BADIJA & VRNIK ISLANDS, ISLAND OF KORCULA

---------------Stayed at: Still at Port 9 campground! Ate at: Fast Food Skoj the only restaurant on Vrnik (GREAT restaurant!), Konoba Nona in Korcula town. Visited: Well, the islands of Badija & Vrnik :)  ----------------- Another sunny August-day in Croatia! We hopped on a water taxi to a nearby tiny little island called Badija :) Found a quiet beach and hopped in. D. tried to dive for treasure, the salty buoyancy of the water makes staying underwater REALLY tricky! He hunted and gathered a sea urchin :O there are what seems like millions along the coast of islands & mainland. Got one of the spikes in my toe years ago on another holiday, not a great feeling...  Very fishy, a bit sweet and sort of fluffy? Hard to explain really. Would happily eat again though! On our way back to the water taxi this guy poked his head around! Thought it was a fake one until it moved, haha!  Also walked past an abandoned old school, complete with playground. Love that kind of thing. Spooky. We paid the taxi guy a bit extra to take us to the next little island as well, Vrnik it was called. Impossible names to pronounce :O We were mostly there since the receptionist at Port 9 had told us that there was a great restaurant there. It wasn't the easiest to locate (even though the island was TEENY) but at last we found it. An Italian family had booked out pretty much the whole place so for a while it looked like we wouldn't be able to eat after all...  But they pulled out an extra little table and popped us in a corner right by the door, yay! I was trés relieved, since this was the only restaurant on the island (and no shops). Phew. The Italian family had pre-ordered this very impressive squid-dish! We ordered in a bunch of different things to try. Local ham & cheese, anchovies, cevapi, fries, their amazing olive oil etc. Been trying to make a GIF of this for a half hour now but it's not cooperating. Instead of driving myself nuts with it I'll leave it, it'll come up in Croatia 2017 - the movie instead :))) After a wonderful lunch at what felt like a real hidden gem we cooled off in the water whilst waiting for the little boat to take us back "home". Skip ahead a few hours, we'd dried off, gotten changed and strolled to Korcula old town (maybe 20 mins walk). The cat whisperer strikes again :))) when I tried to say hi to the cat it hissed. Haha.. We sat down at a place that promised cheap mussels. Cold beer and mussels, hard to beat I think..  The mussels were really nice, I'll give them that. The mains were inedible. I ordered a scampi risotto, which does not deserve the name risotto. The scampi were clearly frozen (hello, we're literally 10 meters away from the Adriatic sea?!) and the "risotto" was just under cooked rice drowned in a canned tomato sauce. TERRIBLE. DO NOT GO HERE. There. Rant over. Minus the dinner we had a wonderful day in Korcula! Definitely recommended to visit the little surrounding islands, doesn't take long at all since they're nearby and teeny tiny :)