Cres and Dubrovnik, Croatia

I'm really behind in updating this so I'm going to be brief. Last I left off we had just arrived in Cres, Croatia at about 6 in the am. I slept until about 11 am when I woke up and started writing postcards. Soon my parent's friends came back and asked if I wanted to walk around the town with them. We took a stroll along the harbor and checked out an old church or two. Cres is really beautiful and relaxing. It's a bit like Italy, and in fact used to be part of Italy, but is nowhere near as expensive or touristy. We came back to the condo at about 1 pm to find my parent's still sleeping. While they got up I went swimming in the condo complex pool (cold but refreshing). Then everyone got ready and we walked around the harbor again, had a drink at a little cafe, ate dinner ("tomato salad" is made up entirely of tomatoes. Now I know), then walked around some more. Whilst browsing postcards I saw a poster for a viewing of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" in English with Croatian subtitles for that very night. No one but my lovely mother wanted to go with me so my dad and the friends went to get plastered while my mom and I wandered up and down the little streets trying to find the theater. We finally did find a little outdoor set up with out 5 other people waiting for the show to start. The whole set up was so cute. My mom even made me stand in front of the screen so she could take a picture. The movie was pretty funny and there was full frontal. Afterwards we found the rest of our party, plastered, as planned.

My parents and I were pretty tired of driving but the next morning we nonetheless hopped in the car for a grueling 7 hour drive down the Croatian coast to Dubrovnik, the jewl of the Adriatic. The drive was fine until Split when the highway ended and became a one lane winding road right on the edge of the coast. The scenery was breath taking but I was busy trying to keep my head from swimming. When we finally reached Dubrovnik just as the sun went down we were ecstatic to find that our hotel was not only really close to the old city but also really nice, easy to find, AND included a free upgrade with a better view. We walked around the old city a bit and even went to a vegetarian restaurant (review to come) before retiring for the night. The next morning we had a nice breakfast at the hotel and headed to the city to hike the city walls. I think we were all in a sort of foul mood as the day began but as soon as we got onto the walls that changed completely. I'm not sure I can really even describe Dubrovnik. I don't mean to brag but I feel like I've travelled a fair bit and I've never seen anything like Dubrovnik. It's like this medieval town of orange tiled roofs surrounded by complete city walls. My mom read to us from her Rick Steve's book that during the Yugoslavian war the Serbian and Yugoslavian armies bombed the hell out of Dubrovnik despite it really being just a tourist town. They destroyed some of the buildings in the old city completely and damaged many of the famed orange roofs while the city residents stayed within the walls for 8 months waiting out the Serbian attack. She read that some nuns put all their money in Swiss banks just before the war and after it was over the took it all out and used it to rebuild Dubrovnik. It took us over 2 hours to walk the walls but I could have walked around that city all day. The various churches and buildings with their tiled roofs with the amazingly blue Adriatic Sea sparkling just below was a site I don't think I will ever forget. Unfortunately we had not even a full day in Dubrovnik so after the wall walk we had lunch and then headed back up the coast.

We had plans to take an overnight car ferry to Ancona, Italy from Split but that didn't work out so we drove up to a random hostel like hotel in Slovenia and stopped for the night. Earlier we stopped in a random Croatian small town for dinner. I have never felt more out of place. Every single person in the restaurant/bar turned to look at us when we walked in. I ate a salad and fries. Not unusual those days. But anyway, I shall leave you in Slovenia.

Still to come: Padua, Verona, Lugano, Lucern, Geneva, Cinque Terre, Pisa, and Florence.