Birthday trip: Day 13

Day 13 was our last full tourist day. We walked the short distance to Dubrovnik's Old Town, figured out how to buy passes and found the Ploce Gate entrance to the City Walls walk. We did the full perimeter, counter-clockwise as required...stopping along the way to take plenty of photos...

We spotted more than one fellow traveler toting Rick Steves guide. We also had it, but didn’t carry it with us during the day.

After we finished walking the walls, we exited back down into Old Town and climbed these stairs...

(It's hard to see, but the stairs go all the way into the distance.) We ended up at Lady Pi-Pi's for lunch. This was the statue out front...

It was wonderful! They grilled the food just feet away from us...

Yum! We then walked back down and found gelato then decided to explore the Rector's Palace. This was a banister that caught my attention...

(Yes, there was a lot of other stuff. Like I said, this was day 13 and we were a little photo'd out.) After the Rector's Palace, we went back to the gelato place for coffee and tea (and gelato)...

...then decided to split up again for about 90 minutes. Nathan went to some museums and found our dinner spot and made reservations and explored other areas, like a hole in the wall to a restaurant and swimming area on the outside of the wall. I shopped and had some lovely conversations with some jewelry vendors. 

We met back up and had an early dinner at a restaurant called Azur, which was delicious...

This was CroAsian something other Laksa?? I really should take pictures of the menu, lol. It was yum.

We then walked back to our place...stopping to capture this pirate ship sailing into the sunset...

Nathan turned around and went back out to swim in the Adriatic for a bit while I caught up on some things. And then we had to pack and check in for our flights...

Birthday trip: Day 12

Day 12 found us in Montenegro! We drove from Dubrovnik down and into Montenegro…took an alternate border crossing (less busy)...and survived some dubious directions from Google Maps to eventually get on the main road around the bay area there thru several little towns. We stopped in Perast where we had a nice chat with a young local guy and took a boat out to a tiny island...

The island is called Our Lady of the Rocks and has an interesting history. 

(Yes, after our experience in Mostar, we carried our rain coats with us to start the day, lol. They weren't necessary at all.) This was our driver and boat (taking others back to shore)...

After a bit on the tiny island, our driver picked us up and took us to Perast, where we enjoyed lunch and their local dessert... 

...then found some gelato before we climbed the tower...

This was one of the more difficult towers to climb. It's hard to tell from this photo that Nathan took but even short-little-me had to bend and contort to make it through some of the areas...Nathan was literally crawling and had to go down some areas backward on our way back down. The woman selling admission did warn us, lol.

But the view was worth it...

What you're seeing is the town of Perast and in the distance is Kotor.

While we were at the top, a fellow tourist offered/wanted to take photos of us for us. She posed and directed us all around the tower, lol.

We all climbed back down (carefully!). We then returned to our car and continued our drive around the bay to Kotor. Once parked and inside the city walls, we discovered this very odd Cats Museum...

The walls were just covered in random drawings and sketches and paintings of cats…in the rooms and hallways and everywhere.

And there was an actual cat! Nathan was checking to make sure the cat was alive…it was pretty darn chill. Nathan took a lot of other cat pictures in Kotor (of actual cats, not the strange drawings and such, lol).

After that, we stopped for coffee and tea and wandered...

Full disclosure, by this point in our trip, we'd stopped caring as much about all the details and history so I don't know what church that is behind us, lol. 

In any case, we climbed a bit in search of the entrance to the city walls. We were in the wrong place initially but it was a beautiful view...

We then found our way up to walk the city walls. From them, we marveled at the paths up to a church and fortress on the hill (St John's Fortress). Turns out that's what the steps we'd originally tried led to. If we'd had more time, we probably would have continued up the path...next time. :)

We walked around the fortified city walls and saw a pomegranate tree...

...and found a random dragon engraved on a wall...

We then got down from the top of the walls and got more gelato and returned to our car to drive a bit more then catch the ferry across the bay (rather than retracing our steps back around the bay)...

On the ferry (it was a very short trip so I just stayed in the car), we had to wait a few minutes for the cruise ship that had been at Kotor to clear the bay...

Nathan caught this from the ferry.

Once across the bay, we stopped for dinner before continuing back to Dubrovnik for the night. 

Birthday trip: Day 11

On Day 11 we checked out of our AirBNB in Split, grabbed a few groceries and got on the road. As we were driving to Mostar, Bosnia, we took a short detour to stop at the Stella Croatica olive oil museum. (It was actually included in our tickets to Klis Fortress the day before but the museum had closed by the time we were done at the fortress.) The tour and facility were very well done and educational...with a factory walk-through, gorgeous botanical grounds, and a small museum.

