Messalongion to Itea -- Best Sailing Yet

The night was calm and uneventful at Messalongion, but the water isn’t really swimmable and there was little to do near the boat so we got up early the next day and bugged out. Marina and I got up early and lifted the anchor – the chain was covered in black silt and it took about 10 minutes to clean it off with buckets of water. 

AK. Rion -- world's biggest suspension bridge?

How tall is our mast?

Lots of Room to Spare

We were off to our next destination – Galaxidi or Itea. We powered out and turned east and approached the point of Ak Rion – apparently the worlds’ largest suspension bridge. When we were 5 miles out we called bridge control on the radio and they told us to ‘leave one pillar to the left, three to the right’ – OK cool – now what is the height of the bridge (followers may recall our close encounter with a bridge in Croatia). The answer was 25-40 Meters and we have a 21 meter headroom requirement so we were fine. The bridge reminded me of the Alex Fraser bridge only with 5 spans instead of two. 

Driving is so easy Ross can do it with his eyes closed

On the boardwalk at Itea

Did I mention that it was raining? Well it started to clear up and get windy so we (novel idea) put up the sails. We started averaging 6 knots on a broad reach. The six became a 7, then an 8, then a 9, topping out at 9.7knots. Here are a couple of videos on how we keep morale up on these long days.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmt0fU0cOVo
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiTCgBd9_QM


We had a full genoa and a reefed main in 1-2 meter seas and were bucketing along. Unfortunately as we turned the corner for Galaxidi the wind pooped out so our 6 hour 50 mile sail was pretty much over. As we were powering into the bay Marina decided Itea sounded better than Galaxidi and then we discovered mostly by accident, that the Delphi Oracle is just outside Itea – quick change of plans, we’re going to Athens on Friday and touring the Oracle on Thursday. We will put a photo essay and a couple of blog posts up on Delphi from the kids. The pictures don’t do it justice. We met a very enthusiastic Port Policeman in Itea so we had to pay 30 Euros for staying for 2 nights – still unbelievably cheap. 

Itea from Delphi

We also bunkered a 125 liters of diesel fuel. The price is 1.40Euros/Liter – so if we complain in Canada about fuel prices, a Euro is $1.40 CAD so a liter of Diesel is nearly $2.00 here, with gas about 10-15% higher. I asked Kosta on ‘My Way’ -- the 50 foot Feretti powerboat what his fuel consumption was – 120 liters per hour to go 16 knots. So basically he is 120/16 or 7.5 liters a mile. He’s from Athens and since we left them we have gone about 200 miles. He’s gone both ways plus then some, my guess is that he used nearly 4000 liters of fuel in 10 days -- or his fuel costs are about $1000 per day when he's travelling. Ouch. Maybe slow is a good way to go.



After the Delphi Oracle it’s time to get to Athens – so the next stop is the Corinth Canal and if we get through early enough, we’ll go to Athens, if not we’ll overnight in Corinth and leave the next morning.

Atokos to Messalongion

All good things must come to an end so we bade fare-thee-well to the group on ‘My Way’ and sailed towards the Gulf of Patras – the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. Basically to get to Athens you have two ways – sail around the Peloponnisos or into the Gulf of Corinth and through the Canal. It’s about 200 miles shorter to take the canal route so we chose it – after getting away late from Croatia we have to make up time, plus the pictures of the Corinth Canal are spectacular. Well to get to Corinth you must sail through the Gulf of Patras and then find a place to hide out.



For our first stop we chose the city of Messalongion. It is a quirky little harbour with a very run-down waterfront and no visible services. We anchored out because the docks at the marina weren’t connected to the land so we’d need to use our dinghy anyway. We went ashore (Jessie, Marina and I) and walked about 6 blocks through a rough commercial / residential neighbourhood before we got to town. Much to our surprise, it was a nice little town and if we had more time I would have liked to explore more. As it was we bought some really tasty ground chicken, fruit and other staples and headed back to Ross and the boat. The most memorable part of Messalongion is the long canal to get to the harbour. The area has a number of salt marshes and the channel is dredged. It reminded us of the Bayou in the movie Forrest Gump – with old cottages, mostly run down, standing on piers or stilts and a bunch of docks in similar levels of disrepair.

