Sunday, May 10—Mother’s Day

Dubrovnik, Croatia

We visited the walled city of old Dubrovnik, which is about a half-mile square. The main things we wanted to accomplish at this stop were using an Internet café and walking on the wall that goes around the city.



Daniel, our Collette guide, is not supposed to “guide” us when we walk around the city. He is not licensed here to do that and the locals can get upset if he is “guiding” unlicensed. As we were walking through he mentioned places and things that he had told us on Saturday when we had our Dubrovnik history lesson. I suppose his voice carried a little too far, because one of the local guides chastised him and warned him that he was not licensed. He promised to be quiet and we proceeded. The city has several Catholic churches, a mosque and a synagogue. Most of the area is Greek Orthodox, but not Croatia. Because the Pope crowned a king in the 11th Century, Catholicism is predominant. Various groups--Romans, Saracens, Richard the Lionhearted, Turks, even Napoleon, have ruled Croatia. In 1991 when the Croatians fought the Serbs, the bombing and shelling destroyed 60% of Dubrovnik. Most of it has been rebuilt.

I mentioned that there are various churches here, we arrived about 9 am on Sunday morning and bells were heard from all different directions. From the main bell tower of the town, from the Jesuit church, the Franciscan church and the “Main” Cathedral. Reminded me a little of Poe’s poem, Bells.


Flowers growing out of the top of the Dubrovnik city wall



After our mini-tour of the town, we headed out of the walled city to the newer area and the INTERNET CAFÉ. Got all our stuff downloaded and checked some e-mail. Hoped to find out about the storm that had hit Bwd in the last day or so, but only one person mentioned it and that was not in much detail. Hopefully, when we log on in Milan, we’ll have more specifics to report. Interesting thing about this Internet café was the keyboard. A few letters were rearranged and for a touch typist that is difficult. The “Y” switched places with the “Z”, the apostrophe was nowhere to be found, and the question mark was above one of the numbers—not sure which one. Anyway, it got done and N and I both checked e-mail.

After using the computers, we climbed up the many many stairs to walk on the city wall. The fee to make this trip was 50Kona or 7.5 Euros. We walked and walked and took pictures and climbed and walked and took more pictures.


Not sure which was the more strenuous activity, the Acropolis on Rhodes or climbing to the top of and around the wall of Dubrovnik.





We found an ice cream shop and got a cone and sat and waited for the “tenders” to come and take us back to the Fortuna. I didn’t shop at all, guess I’m all shopped out of hand embroidered stuff.

One last bit of information to impart—the Bosnian/ Serbian/ Croatian problems are all rooted in their religious differences. As I mentioned before Croatia is Roman Catholic, Serbia is Orthodox and Bosnia is Muslim. Why can’t we all get along?

Another observation—many in our tour group have commented that some of the people on this Cruise ship are the rudest and pushiest people we have ever met. The majority of these pushy folks are speaking Italian as they shove you aside to get ahead in a line or on the elevator. A woman who was chattering in what sounded like Italian pushed me away from a toilet stall when we stopped at the fancy hotel for lunch on Rhodes. One of our group who is from New York, told me just to push back. That’s not me.