One word. Beautiful.
We woke up on July 11th to a view of a bay and houses on a hill over looking the crystal clear, royal blue Adriatic. Later we learned that you can see down into the water 30 meters (almost 100 feet). Me and my friends got up and went out into the old city of Dubrovnik for lunch. We ate at some cafe off the main street. The whole of the Old City (within the 1000 year old walls) was pedestrian only and CROWDED with tourists. At the cafe, we tried some new foods, kabob sandwich, and some familiar, open faced ham and cheese omelet. Everything was fantastic. We were so pleased too because FINALLY, the currency was in our favor. The Croatian Kuna is about 1/5 of an American dollar. It was super. After lunch, I had to get back to the ship for one of my prepaid programs through Semester at Sea. During this city orientation, we were supposed to walk the walls of the city, about 2.5 km, at 3pm. We did just that, and it was so hot. The tour guide said it had been unusually hot the past couple days. Of course. When we pulled into Dubrovnik, it was 104. And on top of the city walls, it was scorching. But, it gave us phenomenal views of the old city and bay.
After the sweatiest of walking the walls, I met up with my friends Thomas, Boyd, Christine, Lizzy, Clara, Molly, Madison, Jillian and Paige at the beach. Apparently, most beaches in Croatia are pebble. The beaches hurt your feet a little bit but you eventually got used to it. We sat out, people watching for a while before deciding to head back to the ship for a free dinner. We did just that and after a quick nap decided to go explore Dubrovnik's night life. We went to this Latin Dance Club called Fuego and it was so fun. The MV Explorer was the only ship in town so we dominated the club. I went back to the ship and got a good night's sleep because I had to be up at 8am to go on another SAS trip.
At 8am the next morning, I was with one of my professors and 30 other people on our way to the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was strange, on the 3 hour car ride there we had to cross 3 borders. One from Croatia into Bosnia, one from Bosnia to Croatia, and another from Croatia to Bosnia. But we eventually got there. And the first thing that struck me was that, unlike Croatia, Bosnia very much looked like what I expected a former soviet state to look like. Everything was concrete and straight lines and falling apart. Some of the buildings still had bullet holes and shrapnel marks. The city of Mostar was a major battle zone during the break up of Yugoslavia. The story of Mostar is that it was once a multicultural city on two banks of a river. Islamic Bosnians, Orthodox Serbians, and Roman Catholic Croats lived together and there was a beautiful bridge, closing the gaps between the neighborhoods. During the war in Bosnia, the bridge was blown up and the city's ethnic neighborhoods turned on each other. After the war, the city and the bridge were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and 10 nations donated money to rebuild the bridge.
We walked around the city for an hour, visiting a Mosque, a Turkish house, and then old bridge. All the while, we were sweating gallons. We nearly died when we found out our lunch restaurant didn't have air-conditioning. But, it was covered so it could have been worse. We ate some typical Bosnian food, which was mainly meat and then had some time to explore the shops. I was so hot I could barely count my money to give to the shopkeepers. We made it back to the bus, and on the way back to Dubrovnik, our guide informed us that it was registered as 114 degrees in the sunlight. And to top it all off, she told us that since this weather is odd, the bus' air conditioning couldn't handle it and it would take a long time to cool it down. Nothing like sweating on a charter bus for 3 hours with 45 other people? I have never been so happy to get back to the MV Explorer's super air-conditioning. That night, my friends and I decided to just stay in and breathe in the air-conditioned air. It was great to go to bed early and wake up refreshed.
The next day, we went to the beach for a while and then decided to go cliff jumping. You read write Mom…. sorry…. There's this bar on the edge of the city walls called Cafe Buza where you can just hand out and chill or you can jump off the cliffs into the Adriatic. I did it. There were 3 different levels. One was about as high as a high dive, 3 meters or so. Another, the middle was about 8 or 9 meters (25-30 ft). And the hardcore high one was about 40 feet. It was so cool because there were so many people around cheering you on if you got nervous and so many people were jumping off it had to be safe. We asked the locals how to do it and they said to just make sure you enter straight up and down, like a pencil. And you'll be fine. They were right. It was so much fun! After cliff jumping for a couple of hours, we went and grabbed lunch at another back alley cafe. Then a couple of my friends checked into a hotel right outside Old City… I went back to the ship… Little did I know, that the ship had left the dock for the day to make room for a Royal Caribbean cruiseliner. They were running tender boats and I missed the last one by 10 minutes. I had to wait and hour and a half in the terminal for the MV to return to dock. While waiting, I ran into some other friends and they invited me to a place for dinner that they heard of when talking to a cab driver. It was about 20 minutes north of the tourist Croatia and was known as the hot spot for anyone who knew anything about Dubrovnik. And let me tell you, it was the best food I've had on this trip so far. The restaurant, called Gverovic Orsan, was on a terrace, out on the Adriatic. I ordered Black Risotto. It was black because they used Squid Ink in the recipe and the entire dish was jet black. In the risotto was a prawn, a couple muscles and a few clams. SO GOOD. I'm not generally a sea food eater, but I could have eaten this risotto for every meal for the rest of my life.
After dinner, the same taxi driver recommended this bar that had just opened the night before and was run by one of his family friends. After the pub we went to a club built into an old fort. This club was huge and still showed remnants of the stone vaulted ceilings and huge arches. It was really beautiful and hilarious to see a bunch of people dancing all over it haha. After the club, I went back with a group of girls who needed an escort, and we made it back to the ship.
The next morning I went cliff jumping again with some friends who didn't go the first time. Then we went to the beach to parasail, but it was closed because the wind was too light. Instead, we just sat on the beach and relaxed again. After it got too hot, we went into old town to find a place to eat. We ran into some other SAS kids, who I hadn't met, and they told us they'd been recommended to eat at this pizza place just outside the walls called Pizzeria Tobasco. Apparently it was the best Croatian pizza. It was so good. I ordered their version of a calzone and they topped it with sour cream and tomato sauce, which sounds gross, but it was delicious. After lunch, we wrapped up our Croatian experience and headed back to the port and our home away from home.
Hope you liked my novel of a post. I had a lot of free time to type it on my ferry ride to Mykonos! Enjoy. Remember, if you want more details or to hear about some thing specific, email me at rfcook@semesteratsea.net
I'll write soon.
Robbie
Omg sooo pretty!
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