Climbing the Walls in Dubrovnik, Croatia

Benjamin probably said it best. "We would never have chosen Dubrovnik, Croatia, except that it was on the ship's tour schedule. Missing it would have been a real loss." Or something like that. I took far more photos there than anywhere else. It was astoundingly beautiful, and the clouds that day were phenomenal. If I had painted them in, I would be getting complaints that they were too beautiful to be real. My slide show is longer than usual, but I cut it down twice already, and I'm not going to slice away any more photos.

John and I kept smiling at each other that day. It was hotter than it had been, but there was a bit of a breeze to keep us comfortable. I was enjoying the beauty of the day, the orange roofs and small alleys we could see as we looked down from the walls that surround the town. Of course, we had to climb long flights of stairs up to the walls first, but once up there, we had long stretches that were fairly straight. We looked down on yards with hanging laundry, flowers, churches, musicians, and (of course) lots of tourists.

We passed canon and craftsmen, including a man in costume making coins the old fashioned way: with a huge hammer from blanks in a very old machine that contained the reverse artwork that would be pounded into the blank with two or three strikes of the mallet. John collects that type of coin, as well as the souvenir pennies from various interesting spots we (or the kids) visit, so we had him make one for us.

This is one spot that I didn't buy a single post card. If you take a look at the photo above, I think you can get a pretty clear idea why I didn't. With digital cameras, it's easy to see what you're getting. I knew I had post cards in my camera already if I needed them. All I needed to do was print them out. Another thing I appreciated about Croatia was their music. It's another good reason for having a long slide show. I got to use two songs.

Again, the statuary and buildings were beautiful and attention to detail is amazing. It was obvious that "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," as the saying goes. History, once again, was all around us. This is another one of those spots that we were getting to taste, when a full meal would have gone down really easily—maybe a week of full meals...

As we left Croatia to tender back to the ship, I realized that we would be leaving the cruise the next day, back in Venice. Our vacation, and the time with Ben and Ruth, Ashley and Kate was coming to an end. But what a way to finish it!