Meganisi to Kioni and Atokos

After waiting out a thunderstorm (my personal favourite) we left the next day and started sailing around Meganisi and to a port on the Island of Ithaka called Kioni. We pulled in stern-to and tied up beside a 60 foot sailboat with the nicest teak deck I have ever seen. Bringing the boat in was a bit of a gong-show as we set the anchor to the left and the wind was blowing from the right – so cinching up the lines was a bit of a grunt. Not our best effort but we didn’t hit anybody and we didn’t damage our boat. About 5 minutes later a group of Germans on a Bavaria 49 came in and spent about 30 minutes getting stern-to (maybe we aren’t wankers after all).One cool aspect of Med Mooring is that if there isn’t enough space, just squeeze your boat in there anyway, push your neighbours apart until you have space. The German chap brought a 5 meter wide boat into a 3 meter wide slip – then a couple of lines are loosened off and room is made. It seems kind of rude but so does not making space when there is some to be had.

Wandering back from the market we saw a power boat come in and it had a Canadian Flag on it. We went and introduced ourselves and were promptly invited over for a cocktail. Three couples were on the boat, (one from Mississauga, one from Kitchener, and one from   Romania, and their friend Kostas -- a Greek they met at school in Romania who happens to own the boat – a really nice Feretti 52 powerboat. Cosmin and Claudia, Alex and Cora, and Adrian and Darina were all really nice and engaging people. They were going out to dinner so we tagged along, and they treated us to lots of Greek Cuisine and great conversation. Adrian works for Bell in Mississauga and does something in their Mobile business. He had an iPad he gave Jessie to play with and promptly became her new best-friend. Cosmin’s cousin Alex and his wife Cora are newlyweds. Cosmin, Kostas and Adrian went to university together in Romania and have been getting together on Kostas’ boat every year for the past eight years. What a great group of people.

 One of the dishes they introduced us to was sardine fries. Basically you take sardines with their heads off, batter and deep fry them – then you eat them like french fries. While it may sound a little disgusting to some, they were actually quite good. I saw something similar in a restaurant in Preveza, but the fish were the size of a large carrot – and their heads were on. I was saying to the guys that I am interested in trying them but an entire plate of them is a  level of commitment yet I am not ready for yet.

At dinner we decided we would get together the next day and have dinner and hang out at a beach on the island of Atakos. There is beautiful beach in “One House Bay” that we anchored in, aptly named for its one house in the bay. If the weather is settled you can overnight there. So we played and swam and goofed around all day and then at night rowed ashore for a BBQ dinner and bonfire. Cosmin made some Cevapcici (pronounced Se-vap-chee-chee) that he grilled on the BBQ. The ladies made these garlic potatos – slices of potato with garlic slices inside the sliced part, Olive oil, spices, wrapped in foil and laid at the bottom of the fire to cook – they were go-oo-ood. Lots of wine, some home-made Grappa and Marina made the marichino/rum/grapefoot/lime drink that Dario taught her to great effect. My guitar was a big hit – I played some sing-along pop songs and Claudia was a Romanian Folk Singer before moving to Canada and she played quite a few Romanian folk songs (that of course we didn’t know but enjoyed immensely).


Everyone made it back to the boats safely – it was raining in the morning and we saw Kostas retrieving the table and chairs from the beach .. sometimes it is lonely being the skipper. By 10 am the weather cleared and it was time to bug-out. We pulled in the 50 meter line to shore, yanked up the anchor and headed out of the Ionian sea and into the Gulf of Patras – next stop is Messalongion then to Galaxia, and into Athens.

Preveza to Meganisi

After school ended we took the boat to the nearby town of Levka that has a bridge that turns sideways and opens up into a canal between the island and the mainland. While we were waiting a guy in a newer Beneteau 50 cut across our bow in his haste to make it to the queue -- I had to alter course 30 degrees to avoid. The bridge opens on the hour so you can lay off until about 5 minutes to. So when the time comes to go through the bridge, he waves us ahead -- wanting someone else to go first and show the way. Go figure.


There was lots of room and traffic was going both ways. Years of racing sailboats has given us a perspective of how "close" something is ... and a 6 foot miss isn 't even close in my book. For a lot of cruising sailors 6 feet is the same distance as a "coat of paint" or what we call a really close crossing. Going through the narrows we encountered another boat travelling the other way that wanted to go side-by-side with the boat in front of him -- basically leaving no room for us. Again drawing on our racing experience I aimed the boat directly at him -- and he quickly got the message and went back in line -- leaving me to chuckle at what a jerk I can be at times.



