Dubrovnik, Croatia

On our way to Croatia!!


New tastes on the airplane:





This is such a typical scene all day in Dubrovnik.  Every restaurant puts tables out in the streets/alleys and there are always people eating until very late at night.



Beautiful water and boats.



Night scene within the walls of the city.


We missed out on some of the night life, but the morning we left, we saw people heading home at 5 a.m., so there must be a lot going on.

Morning view of a walkway.



7 am. view.  My favorite time.  This was when the locals went to the markets.


The stairs to our Airbnb place in Dubrovnik.



The kitchen of our Airbnb place in Dubrovnik.



The green market was open every morning.  The first day, I saw lots of strawberries and raspberries.  They were labeled as 20 krona.  The next day, early in the morning (7 a.m.), I didn't see as many and I had to pay 30 krona for a small basket of strawberries.  Hmm. . .




View from the wall walk of the harbor.  This area was targeted in the 1991 bombings/fire.
Notice the yellow submarine boat.




I loved all the tiled roofs.


Family picture in Dubrovnik on the city wall.



You can see examples of new and old roofs in this picture.  Many buildings were damaged or destroyed in 1991.


We started our wall walk around 9 a.m.  This is what it looked like around 10:30 a.m.



We took the advice of the cabdriver who took us to Durbrovnik from the airport and visited St. Jacob's beach for a little swimming.  It was about a mile walk from the city.


We hiked up to the top of the mountain (instead of taking the gondolas which were about $20 per person).  It was a nice hike and we got lots of great views of the walled city and ocean.



The sunset view from the top was gorgeous!







But then, a storm rolled in with thunder and lightening.  We wanted to take the gondola down one-way, but by the time we got through the long line, they had barely closed the ticket counter and refused to sell us a ticket.  We made a bit of a fuss since it didn't seem to safe to walk down in the lightening storm, but they stayed firm and gave us a taxi's phone number.  A bunch of other people were sheltering in some buggies outside the building waiting for taxis.  Fortunately, the museum was still open (until 10 p.m.), so we paid the entry fee and learned about the 1991 attacks on the city. By 10, the rain had subsided and we decided that we could just walk back down to the city (16 switchbacks).









 We rewarded ourselves with wonderful ice cream cones once we got to the front gate of the city!

Our next adventure was kayaking from the island of Lopud.  Eric and William enjoyed some cliff jumping and explored a cave. We all enjoyed being on the water.  Our guide was an Olympic hopeful for the kayak slalom event.








Lunch at Sipan:



The next day we took the ferry to the National Park Mljet and rode bikes.











We left Dubrovnik at 5 a.m.  I loved the lighting and deserted streets.