Day 9: Cres

When we woke up in Cres this morning, it seemed that the weather forecasts predicting a storm for today had been correct. Although the sky still looked blue and cloudless in places, there were some ominous darker clouds gathering above the mountains and the trees outside our apartment were being blown quite strongly in the wind. Happily it was still warm enough to sit outside and have breakfast on the patio

We decided we'd better make the best of the relatively calm weather before things took a turn for the worse, and so straight after breakfast began walking down into Cres town.

We found one of the historical gates into the old town, complete with its Venetian lion.

We also found this castle tower which looked like perhaps it had once been part of the town walls, although it is now standing on its own.

After wandering around the town, we descended to the sea front and began walking along the coast in the opposite direction to the way we had gone yesterday evening. There is quite a long wide path in this direction and we were able to walk for several hours.

The sea, which had been remarkably calm yesterday, was starting to look rather choppy.

At times the waves were so large that they were splashing up onto the path and we got slightly wet a couple of times. There were some beautiful views of the island though as we walked further away from the town.

After a while we came to a bright red lighthouse.

We rounded a corner of the coast and suddenly found ourselves in a part of the bay which was completely sheltered from all the wind. There were even some brave souls out sunbathing.

Eventually the path led us slightly upwards and towards some olive tree plantations. Growing olives is a significant source of employment on Cres.

The sea was becoming choppier again here. We passed a beach with some steps for swimmers to descend into the water, but it didn't look like anybody would be using them today!

The path came to an end on a gravelly little beach beneath the olive groves.

It was time to turn around and head back to town again.

As you can see, I was starting to look rather windswept!

The winds were even stronger on the way back. We stopped at a little cafe on the edge of the town for a coffee and we had some fantastic views of the waves crashing up onto the promenade.

We found an Italian restaurant in a comparatively sheltered spot to get lunch. I was extremely happy to see that they had miš-maš (a mixture between red wine and fanta) on the menu.

It was starting to look increasingly cloudy, so we went straight back to the apartment after lunch. We had only been sitting and reading for a while when I heard a loud banging sound, which turned out to be the fence between our patio and the landlady's patio blowing open. Soon her entire family emerged to try and prop it back up again, eventually succeeding with the help of our patio table to support it. Not long afterwards the heavens opened and it began to rain torrentially.

We haven't had the best weather for our stay in Cres, but we have enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. It was fun to walk by the sea today, even though it was rough Tomorrow we will be leaving the sea behind as we head to Zagreb for a brief overnight stop and then onwards to Slovenia.