Boat Day

On Saturday morning, we took the advice of some locals and decided to wake at the crack of dawn to walk into town and try to find fish. Two different people told us to get to Ston around 7am and there might be fishermen selling fish out of their cars.

We made it nice and early but found no cars with fish. We did however, find Ston bustling with people doing their morning grocery shopping. Very different from our Thursday impression.

Our T mobile guy told us about a farm stand which opened as we arrived. We bought tomatoes, green beans, garlic, potatoes, cabbage, strawberries, cherries, an apple, and a cucumber. All of the produce was 20€. We were thrilled.

Next we returned to the dollar store supermarket, Tommy, and found it alive and crowded. The butcher was at the meat counter and the bakery section was full of bread. We picked up pork chops for Saturday dinner and ground beef for Sunday. The ground beef was put through the grinder when we ordered it and the color was so bright. We left Tommy with some charcuterie items for lunch, more groceries, and a much more positive feeling about cooking.

Back to our sweet little Ston spot before getting picked up for a boat adventure!

We originally thought that we would be able to bike around the area to different beaches but the bike situation was not ideal and without a car we were mostly stuck in the house. Which of course, the point was to relax at this house but we also want to see some beaches.

So Marko of “Boat Kristina” picked us up at 10:30am Saturday morning and drove us to Zlujana (pronounced like Jul-yana) so we could go out on his boat. This little beach town was gorgeous! The water was so clear and clean and beautiful!

We stopped for a coffee with Marko, spoke about life in America vs Croatia, about big corporations and small businesses, and then walked over to his boat. His brother in law, Mario, was our skipper for the day.

Mario was very nice and chatty despite not having a lot of English. Rebecca talked with him mostly. He liked our dinosaurs.

We stopped at three little beaches where we jumped into the cold water. Yes it was a bit cold but not terrible. Jumping from the boat and then swimming to shore was ideal for my body to get moving enough to not freeze. It was probably 80 here yesterday so it was hot enough to swim but there was some wind and some sections of the water are so much colder than others.

At one point we stopped at a cave where people snorkel. It wasn’t quite what we imagined and it seemed you really had to climb into this cave. As we arrived and were a bit hesitant, Mario told us a story about a man who went in the cave to snorkel and never came out.

We quickly decided to skip the cave adventure.

Wine was included in the boat price which we laughed thinking that we would definitely get our moneys worth in wine. The included wine was made by some family member and came out of a plastic soda bottle. Rebecca was brave enough to try his homemade schnapps as well. I think he may have been slightly offended when we cut up strawberries and apricots and put it in our wine glasses.

He offered us random foods but we were prepared with our own charcuterie materials and even brought our own knife.

We think Mario would have stayed all night on that boat as he drank with us and said “it’s like holiday for me too” so we directed him back to shore around 5:00.

We learned a Croatian word this week: fjaka—-Fjaka is a Croatian term referring to a state of mind characterized by a gentle, easy-going attitude, a lack of ambition, and a tendency to enjoy the moment without rush or stress.

So the new vacation goal is fjaka.

Back to our Airbnb in Ston for showers and dinner. We were sunburned and hungry as we prepared pork chops with roasted potatoes and onions, lentils, and cabbage apple slaw in our tiny kitchen.

We drank aperol spritzes, then red wine, then rosé, and then laughed and danced around the kitchen and laughed some more. We laughed until we cried at some of the pictures taken yesterday and probably have stronger abs today due to the hours of laughing.