There's a great chandelery at Levkos and we bought yet another head pump -- the third. I had tried to make one out of the three we had dismantled. What a bad idea. Not only was it gross, disgusting work; it also didn't work out so I had to buy the new part anyway. Lesson learned ... there are things that you should just buy new and don't try to repair them .... and anything to do with a marine toilet is one of those items.


After Levkos there is a 2 mile long canal that's marked with what look like solar lights you buy at Home Depot for $3.00 each. I'd guess that one in ten might actually work -- but given the straightness of the canal that's probably OK. We spat out the other side of the canal feeling like a Salmon swimming the wrong way. As we have said before, Fridays are usually the day you return your charter boat. We probably passed 75 charter-boats returning to their base that day -- and most of the people looked like they wished they had more time to spend on the boats. Our final destination was Meganisi Island and a group of little bays where you can anchor and run a line to shore. The weather was supposed to get rough so we wanted to be well protected and these little bays are just that -- protected from every direction.


The charts we had bought from our friend Marcel were really high-level -- good for crossings, not so good for gunkholing close to shore. With a scale that would put half of Vancouver Island on one sheet we didn’t notice a shoal until quite late in the game. A 90 degree course change to port for a few miles made sure that we would miss the reef (actually we think it was much closer to shore than the chart indicated) and we went into a bay on the north side of Meganisi and dropped the hook and took two lines ashore in a very secluded bay.


We needed that protection. While the weather has been excellent on this adventure to date, we got a lot of rain and wind that day. As Marina said “it looks like the rain that goes up – just like in Forrest Gump”. But also like in Forrest Gump, the rain stopped suddenly and we went into the next town over – where we bought some provisions and had dinner. Ross ate Spaghetti, Jessie pushed sausages around her plate, Marina had lambchops and I had fish. I am still not quite used to the way fish is served here – when you order fish, you get a fish – scales, head, tail, fins, eyes and all. They season the outside, cook it in Olive oil and present it. My folks were not much into fish and while I like it (and we try to eat it more than once a week) it’s usually not my first choice – but I am trying. I haven’t eaten the eye yet – though I did scoop out some meat from the ‘cheeks’ this time. The other great thing about eating out in Greece is you can feed the cats. There are feral cats everywhere – actually I don’t think they’re really feral – they just live outside, don’t have a single owner, but they do have lots to eat and people tend to take some level of care of them. In Gaios we saw a poster from a group of people that provide for these semi-wild creatures.

I'll try to get Jessie to post some of the thousand or so pics she has taken of the Cats in Greece.

Gauvia to Petriti to Nisos Paxos

Our First Anchorage in Corfu

We left Gauvia under power and proceeded to sail, power, motor sail, sail and eventually power (sails up, sails down again and again) and anchored in a small indented bay on the east side of Corfu called Petriti. While we dipped the dinghy in the water we didn’t bother with the engine and we stayed onboard, had a good dinner and an early bedtime after a couple chapters of “The Life of Pi”.

Fishboat and his "dinghy"

The Town of Lakka

We got up fairly early after a bit of a “washing machine” night – when there is no wind the boat tends to orient itself sideways to the swell – and that means rocking and rolling and a fitful sleep. We had done some research and the islands of Paxos and Antipaxos have 3 of the best beaches in the Mediterranean and some cool harbours – though the stories of a rat swimming out to a boat freaked us out a little bit. We arrived at the harbour of Lakka on Paxos around 1pm and wow – what a nice place. It has clear blue water, only a few meters deep and is safe on 3 sides from the weather. There were a number of boats inside, a couple of superyachts with their multiple dinghys, jetskis and crew to tend to every detail, and then there was our “laundry boat” that had many different pieces of laundry drying in the rigging.

We swam and dove and played for a couple of hours, then went into town for a drink and an appetizer. Unfortunately the place we selected was a bar, so no food, but we were treated to a show. A German boat with 10 men on board (identical T’shirts & everything) started ferrying their crew in for dinner. Either the chap who was driving was completely smashed, or had never driven a dinghy before. He hit a bunch of boats, gunned the engine when it was out of the water, did a few accidental donuts and couldn’t drive in a straight line. His crew and the entire shoreline were killing themselves watching. Marina struck up a conversation with a British couple on the beach that had hired a villa on Paxos and got some ideas on where to go next. It was nice just to have a chat with another English speaking person.


We went back to the boat for dinner and during this time a German charter boat came in and anchored about 30 feet from us – ridiculously close if you ask me. Anyway we made it through the night (more rock and roll) unscathed and Marina headed off to town for a little marketing.

