked really nice across the bay but I unfortunately ran out of time to take a closer look.


The other two photos are from one of many narrow streets. I hope you like them.

For those of you in doubt about the object on that last photo. It has obviously seen better days but it is still a door knocker.

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Dolphin encounter in Croatia

Seeing dolphins in nature is not something that happens every day. I consider myself very lucky for encountering them quite a few times.

If you have been reading through my previous posts, I guess you guessed it already - my last encounter with these beautiful animals happened during my last sailing trip in Croatia.


While we were on a course for Jabuka island, they suddenly appeared in the distance on our port (i.e. left) side. Unfortunately a few moments later they were gone. When we already thought that was the end of it, they reappeared just next to the hull of our boat. We were sailing at around 6 knots without the motor. It seemed they liked this fact and swam with us for a while. There were around 10 dolphins in this group - some small and some quite large ones.

After five minutes of playing around and under our boat they decided to get back on their way.
I had just enough time to take a few photos, but none of them came out very impressive. It is quite hard to guess where and when is a dolphin going to come out from under the water. When it does swim to the surface, this happens just for a moment and then it is gone again.
This means luck is quite a factor when trying to take a good photo of a dolphin.

I hope one day I will be lucky enough to actually swim with dolphins in their natural habitat.
This time water was not really all that warm (it was just under 11 degrees Celsius) and I didn't even think about jumping in.
I am not sure doing that out on the high seas is such a good idea anyway. After all, those are wild animals I am talking about and anything can happen.

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Wordless Wednesday: View of Hvar seafront

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