A Love Letter to Hvar, Croatia

Hvar, you have stolen my heart.

Your exotic, rocky coastline. Perfect weather. Breathtaking sunsets. Crystal clear turquoise water. Your mega yachts. Kind people. Your endless nightlife.

Hvar, you have stolen my heart.

Your exotic, rocky coastline. Perfect weather. Breathtaking sunsets. Crystal clear turquoise water. Your mega yachts. Kind people. Your endless nightlife.

I spent six nights, seven days in Hvar but I could have stayed a month and been happy!

Hvar feels like the French Riviera but not as fancy. It wasn’t just people there to see and be seen. Hvar is filled with young travelers down to have a good time.

Although there were many mega yachts in the harbor!  New life goal is to vacation, buy, rent, whatever on a yacht one day!

 

I spent six nights, seven days in Hvar but I could have stayed a month and been happy!

Hvar feels like the French Riviera but not as fancy. It wasn’t just people there to see and be seen. Hvar is filled with young travelers down to have a good time.

Although there were many mega yachts in the harbor!  New life goal is to vacation, buy, rent, whatever on a yacht one day!

Our first day I had one goal and one goal only. Cook myself stupid in the sun. I love a good tan more than anything.

I was also desperate to have my first swim in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Med is incredibly salty! It is so thick you can easily just lay on your back and float. But I didn’t love how it stuck to my skin when I got out.

Where to Stay

My favorite part of Hvar was our hostel. We stayed at Villa Skansi and it was by far my favorite hostel. Not only was it incredibly clean with a beautiful terrace overlooking the Sea, but the staff was amazingly generous and friendly! Bojana was one of the girls who worked there and she was great. She took us out every night, getting us free drinks and showing us cheap places to get food. Most staff at previous hostels show you your room and never speak to you again. The staff at Villa Skansi would come in our rooms, hang out, make jokes and show us how to have a good time. They were perfect for our six night stay.

There was a free pub crawl each night where we got two free shots. Everyone at the hostel participated. It was a perfect way to meet people. Every night there were literally 30 people just hanging out on the terrace sharing stories and drinking…heavily. This place needs its own TV show. The situations that happen are hilarious.

At most of our hostels, we’ve found that at night people like to sit around and drink and talk but during the day most people want to do their own thing. It was not like this at Villa Skansi. Everyone wanted to go out and explore Hvar’s nightlife (or rather morning-life! It doesn’t really start until midnight and goes until 6 a.m. most nights) together and then plan an activity for the next day. We’d wake up in the morning, everyone would say what they were going to do and we would all change to do it together. Everyone was so friendly and fun that we were all instantly friends.

Our first night, we met a group of Brits traveling after graduating from uni. Chelsea and I really haven’t drank much on this trip so we struggled a little the first night. It ended with Chelsea buying two pizzas, bringing them to the bar and us going home at midnight.

The next morning, the Brits invited us to rent boats with them to explore the surrounding islands. You don’t need a boating license to rent a boat in Hvar which is absolutely insane to me but oh well! I have a boating license but I let Ollie do the driving.

But I did have a great time messing with the Brits. It was just before July 4 so I kept teasing them telling them I was going to celebrate not being part of their country anymore. They really didn’t think it was funny. But they had great senses of humor. Miss those guys!

I also loved Hvar because our friends Gina and Emily from home came to visit us! They’re traveling around Europe for two weeks and made a stop in Hvar. It was so refreshing to see people from home who understand me and who I feel so comfortable with. They’re also crazy. They’re loud girls from Long Island who just take over a room when they walk into it so they made our stay at Villa Skansi that much more fun. It was also Fourth of July while we were there so it was nice to have others to spend it with.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of what we did on Hvar. We laid in the sun (a lot!), read, swam, drank (a lot!) and did little sleeping. We did do one activity which was paddle boarding! I’ve always wanted to try it out and the Med wasn’t a bad place for a first time. It was a lot easier than I thought. It helped that the board was massive. Chelsea and I did it together and we let our Aussie friend Liam give it a try but he was more just trying to knock us off and drown us.

Hvar is definitely about the nightlife. For example – our first night we stayed in after a 10 hour travel day. At 8 a.m. the next morning, an Indonesian guy ran in all pissed off and started pacing around the room before just face planting into his bed. People stayed out until 6, 7, 8 a.m. almost every night. The latest I stayed out was 5 a.m. just as the sun was starting to come up. I can’t hang like that!

Chelsea did not have such luck…she spent the last night in Hvar in the hospital. She’s had quite a cold this entire trip but the sleepless nights, heavy drinking and heavy sunning in Hvar finally did her in. She was laying in her bed in a cold sweat shaking and crying. She was in pants, a fleece and a blanket even though it was 80 degrees. I asked her several times if she wanted to see a doctor and finally when Bojana asked her at 10 p.m., she agreed.

Julia, the owner of Villa Skansi, drove us to the hospital and translated Chelsea’s symptoms for us. She was absolutely unbelievable and we cannot thank her enough for helping us.

The hospital was a little…dirty. They made me leave the room while they examined Chelsea and when I came back in, she had an IV and an incredibly bloody arm. Still not sure what happened.

The hospital on Hvar is tiny. Of course because it’s a tiny island. There is one doctor and two paramedics for the entire island. The examination room had spiders on the floor and bugs everywhere. When I came back in I asked Chelsea if the needle had been taken out of a sterile package and she couldn’t remember. Great…

But we did Snapchat the entire situation.

The doctors were absolutely in love with her. We asked if she could fly as we were supposed to head to Mykonos the next day and they said no, she had to stay for 10 years. She had two IVs and two hours later it was time to go. When the paramedic took out her IV, he told me to take out my camera and video tape it. He was putting on a show. It was just so bizarre.

Despite Chelsea’s mishap, Hvar has been my favorite spot so far. I definitely left my heart in Hvar. To Mathieu, Liam, Rennyn, Willzie, Ollie, Tom, Jack, Lee, Kieran, Sam, Dan, Putu, Brendon and Jamie – we miss you all and your crazy stories! And for letting us show you that American girls are actually fun and not annoying.