The girls are having a good time

One-two-three-go

Budva to Corfu – Our first overnight journey!

After going to Montenegro and finding that you need to buy a vingnetta for a mere 175Euros and then you get to pay for the marina, or in the case of Croatia or Montenegro, for the privilege of anchoring on your own anchor and chain, we decided to go directly to Greece from Montenegro. We had originally planned to do an overnight to Brindisi – about 120 miles from Montenegro, then down the coast of Italy to Otranto – about 30 miles, then over to Corfu in Greece in about a 40 mile shot. After paying the 175 Euros in Montenegro we decided that Corfu was only 140 miles directly – so why not cut out the same vingnetta fee in Italy and go directly to our destination.

We carefully charted out what we needed to do and decided to leave Budva by 11am. Actually we gave ourselves a few timed options – we power at about 8 knots on fast cruise – and that will have us into Corfu (Gouvia Marina where you can clear Greek Customs) at about 10am. At a 6 knot pace, we’ll be there at 2pm, so let’s leave at 11:00. So, we go to exit Budva – which truly is a beautiful place – at 8:30. We did a little marketing and we arrived at Carina (Customs) at 9am – and were told to return at 10. We did so and it took most of an hour to fill in a crew list, check our passports and extort a couple bottles of wine from us. [I’ll let Marina comment on that one]

We got back to the boat, lifted the engine off the dinghy, and for the first time hoisted the dinghy aboard using our electric winch. Much to our surprise and delight, it was fast, easy and it actually fit on deck. If any sailor is wondering whether the $4K for an electric winch is worth it, they should try to manage some of the loads a 50 footer and you’ll quickly become an advocate of electric power.

We had considered cruising down the coast of Albania but small things like underwater mines, endless bureaucracy, difficulties in foreign yachts being impounded or supplies being removed deterred us. While we have been told it is much better than it used to be … after customs in Montenegro and Croatia, we wanted to move into more mainstream Europe for a while.

The weather on departure day was beautiful – but not a breath of wind. By that I mean that the wake of our sailboat was the biggest wave in the Adriatic that day. Like many times already on this adventure, we were the salmon swimming the wrong way … and the only boat making the trip south – lots of boats heading north but only us heading to Greece. So, we put it on fast cruise, got Otto (the Autopilot) to do most of the steering.

Dusk came at 7pm and it was beautiful. We also discovered that there is a huge amount of ship traffic at night – makes sense, they travel at night and load/unload during the day. Anyway we now have a new best friend – RADAR. We could look out 10-15 miles, figure out the boats that were factors and then could track them with Mark-1 Eyeball as we went by. So we continued our fast cruise 8.0-8.4 knots depending on the current, for 12 hours. In the late afternoon, on someone’s watch other than mine, we ran over the only stick/log we have encountered in the Adriatic – there just isn’t that much wood! After that we were a little more vigilant and at dusk we nearly hit a crab pot so we slowed down to our slow cruise of 6.8Knots and carried on until 3am.

At this time we were all getting a little tired, and probably didn’t have our best decision-making hats on. Anyway it turns out there was a big fire in Albania and the smoke and ash was everywhere. We kept smelling something burning, the exhaust was making a lot of smoke and we thought we had might have a fire onboard. We immediately shut off the engine, and went on a search around the boat for problems – the engine, the refrigerator, the bow thruster, the electrical panel, the water heater, the bilge pumps, water pumps – opened up every bedroom and searched every compartment. The smell was outside not in. We suspected that we might have been smelling a fire from somewhere else but prudence made us shut down all equipment until we could verify it in the light. So we pulled out the sails and over the next three hours made just over ½ mile. During this time when we had no speed on, we were regularly passed by freighters, ferries and cruise ships. The RADAR is slaved to the other instruments and it got confused because we were stationary … it didn’t know which way was up … so we got quite confused and concerned about how traffic was reacting to us. If only we had a 5 knot breeze … the biggest wind during this time was 2.2 knots – on the nose too so we were 70 degrees off our target course.

