So begins our 10-day trip to Croatia and Montenegro. We had planned to go somewhere for a week in August - initially we thought the south of France, but apparently August is a horrifically busy (and expensive) time to go there. The idea for the revised trip stemmed from my desire to visit Croatia and from a friend's suggestion of a trip he's been wanting to do (we totally stole it). Because we saw so much, and the trip had different phases, I will separate it into 2 blogs.
The idea was to fly into Dubrovnik in the southern part of Croatia, spend 4 days here island-touring, then on the fifth day rent a car and drive to Montenegro, where we would stay by the Bay of Kotor for 2 nights then by Lake Skadar for 2 nights, then back to Dubrovnik for our last 2 nights to relax and get some more beach time before flying back to Amsterdam on Tuesday afternoon. As of yet there are no direct flights from Amsterdam to Dubrovnik, so we had to connect in Vienna. Our connection was tight (35 minutes) and annoyingly, we had to go through security for the second time once we landed in Vienna. We were smart this time and carried on - I spent the Friday before our trip scouring Amsterdam for toiletries in 100 mL or less containers. This was surprisingly a difficult endeavor, which made me consider it as a profitable business idea.
We landed in Dubrovnik on Saturday in the early afternoon and got a cab to take us to Port Gruž, where we got tickets to take the ferry to the island of Koloçep. While waiting for the ferry we met a really nice Croatian family who gave us some tips on what to eat and where to go. We thought we were getting great insider info, but turns out the places they told us about were very evidently the more popular places to go...We were thankful anyway. In Koloçep we stayed at the Villas Hotel Koloçep - easy to find as it is the only hotel on the island, and a 10 minute walk from the Koloçep port. The hotel had a nice sandy beach, which unfortunately attracted a lot of families with kids. The room was small, and we had a small balcony that we shared with our neighbors. But the beds were really comfortable and the shower was decent and, best part, we had a computer with free internet in our room.
Upon our arrival, we got the last rays of sunshine on the beach, then went out to dinner at one of the outdoor restaurants on the boardwalk tracing the hotel to the port. We had some really delicious "dalmatian-style" ham, similar to prosciutto which makes sense given Croatia's proximity to Italy, and it was served in abundance. We also had shared grilled yellowtail and cuttlefish risotto - highly recommended around these parts and absolutely delish. With all our traveling, we got wasted a bit quickly on our first bottle of wine, which prompted me to stupidly ask for another. I do this often. We scrambled back to our hotel, happy and warm!
We spent Sunday on the island again, and in the afternoon tried to do the "mountain biking" excursion that the hotel advertises. If in Koloçep, I would not recommend this. The "trail" was actually just the main walking path (cars are not allowed on the island) - concrete and sometimes with stairs going up or down. After trying out several of the hotel bikes and finding they had flat tires or broken gears or weak breaks, we managed to fix up two so that they were ridable. After about a 20 minute ride that was treacherous (steep, almost vertical downhill paths that wound and were, I repeat, concrete) I gave up. Matt continued on and found the hiking path, which you are not supposed to bike down, and he biked it. So when he returned and found me on the beach sipping sparkling water and reading a book on a chaise lounge (I found this much more enjoyable), he was naturally surprised and relieved to be alive and not lying in an island hospital somewhere with a broken neck. That night we went over to the villa next door, that had just opened the week before, for a mediocre meal (too much rosemary) but a phenomenal bottle of Croatian wine and an even more amazing view of the sunset. This dinner epitomized the "Who do we think we are, vacationing in Croatia?" sentiment. We felt like movie stars. 
The next day we took the morning ferry to Lopud, the island that the Croatian family we met at the port had recommended. Lopud is home to Sunj beach, which I believe is the largest sandy beach in the Elaphite Islands. In this part of the world, a sandy beach is hard to find, and thus coveted - most beaches on the Adriatic are rocky. We had to walk across the island from where the port was to get to the beach. This island is much more populated than Koloçep with more restaurants and shops - there are no cars allowed here, either. Sunj beach was great, and in the late afternoon we went up to the busy beach bar for lunch. The place was loud and cheerful with mostly picnic-table style seating. We had to wait about 45 minutes for seats, but we passed the time waiting with cold beers. We finally spotted a seat and made a run for it, sharing a picnic table with a Croatian couple and their cute little daughter. 
We waited about an hour for our fried calamari but once they arrived they definetely hit the spot. Again, we passed the time with beers. It also didn't help that after we tipped our waitress generously (she was working very hard) she gave us two shots of a suspicious yellowish drink that was in a huge plastic water container. When we asked her to do a shot with us, she grimaced and said "No, I don't think that stuff". Not comforting, but bottoms up anyway. After that we spotted our friends that had recommended the island on the beach, and walked over to talk to them - me keeping the chatting to a minimum and the sunglasses firmly on because I was quite tipsy at this point...After a nice chat we headed back to port, got some ice cream and jumped in the water again. We got the last boat out of the island at 6:50 (along with the rest of the island but somehow we all fit on the boat). That night we had a late dinner of yummy pizzas at the trattoria close to our hotel - they do Italian pretty well in Croatia.
The next day (Tuesday) we took one of the organized trips that the hotel advertised through Hidden Croatia boat tours. The trip was a speed boat ride to Mljet - the largest of the Elaphite Islands that is also home to a national park. We didn't go to the side of the island that had the park, which if we had one more day we definetely would have. 
The tour took us to a sweet little family-owned restaurant with an incredible cliff-side view of the Adriatic, and after lunch we could walk over to the small beach on the island. The weather could not have been more perfect during this whole trip, and we had another excellent beach day. We got an hour or two on the beach, then the boat took us back. The speed boat ride was awesome - we were going so fast and the boat was really clean and new. We made friends with an older English couple at lunch, and when we got back to Koloçep they treated us to beers at the bar on the boardwalk. Since we had a 3 course lunch that day, we went to dinner pretty late, again at the boardwalk restaurant. The trattoria was advertising a grilled sardine night, which we were psyched for, but when we got there every seat was filled. We noticed some random groups of teenagers on the island - definetely kids that were there with their parents but trying to ditch them. We felt for them because there was not much for them to do at night - all we did was eat and drink wine, which was perfect for us. The next morning we hired a private water taxi to take us back to the port of Koloçep, since the ferry times were very awkward (6 am or noon). The ride was nice, definetely much slower than our speed boat ride, and we think the drivers were pissed because we were the only two on. Once we got to the port, we meandered around with our luggage trying to find the Avis, which was very elusive (it's actually in the main building, in the back, with no signs leading up to it). We picked up the car we reserved, and got a free upgrade since they didn't have the car we ordered - Note: always do this. The problem was when we asked if they had GPS - back in Amsterdam we had tried to print directions to our hotels in Montenegro from google and yahoo, but they didn't recognize them. No GPS here, but they gave us a "road map" which was actually just really a big tourist map of southern Croatia with not really any roads on it - just names of towns. And Montenegro was completely off the map. Thus the Montenegran adventure begins...
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