What a fabulous place. Easily the most interesting town we’ve visited so far. Everyone says so, and they’re right.

We’ve decided to stay here for two nights and set off on a wander around the old cobbled streets. It’s a very busy place, full of tourists, restaurants and glamorous posers. We ended up walking up the narrow alleys and before we knew it stumbled across signs to the old fortress which had appeared far too high up for us to be remotely tempted.

It was a hell of a climb in the heat but the view, as exclaimed by a couple of downward walking English girls was amazing. It’s quite surreal to think the people who built the fortress 500 years ago had the same view of the bay and islands as we did (albeit no yachts or Sunseekers).

We had in our plan to spend a day on the beach on the other side of Palmižana but that assumed we would have been in the marina. So on our second day we got the boat taxi for £6 each return. The beach was basically a narrow strip of jagged rocks around the bay and you hunted down a flat strip that wouldn’t lacerate you when laying down. There was barely enough room to swing a cat – either on the ‘beach’ or in the bay which was absolutely packed with all manner of motor boats. We managed about 3 hours and headed back. Ice cream back in Hvar was at the more expensive end of the scale at 80p per cone (cheapest so far 50p) – properly delicious.

On reflection not getting into the marina was a blessing in disguise (looked especially grotty) and having the best part of two full days in the town was fantastic.

The pizza we had the previous night in the main square was pretty decent but this night we hunted something on the back streets and found a good seafood restaurant.