At around 6:15 it was light enough to fire up the engine and look at it – though the brownish/orange fog clouds off of Albania were a giveaway that they had been burning something and we were probably OK. We started up the engine and were off and running. Unlike the day before we were on our slow cruise of about 7 knots – we have three modes: slow – 2000 RPM and about 6.5-6.8 knots, mid – 2500 RPM – about 7.2-7.5 knots, and fast 3000RPM – 8.2-8.4 knots. The challenge with the fast cruise is that it is much louder than the other two … and that gets to be a wee bit annoying after a while. We had 50 miles to go but the difference in noise from 8.2 to 7.2 knots is quite overwhelming. At 7:45 I ran out of energy and Ross woke up and ran the boat for the next couple of hours – save for a quick turn he made at 8:00am that got me out of bed and on deck in seconds wondering what the problem was.

Anyway, the rest of the morning was absolutely beautiful weather – with no wind again. We powered past Albania – being careful to remain 15 nautical miles off its shoreline at all times, entered Greek waters and caught sight of Nisos (the Island of) Othonoi– we’re in Greece Baby! Unfortunately, it’s still 35 miles to go to get to the Marina at Gauvia .. so we had another 5 hours to enjoy it. After doing an all nighter we found we needed a number of cat-naps when you’re tired …. So that’s what everyone did.

I checked into the country – through the Port Police, and then went to get Marina and the kids so we could go to the actual Customs office in downtown Corfu City. Unfortunately for me, two cruise ships were loading up ready to go when I arrived and they asked me to come back later (after they learned we were Canadians)…. Reminds me of a joke my Dutch friend Marcel told me – “Q- How do you get 25 Canadians out of a swimming pool on a hot sunny day? A. “Ask them to please leave the pool.” They know we’ll be nice and not complain … though in my experience the worst thing to do to a customs officer is to be cranky with them.

When we arrived we called Gauvia marina on Channel 71 and ask for a place for the evening and they direct us to a slip and I head off to figure out the Byzantine way of entering Greece with a boat. First stop is the Port Authority – they offer me a piece of paper that lets me go to Customs and Passport control. We then piled in a taxi to the downtown Cruise Ship terminal for customs and passport control. The customs officer gives me a Transit Log for 30 Euros that lets us visit up to 50 locations in Greece over the next six months – way cheaper than the 120 week long Vinjetta from Montenegro or the one-year $400 permit for Croatia. Next up is the Passport control. Now back to the port office to where we expected to pay taxes amounting to about 360 Euros and we were assessed a tax of 0.80 cents - go figure. Apparently our fee to stay in a harbour is 0.80 Euros a day … a little better than the 20-40 Euros we got nicked when we were in Croatia or Montenegro.

Gauvia is a nice marina, humungous – something like 600 berths or 2-3 times the size of Fisherman’s Cove in West Vancouver. They had a beautiful pool, a couple of restaurants, an excellent Marine Store, and an OK grocery, and of course a fuel dock. We went out for dinner but had one of the worst meals – actually I think it was the worst meal, we have had on the trip. When 3 of 4 of us didn’t finish it and don’t want it wrapped up, that should tell the chef something. The next day we lounged by the pool, used the free Internet service, and generally laid about. Checkout time was 2pm but we left at 3:30, got a few hundred litres of fuel to replace all that we used since Croatia. To give you an idea of the amount of powering, we put 45 hours on the engine from Split to Gauvia. Research we have done tells us that this time of year it is calm nearly 30% of the time. As Brian Moorhouse said, “there will be times when you’ll go 5 miles out of your way just to get some wind.” At the time I was skeptical, now I can see how that would happen.

Anyway, we’re safe here in Greece and looking forward to the next phase of our trip.

Budva – Montenegran for Please Give Me Money

We arrived at Budva at around 6pm and anchored out, well past the Marina. We then had a boat come out and tell us that we needed to either 1) move into the Marina 2) pay a 35 Euro fee to anchor, or 3) move around the point to another bay. We were tired and we needed to clear customs anyway, so we decided to stay and pay … Marina and I went into town and were totally blown away by how nice an old city Budva is. It’s like Korcula or Dubrovnik (though less touristy) and is quite impressive. We decided that we would need to bring the kids ashore in the morning to experience how nice it is. On the way back we were challenged by some port police that wanted to know why we didn’t check in with them when we arrived (actually I did but they didn’t stamp anything). We told them we wanted to leave in the morning around 8am … they talked to each other and asked us to come back after 9am … with a smile. It is a great anchorage except for during the day the traffic is thick and nobody cares about the size of their wake so we were regularly assailed by 30 foot powerboats zooming by … and then there was the disco that played music at ‘10’ until 1:30am … making it difficult to sleep.

