September 7th: In the morning we headed for the ferry out to the island of Vis.
The plan was to relax and unwind after two busy and physically hard weeks touring Iceland. But when we arrived, we had to drag more weight each than a Marine carries into combat, nearly a mile, slightly uphill, to reach our apartment.
Vis is probably most famous in America as the filming site of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018). I’ll probably have to rewatch it now to see what locations I can recognize.
For dinner we went to Restoran Val on the waterfront. The catch of the day included monkfish, which I had first sampled as sushi in Iceland.
Cooked monkfish was nearly as good as the sushi. If you get the chance to try it, you should.
September 8th: A lazy morning. We split a pizza for lunch.
September 9th: Another ćevapi for lunch.
In the afternoon we had refresher scuba dives. I hadn’t dived in about 7 years. I didn’t take the GoPro because my instructor didn’t want me distracted, which was probably a good idea, but we did see two octopi that I can’t show you. 😦 On the way back we stopped at a boat bunker from the Tito era. Vis has a lot of military installations from the cold war.
September 10th: Sandwiches at Kavana Riva for lunch. (“kava” means coffee, “kavana” means cafe or coffee shop.)
Then two scuba dives. Vis harbor is one of 4 places in the Mediterranean where you can legally dive to see amphorae from old Greek and Roman shipwrecks.
At dinner I tried a lemongrass-flavored sparkling mineral water, Römerquelle Emotion Limunska Trava, and really liked it. It became my go-to drink on hot days. Römerquelle is bottled in Austria, sold only in Europe, and part of the Coca Cola family.
The harbor in the evening.
September 11th: Our day to drive around the island (counterclockwise). We rented a tiny car that surprisingly had plenty of legroom on the passenger side.
First stop was the 2nd-largest town on the island, Komiža (population about 1400). We considered staying there.
A bit further around the island, and higher up in the hills, we found the entrance to the “Tito Cave”, where Yugoslav partizans hid out during WWII. It’s actually a series of different caves, with overlook posts guarding the approaches.
Then we drove as high as we could get by car, without entering the restricted military base on top of the mountain.
Then we went looking for the local nude beach. This sign clearly wasn’t for it; FKK = Freikörperkultur (“free body culture”), a prominent German naturism/nudism movement started in the 1800s, which has become shorthand for nudism across much of Europe despite the tendency to use English for everything else.
But we couldn’t see how else to proceed, so we ended up reaching the water in the wrong place, and had to hike over wet uneven rocks.
Once we found it, it was rocky with almost no shade, because it’s a south-facing beach and it was early afternoon. We saw a few other couples and singles around, some swimming, some just sunbathing. There was pretty good snorkeling, with some deep pockets just offshore.
On the way back, we tried going higher, and found a better route that included a small bunker.
Carol even hiked out nude until we got close to people.
In the evening we saw Shang-Chi in an outdoor theater. Half the movie was in Chinese with Croatian subtitles, which made it challenging.
September 12th: Carol went snorkeling in the morning while I rested and blogged.
Then it was time to pack up and drag our stuff back to the ferry. But we broke up the slog by having lunch at Bistro Frutarija.
After that it was just travel. Hike to ferry, take ferry to Split, hike to bus terminal, take bus to Zadar, hike to our new apartment, eat something, and sleep.
Energy and Time 