14 Korčula Scavenger Hunt

The island town of Korčula boasts a walled city look against a fjord mountain backdrop just across the channel. It’s the birthplace of Marco Polo, thus one in five shops carry the name … the town’s poster boy. The medieval Old Town area is the size of COS campus with walls rising 20 feet above the sea. A 30 foot ring separates the wall from the cluster of densely packed apartments and town buildings, mostly privately owned zimmers. The 40 foot ring has three lanes, the closest to the buildings used for restaurant seating or souvenir shopping, then a 12 foot wide asphalt lane for cargo vans in the early morning then pedestrian traffic starting at 7:00. The last lane is another 10 feet of restaurant seating butting up against the wall and overlooking the majestic Sea and impressive mainland mountains beyond. What an awesome place to have a leisurely lunch, a quiet relaxing cup of coffee, a fishy fish dinner or an evening gelato.

The Old Town is strategically laid out with the mounded city split in the middle east-west by the main Street of the Korčulan Statue of 1214. Branching off the street to the west are straight pedestrian alleys allowing the cool northern winds to fill the center. The pedestrian alleys to the east are curved preventing the hotter southern winds from enter the city center.

One morning, the eight gathered for a Rick Steves’ scavenger hunt of downtown Korčula. It was fun with Petey’s dramatic readings from Rick’s poignant passages. We discovered the distinctively Venetian Great Land Gate with the official city seal marking the town’s importance as the southernmost bastion of the Venetian Republic. We found the Rector’s Palace and toured St. Mark’s Cathedral where the weapons display on the entrance wall seemed like a funny way to welcome visitors. The Cathedral is the home to many beautiful alters and statues, among them St. Rok pointing to his wounded leg, a saint the helps cure diseases. Just outside, Dave spotted a sign supporting old guys and across the way Petey found a perfect landmark to signal the exact location of our zimmer … it was a gelato shop. Dave and I shopped the Marco Polo gift shop just outside his house. The shop carried and interesting collection of old-school mariner instruments.