Rainy Days

Call me ignorant, but Europe in June spells sunshine to me. It’s why we chose that month to escape Melbourne and the beginning of winter. Unfortunately, winter came with us. It rained everywhere we went, which in some places didn’t matter: Barcelona is just as beautiful in a downpour, Paris is arguably more romantic under an ominous grey sky, and London just wouldn’t be London without a shower or six.

But when it rained in Croatia I was mad. We’d skipped Budapest and Sarajevo to spend two weeks island hopping in the Adriatic where the sun would surely shine. It did not, not even on Hvar, which receives an incredible 2724 hours of sunshine a year. Our week on the island contributed three hours to the annual total.

It didn’t work out the way we’d planned, but in the end it didn’t matter. We slept in, had long lunches, discovered Croatia’s national parks and Tuscan-style regions, and got lost in Dubrovnik’s magical Old Town.

Our planned beach time was spent at the bar, and I lost count of the times I slipped on the polished stone of the Stradun. But the ice-cream tasted just as good.

And another unexpected bonus: the weather was so bad that every hotel offered us a discount and an apology because ‘it never rains here’.

How do you like the rain when you’re on the road?

- Gabrielle Nancarrow is an inhouse Content Producer at Lonely Planet

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