Goodbye from Korcula pt 2

Hi family, I'm writing this to you on our 2nd to last day in Bol, but it'll be about our last day on korcula island. on this day, we went to another prt of the Korcula island called Lumbarda, just south of where we were staying which is old town korcula. We were going to rent and ride a bicycle there,about 6km, but then we got lazy, so then we were going to take the local bus, but we got lazy, ad then we found a water taxi, which was only 2 bucks more than bus so we decided to take water taxi, same idea as the aqua bus for Granville island or star ferry on hong kong, but it's driven by an old sea man and it fits only bout 20 ppl. There are a lot of little islands on around korcula, so it was nice to see the landscape. The weather was not so sunny, and not as hot as the previous day when we were just dying from the heat. I think was a storm coming for the night. Lumbarda was originally founded or named by Venetians who are from Italy, so when they discovered the land they brought wine grapes with the, and so Lumbarda has vineyards in a lot of the area. After we walked up 200m of upward stairs, omg so humid and difficult, we came upon the view of vineyards!!! Different than Germany's vineyards, I think they were not as high and had red and white grapes alternating and, more wide space. We wanted to go to Lumbarda to do wine tasting so we eventually kept walking along this car road and found a small tourist info office who gave us directions to a local vineyard that does it. After 30 mins of walking, not difficult walking, but it was on the same road as cars as they don't have side walks, you just walk along the coast and beside cars, we found the street of the winery. There were lots of fruits and vegetables growing. I saw... Eggplant! Tomatoes, what I think re persimmons but I'm not sure. It I know I've seen them at T&T before, white peppers, and grapes. The drive or neighborhood street that lead to this winery was very very quiet, like nobody around, not sure if ppl lived in those stone houses or what, but eventually we found a sign to this winery, Bire. We looked around, nobody on sight, and eventually found a door that said "open." so we walked in and realized it was a dark chamber with benches, a bar and it was air conditioned!!! We saw a German couple drinking and chatting w/ the owner and the owner's son led us to the bar and that's where we did a wine tasting. The grapes we originally saw when we walked over those steps is their grape vineyard! And where we were having the wine tasting is their production office. They have 2 local wines, white called GRK, and a red I forgot the name. They were both very tasty,good quality wines. We eventually sat down on the long tales to have a full glass of red wine. We made sure to hydrate w/ water b/c we were so hot from walking outside. Apparently the next day, this winery was going to start harvesting all their grapes! The guy was saying they start at 5am and end around 11am b/c it gets so hot and they have to start the production right away b/c once the grapes are plucked they only have x time to get the best out of the grapes. They product about 10k bottles each season, and only for the local use and for korcula island. We were thinking of buying a bottle, but it would be a pain to pack it and we would still have to go thru the split to Gatwick airport md the Heathrow to Vancouver airport. I didn't want to deal w/ any potential security and customs issues. Ppl can be douchebags about it. After the German couple left it was just me and farhan and after we left it looked like they had closed up shop. Good thing w got there when we did or maybe it wouldn't have been open which would've sucked b/c that's why we wanted to go there. It was very very quiet there, I think their tourist season has ended or the big boats don't bother visiting this area. Actually old town korcula was a little quiet too, just depends which ferry and cruise boats are there. We returned to korcula town via bus b/c we didn't feel like waiting for the taxi boat guy, and when we got. Ack we went for a swim in the sea area right outside our flat. After that we went to buy our tix to get to Brac island via Split. Tix office only open for 1 hr each day. They work on island time here.... There ws a storm or run predicted so the ferry was docked on a diff side than usual, it was ok, we could still walk to it from the flat. Otherwise a pretty uneventual day for us, we've definitely slowed down on the activities and are just happy to get a swim in, in the sea. Like I said, we had to wake up at 430am, to catch the 6am ferry. Took us quicker than expected to walk our heavy suitcases to the boat, b/c we got there by 515 and the captain wouldn't let us on yet. Tis ferry boat is fast, faster than the big ferry boat that went from Dubrovnik to Korcula. This one is called a catamaran, but not the catamaran you're thinking of, it's like a speed. It goes so fast, took 3 hrs to get to split, had stopped at Hvar island first. We were thinking of going to Hvar island from Korcula on that full day at Korcula, which meant catching th 6am catamaran, but after our early morning journey to get to Korcula, thought no way, too tired which is why we went to Lumbarda instead.plus to do 2 6am ferry departures In a row, that is brutal. Oh well. You see one island you see them all...? At least that's what I'm telling myself haha. Even if we did go to Hvar, we would've gotten there by 730am and nothing's open! And the 6am ferry to Hvar from korcula was the ONLY time option. Ok that's it from Korcula. It was a beautiful is and, water, again, awesome, and glad we saw it. Love you, Helen