A week in Croatia – part 1: arrival at Lopud and The Lafodia

Back in 2015, I was midway through planning a holiday to Croatia, when a lot of fuss with Scottish Power finally got resolved and we found ourselves with a bit of a windfall. As a result, we decided to visit Curacao in the Carribean instead. However, I really did want to go to Croatia one day and kept the plans in the back of my mind until the next opportunity presented itself.

We decided to book a week in the Lafodia on Lopud Island, a 50-minute ferry trip from Dubrovnik, for the middle of May. We flew from Glasgow with Jet2 early on Sunday morning and found ourselves in Dubrovnik by about noon. It was already very warm, in spite of being early on in the season and we gathered our luggage and tried to figure out how to get from the airport to the hotel.

 

Getting fizzy at 35,000 feet

 

This turned out to be a minor faff. There’s an airport shuttle bus that will take you into the centre of Dubrovnik and more busses that will take you from the Old Town to the Port of Dubrovnik. All are cheap, frequent and easy to use. The challenge arose when we discovered that on Sundays they don’t run many ferries to the island and we’d have to wait until 8 pm. Oooops.

 

To be fair, of all the places I’ve been stuck waiting around, this is probably the one I’ve complained about least

 

Not to worry. There were a few bars near the port where we could relax, soak up some sunshine, people watch and, importantly, order pizza. I think every single bar we visited during our trip had pizza available on the menu – and it was always good. Possibly we’re lucky, or possibly that’s a side effect of being so close to Italy. Either way, it worked for me.

 

When people talk about public transport, I guess they aren’t usually thinking of sunset ferry crossings

 

Eventually, the ferry showed up, around the same time as the sun started setting, and we climbed aboard. It stopped at the smaller island of Koločep first, before heading on to Lopud. We were pretty tired after a day’s travel (even if most of it had been spent sitting around) and we were keen to check into the hotel, shower, unpack and find somewhere to serve us a glass of wine. P asked me, “do you know the way to the hotel from the ferry port?” I answered, “I think it’s just up the beach, but I suspect we’ll be able to see it.” I was right.

 

The Lafodia at night from across the bay. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to figure out where the hotel is.

 

The Lafodia is enormous. It’s right on the beach, seven stories high, and basically dominates the bay. It’s especially impressive at night when the lights from the hotel are reflected in the sea. We walked the five minutes from the ferry port to the hotel, checked in and relaxed. We could explore the next day – we decided to take things easy and just order a bottle of Croatian red wine in the hotel bar.