Bol and Trogir

Today we have two stops on the docket. We first stop at the island of Brac, where the town of Bol sits, which boasts some of the most beautiful beaches in all of Croatia. This is the location for some of the main cover photos touting Croatia’s beauty on travel brochures. We walk along the promenade along the coastline to Golden Horn Beach, a pebble beach well known for its shifting formation as the tides pick up and carry pebbles to another part throughout the year. The beach is beautiful, with those turquoise blue waters and you can tell a lot of sunbathers come here for their vacations. After a brief amount of time here, we board our vessel and enjoy lunch as we are motoring on to Trogir.

Trogir is a small little ‘island’ connected by bridges to the mainland. It is known as Little Venice and was originally started by the Greeks in 300 BC, one of the oldest consistently used settlements we have visited. As it once used to be a fortified city, but the French tore down the walls and built a promenade instead to allow you to walk around it. It is said they opted to do this due to hygiene, as the city was kept filthy, and they implemented some other practices to require better cleanliness. The main gate from 1612 still exists as the main entrance into the city, and the whole area is no more than 500m by 250 m in total. Here you can see an old Benedictine Monastery still with three nuns living there who never leave the monastery, St. Lawrence’s cathedral, one of the most ornate and decorative cathedrals we have seen thus far, and the old government building (which is still used as such), and the open air lodge, or court, which was used to settle matters hundreds of years ago. The central square is truly breathtaking and you can imagine living here all those years ago with the bustling restaurants and shops now taking the place of what likely was a lively market in the square. 

We wander around the town after a guided tour and then board the boat again for a Captain’s dinner tonight. The vessel brings in live musicians to play a mix of typical Croatian music, folk songs, and old English language favorites for us. The night is spent enjoying each other’s company, dancing, and thanking the crew for such a good week together.