The next day we went back in the morning to grab a quick bite, do some marketing and check out of the country. It turns out the Police didn’t want to process anyone until 10am. It took most of an hour and the customs guy wanted a bottle of wind because it is “tradition” to present wine to Customs and Police in Montenegro.

I think Jessie summed it up best “so you want me to give you wine to leave the country where you charged us 35€ to anchor in where a discotheque aimed their speakers at the water keeping us awake until 2am?”

We’re not sure we can recommend Budva to anyone – particularly relative to the value Porto Montenegro represented.

Goodbye Croatia! Hello Porto Montenegro in Tivat, Montenegro

The Croatian Flag...Going Away Nicely Frayed

 After a not so quick stop at Gruz to check out of Croatia, because they wouldn’t do it for us in Dubrovnik…who knows why, keeping everyone working I suppose…we left Croatia with mixed feelings and headed for Montenegro. We loved Croatia for what we experienced here, but have some misgivings about “having” to be here for the length of time we stayed. Anyway…happy to be moving on!


The Boardwalk to the Docks



WOW. WOW. WOW. Porto Montenegro is a development in Tivat apparently led by a Canadian, that will become the nicest marina in the Adriatic. Period. It’s a multi-year project that is just getting going but it is going to be amazing – 5 star all the way. We arrived, they drove me to customs in a Golf Cart – when I didn’t have enough cash they drove me to the bank. We cleared customs and then there were free burgers and beers at the end of the dock – right beside the two largest superyachts I have ever seen – ‘Queen K’ and ‘Sputnik’. The Queen K is a traditional superyacht just more so – 4 decks and probably 200+ feet long. Sputnik looks like a work boat – with cranes and places to store things (probably like submarines) all over it, except that it is done to Yacht quality. Quite impressive – probably 200+ feet as well.



The next morning we went for a workout - the Marina had a health club, a small 2-lane bowling alley, all sorts of services and just plain friendly people. Some things weren’t completed yet – the washrooms as an example, but as Ross said, in 5 years this will be the place to go in the Adriatic. It reminds me of Whistler – I think it’s a real-estate development wrapped in a ski-hill. Tivat was a Naval station that had a few hundred acres of waterfront. The Marina will be a way to draw people in to buy condos. A formula that works is you get the resort side right.

In the afternoon we decided to make a break for southern Montenegro. Miles we put on today are miles that we won’t need to put on in our overnight journey.

A Small Chapel In The Middle of Nowhere

Dubrovnik -- WOW! (Marina's Post)

 


Gates of Pila - 1537

  

We held at anchor (as I said we would!) even with 20+ knot gusts for much of the night. The next morning we waited until the marina cleared out a bit and we called on the VHF arrange for a berth. Matt has become very proficient at “med mooring” – going into a tight slip backwards where they hand you a line to take to your bow and tie off to a forward submerged anchor (usually a very huge block of concrete). So your stern is 2 feet off the dock, boats snuggled in beside you like sardines, very efficient. My turn will come – we meant to practice at Kremik but didn’t get around to it so we’ll find a place so I can get proficient too. Good to have 2 people who can do things…just in case.

 

The Big Onofrio's Fountain



 One thing remarkable about this ACI Marina was cats…I’ll let Jessie tell you about those!



Another thing…a tennis court that for 80 kuna (about $15) we could play for an hour. And Matt and I played twice over the two days we were there. There was a small soccer court as well, with turf, but they wanted 250 kuna for 1 hour which didn’t make sense to us so we didn’t pay for that one.

  



Sponza Palace - Early 16th Century



Church of St. Vlaho

We of course had to see Dubrovnik so we took the bus (about a 15 minute ride at 10 kuna each) and went exploring. It was a beautiful city with so much history, yet again. Beautiful old churches, a treasury building, fountains, walking “streets” and quaint alleys barely wide enough for two and of course, the huge defensive wall system. It started out Greek, then Roman, then devastated at the dawn of the Middle Ages by the Avar-Slav invasion. In the 12th and 13th centuries it was ruled by Venice, then became part of the Hungro-Croatian kingdom although Dubrovnik was a very autonomous city and became its own Republic. Napoleon marched in and abolished the Republic in 1808, it changed hands a few more times and is now of course, a part of Croatia.



The old city had to be rebuilt a few times – particularly after it was devastated in a major earthquake in 1667 and then again after the war with the Serbs in 1991-1992. We saw an image of where every bomb had hit in the old city of Dubrovnik and I wish I’d taken a picture of it…what a tragedy. However, it is rebuilt and much of the old still remains.