STON CROATIA GREAT WALL OF EUROPE Longest Walls in Europe & Mali Ston Oysters Seafood & Wine

It is 7 a.m. We're in the car, hit the road for a little road trip. We're heading over to the town of Cortula to catch a ferry. Let's go. Okay, so we have made it to Cortula to catch our ferry and Angela and I being notoriously early for everything, that's the eight o'clock ferry. We are not jumping on until the nine o'clock ferry. But we are the first ones in line. Actually, we're the only ones in line. Hi, we're Jeff and Angela and we're Pure Detour. This summer we are island hopping the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. Ferry from Cortula has landed in Orobic about an hour left to go before our destination. And this is stone Croatia. And these walls back behind me are why we came here. These walls are the longest continuous fortified system in all of Europe. These walls were built in the 14th century to protect the port and these extremely valuable salt pans you see back behind. So in these squares behind us, they would collect seawater. They would allow the sunshine to evaporate the seawater and they would be left with beautiful sea salt, which has been a major export of this region for centuries. Hi, it's June. It's about 30 degrees outside. Our fat asses are about to attempt to climb these walls. Let's see how this goes. I'm sweating and we haven't even started. Just got started, already out of breath, but you can see the vantage point that they had to protect these salt mines from every angle you can imagine. Okay, so if you come to stone and you come in through entrance A, when you first come in, do not take the stairway on the left unless you just want to go up and look at the lookout point there. It doesn't lead anywhere. This, the longest walls in all of Europe were originally about seven kilometers long. Look how far up they go into the mountain. And do you wonder like what they were trying to stop from up there? Like who is trying to cross in at the top of that mountain? When we started climbing the walls, we thought that we were going to be able to go all the way up. As we get up here, this is all under construction. You cannot go up that way. My fat ass is very thankful for that. About five minutes into our walk, Jeff and I are already sweating like dogs. We've made it into this little cavey area and I don't know anything about it, but I'm stopping to do a shot because it's shady. So right above Angela's little cavey thing, there's another little lookout point up here. Once again, back there, we have no idea what they would have been protecting up there. So we have to shoot over this way now. That's where we're going to be climbing up next. One thing I can say, the views up here are spectacular. Well, at least this portion of it's a ramp. Not many stairs. It's only a step every 30, 40 feet or so. I think we've made it to the highest point here, so hopefully it's all downhill from here. These walls were built when Stone was actually a part of the Republic of Ragusa. Nearby Dubrovnik, which is much more famous for its smaller walls, was also part of the Republic of Ragusa. But I've been to Dubrovnik and those walls are packed. Here, look, absolutely nobody here. Over there, nobody. So a couple minutes ago, I said that I think that we're at the highest part of the wall and that it's all downhill from there. I was very, very wrong. Starting up the second portion of the wall here. This is going to take us to Mali Stone or Small Stone. Check out what Angela's seeing up in front of her. I think we way overestimated the difficulty of this climb up these stairs. I'm calling it. So we've already been climbing a while. I am sweaty and I am out of breath and we kind of just turned a little bit of a corner and it just keeps going, like as far as the eye can see, steps upwards. If you come here to Stone, know that it's gorgeous. But also know that if you are traveling with kids or you have like a knee problem or you have a heart problem or if you're chubby and middle-aged like us, you may not make these stairs. We are leaving the town of Stone. We're going to go to a nearby town called Mali Stone, Little Stone, which is where our hotel for the night is. We've made it to our little hotel here in Mali Stone. We are going to have a cold shower, get all this sweat off us, wait for the heat of the day to dissipate a little bit and we will see you around dinner time. This peninsula we are on is called Peljesic and it is famous for its wine, specifically its white wine. And this bay back behind me is famous for its oysters and lucky for us, wouldn't you know it, we both love those things so let's go eat some. And that stupid wall that we gave up on earlier, this is where it ends up right here. Like we said, we both love oysters and wine so we have stopped at what is supposed to be a little staple here within Mali Stone. Look at these oysters, just so gorgeous, pulled fresh from the sea today from their very own oyster farm. Oh wow. I'm just going with what I know here with oysters. I like oysters with hot sauce so here we go. That's amazing. People say that raw oysters are an aphrodisiac. I think oyster man would agree. And if you are ever in Mali Stone, come visit Liliana at Bebech Oyster Bar. The oysters here are so special. They actually have the protected destination of origin because this bay here is is very conducive to making some of the best seafood in the world. Definitely check it out. Dozen oysters, two glasses of wine each, and then our fat asses wonder why we can't climb a wall. And this is De La Coruna. The little hotel that we're staying at here in Mali Stone, the owner's mom works here. She told us to come here and check it out and we walked in and oh my god, I've never seen tanks like this. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's full of sea bass, full of oysters, full of lobsters. Everything looks so fresh, so amazing. I cannot wait to eat it. Oh my god, look how fresh the seafood here is. So we started over there with fresh oysters on the half shell. Now we're trying them fried. We have a little sauce there dipping in. Oh, so good. These are fresh deep fried mussels. So delicious. After several glasses of wine and we're about to leave here, the proprietor has brought us out a bottle of, sorry, a shot of rakia. If you've not had rakia before, this stuff is rocket fuel. Extremely strong, but this one is actually particularly smooth. Cheers. Overall, our day here in Stone and Mali Stone has been fantastic. Yeah, it's been amazing. Really close to here. A lot of you have probably heard of Dubrovnik. So much more famous, so much more busy, and it feels a lot more touristy. So if you're looking for something a little bit more local, I think this might be a hidden gem here. Yeah, it's probably just worth a couple of days here. But anyways, that's going to wrap up this video here from Stone. We will see you on the next one. Good night. This is what eight o'clock drunk looks like. Doesn't smell like anything.