A report from Dubrovnik

Stan's sister Linda is on her annual European trip with her husband Ron. She's doing a good job of keeping the family up-to-date on her itinerary, this year through Italy and Croatia and the "soft underbelly" of Europe, as Winston would say. Here's a sampler of her detailed etchings of their daily life. If you'd like more, comment and Stan can forward you the other emails so far, filled with tips and details.


She writes:
. . .Shortly after leaving the internet cafe in Split, our every day perfect weather was interrupted by a thorough drenching.  No problem, we bussed back to Pink Inn for the night, another scrumptious breakfast and off we went down the coast to Dubrovnik.

The three hour trip turned into 4 1/2 as we kept pulling off into cutouts for a hundred or two hundred pictures.  The Dalmatian Coast is that impressive.

Once again our directions brought us to the door of our next apartment, right past Old Town, (no one can miss it) and up a switchback and up and up to a reserved parking spot.  Now that's value.  A few of you have said you'd like more on Croatian contacts so here's the best one I found. www.dubrovnikapartmentsource.com  Check out Aerie, Apt. 1 That's ours.   I had searched books, tripadvisor and all my usual hotel.coms and couldn't be confident of getting everything I wanted and then maybe on ricksteves.com I found a simple recommendation for DAS and bingo, I had it all.  For those of you who don't like the detail work, this one site can do it for you otherwise you choose between the Hilton and some strange sobe.  DAS says it takes 10 to l5 minutes for the 300 plus steps down to the ancient city, but it took us only 5 and then 10 to get back up.  Also, without our leaving our terrace, our helpful hostess 0Diana set us up with Adriatic Explore for our day trips to Montenegro on Wednesday and Mostar (Bosnia) on Thursday.  Ron can tell you about the trips, but he is sleeping right now.  They were excellent, 20 guest brand new bus, great guides both on the bus and local, interesting border crossings.  Well worth it.

Number 1 attraction is walking the walled city Wso that made way over 1,000 steps UP/Down besides the regular walking during the day.  The ancient city is immaculate, rebuilt since the war in the '90s.  Beautiful.  Each evening we would explore, eat, and then drop into the RS recommended netcafe and catch up on news/emails.  Our last night was really special, piano music while we ate and then later we ran into a couple of American girls drooling over their crepes.  They showed us where to get them and the owner gleefully and generously showed us his $5,000 French crepe making machine and put together the yummiest chocolate, nut, banana, anything you want on it crepe.  Unforgettable, also the fun we had with the German family joining us in the pure joy of travel and sharing crepes.  Just 10 Kuna, less than $2.


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