It was the trip of a lifetime. Even so, some days are better than others. This day was the opposite of better.

Korcula, like the other destinations we visited in Croatia is a castle city. While it’s not the best “castle city” we visited, an enjoyable and interesting day could be had there. That’s not what happened. Our cruise line Holland American offer excursions once you dock. Some are better than others, some are OK, and this one that we took was so bad I started calling it the Papillon cruise after the movie with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman that chronicles their stay  at the infamous French Guiana penal colony known as Devil’s Island. 

The “information” sheet provided by Holland America called this day’s excursion the Dalmatian Riviera Cruise, you know what I called it. From the Holland America description, “From Korcula, you’ll set out by boat to weave through the 20-island Korcula Archipelago”. If by weave they mean take the straightest route possible to the first island, then the description is correct. The description mentions 20 islands, sorry I’d say we say 4 or 5 different islands.

In researching this blog post I found this review of the excursion.
“POOR VALUE – Date:May 19, 2015

This was just a boat ride to some very unimpressive places. The guide was terrible and was not well prepared. Save your money. The only thing to do in Korcula is visit the Old Town. You can do this yourself for free.”

The author of the review FredT. forgot one thing, besides the complete lack of anything to see, the excursion wasted 4 hours of your time that could have been spend doing something enjoyable.

The day started just fine with a nice sunrise.

If you are on the Holland America Dalmatian Riviera Cruise excursion and see this sign, don’t expect to see much of value.

Yes, that was one of the most interesting things we saw, a kind of neat water faucet.

I think the Police came because somebody started to enjoy the excursion.

Yeah, this is a beach Orebic, just without the sand. Orebic was one of the two islands the Dalmatian Rivera Cruise visited.

This was the photo highlight of the second stop we made which was the small town of Lumbarda on the Holland America Dalmatian Riviera Cruise.  This was at least an hour stop that offered little to do except trying to find a place to wait it out in the shade.

Once we arrived back at Korcula, things were much more picturesque and enjoyable.

Neat little church we found.