Dubrovnik

This is definitly the second city that we a coming back to in February 2012. (Nor take note) we were old that some dais during the summervthere can be aa many as 10 cruise ships in the bay. That would make for wall to wall people, not to mention the heat. So February is still looking good to me.

We took the tenders into the old port. That is definitely the way to enter the City, especially om a day a gorgeous as this one. There is hardly a cloud in the sky and the air is crisp and glorious!

The old walled city is one of the best preserved walled cities in the world we were told and it is a UNESCO world heritage site. One of the things that must be done is to walk the ramparts! It is gist over one mile but it takes lots of time since you HAVE to stop and take photos about every three steps. The stairs up to the ramparts and the stairs throughout can be quite steep but you never feel very at risk. There were a few places where friend five and I felt our stomaches sink and our thighs twitch but mostly it was just amazing.

Our guide was a charming woman named Anna Maria she gave us a great deal of information about the city and about the recent war. About 70% of the old town was bombed. There are still a few areas where you can see the rubble but most of the city was restored by UNESCO. Dubrovnik has been a world heritage site since 1979. When you are on the ramparts you can see the brighter orange roofs, all of those ar restored buildings.

We visited the Rectors palace which is like the Doges palace but not as big. The rector served for omly one month at a time and then there was another election.

We also visited the synagogue which has been an active synagogue since the 1600s, or perhaps ear lie. The Jewish population was never large in Dubrovnik but now there are only 41 on the city.

There are 45 churches in the city, we visited the Dominican monastery. The Franciscans are at the other end of the city. The couryard is lovely and in the museum we saw the forearm of St. Thomas! There are very few monks left but we did see some of them in the street. The patron sati of the city is St Blaise the saint who takes care of throats, not sure why that is important in deciding who your patron saint is but there you are.

After a break for coffee and pastry and after we walked the ramparts we did a bit of shopping. Our guide told us that tourism is their biggest industry and we were certainly doing our best to make sure that the industry stay strong.

We went down one side street and went into a shop where a young woman was selling handwork that she and her family had done. We couldn't leave without making purchases and I took a photo of herewith the work she had done. She told me that there are 14 women in her family and that they all do the work for the shop. She said her mother can do the work without even looking.

We returned to the ship for a sine and cheese tasting and had on our beds an invitation to join the captain for a cocktail--ain't we cool!

The wine and cheese was very good nothing particularly great but good. Right after the former minister of tourism spoke. She talked about her experiences and life. It was most interesting but she kept it pretty high level, we really never got much of a sense of her.

At 6:45 we all met in the reception area in the reception area and were escorted to the bridge. The captain met us and we had champagne and hors droveres with him. He is a very personable individual and talked to us about the ship and how veery much he enjoy sailing to Antarctica. They even have Zodiaks that they take out on the water so the guests can get closer to the whales. They take naturalists with them to tell the passengers about what they are seeing..hm wonder if we could add that to Venice--probably not.

At dinner the chef was introduced to all of us which added to the fun of the evening.

After dinner we went into the lounge. We realized that it was friend sevens daughters birthdays so we toasted to her. While wecsat there we met an American couple who now live in Venice. He is an artist and his father wrote the book upon which the miniseries Pacific was based.

All in all one of our best days on this trip.