We ended in the gift shop/tasting room and wound up spending some time and money there. :) 

We got back on the road about 11:30 as the rain was starting. (With the forecast storm hitting the coast, we figured/hoped that driving inland to Mostar would keep us ahead of the rain.) We made it through the border crossing (Bosnia isn't part of the EU) and to Mostar...found parking...and found a late lunch. We then continued our Rick Steves walk across Old Bridge (Stari Most) and up Coppersmiths' Street...

We went to the Koski Mehmet-Pasha Mosque and climbed the minaret. Here's the view from the minaret...looking at the Old Bridge. (We were up there when a diver jumped. It's a thing. Divers train and jump the 75 feet into the icy river. Crazy.)

Nathan took this shot looking down...

Did I mention that it was quite tight quarters in the stairwell? Parts also were in the dark (and it was the only way up and down so we had to negotiate past people)...

And this is the interior of the mosque...

We made it down just as the rain was starting. We forged on and walked some more and stopped for coffee and tea under an awning...then accepted reality and started our walk back in the increasing rains. By the way, we knew it was going to rain. We had rain coats and waterproof shoes and an umbrella. :) But. We left them all in the car because Nathan assured me that the storm looked like it was going to hold off while we were out and that we wouldn't be long. Yup.

Being willing to just walk in the rain, though, did mean we were able to get a photo on the Old Bridge without the huge crowd, lol. Yeah, we got soaked.

Once we got back to the car, we had another little adventure. We were so proud of ourselves for having figured out to look for the payment station before we even left the parking lot and having taken our ticket with us so we could stop and pay on our way back to the car. But. The payment station didn't take cards or euros. (Bosnia, not being in the EU, doesn't use the euro. Most of the vendors and restaurants accepted euros, and we were only there for a short time so hadn't converted money.)

So. I got in the car to wait and Nathan went back out in search of somewhere to convert money. He found that he could do that at the post office and exchanged enough to cover our fee...walked back...discovered that the machine wouldn't accept 5 KM coins, only 1s...so he had to walk back to the post office and change the 5 for some 1s...then walked back again and finally paid the machine (which had increased our fee in that time). Whew.

We finally got back on the road and drove through Bosnia and Republika Srpska (part of Bosnia that is Serbian) back to the coast. The roads were not great. After sunset, we finally made it to Dubrovnik...where we proceeded to get a little lost since we couldn't find the assigned parking space for our AirBNB in the dark on a single pass. Because of the tight and one way streets, though, turning around required driving all over the place. ;P But, we did eventually find our spot and get settled in our AirBNB. I opted to just snack on things we had and call it a night. Nathan opted to walk back out in the rain to a nearby restaurant to get a burger. 

He did take the umbrella this time. ;)

Birthday trip: Day 10

On Day 10 we explored Split and Klis Fortress. We walked to town and to the brass gate entrance to Diocletian's Palace. We started with a tour of the cellars...

Man, Roman engineering is impressive. I especially enjoy the various ceilings...

After the cellars (which were lovely and cool and not too crowded), we ventured into the crush of tourists at the main square area. We then climbed the bell tower (180 steps according to both the sign and the boy in front of us counting out loud). 

The steps were quite tall! (Each of these is more than a foot high.)

In the distance, you can see Marjan Park (where we climbed yesterday). 

After the bell tower, we also toured the cathedral, treasury and baptistry. This is the ceiling in the cathedral...

...and this is the baptistry...

That ceiling actually had little faces in the individual squares. And here's looking from the baptistry back toward the bell tower...

We then wandered a bit more and found our way out through the golden gate before going in search of lunch. Nathan found us a little pizza place down an alley which was lovely and quiet and cool. Refueled, we tried another Rick Steves recommended gelato place (also good!) then found our way to the bus station to catch a bus to Klis. (A kind bus driver directed us to a better (more direct) bus than the one we started to get on. Thank you!)

We rode to Klis and toured the fortress...

...then grabbed a snack in town while we waited for the return bus.

We rode back to Split, got gelato from yet another place, walked down to the waterfront and through the palace again (doing some shopping and people watching), and had dinner.

We then headed back to the waterfront, up the stairs to the entrance of Marjan Park, and back to our AirBNB. We were amused at this strategically placed sign at the base of the stairs up from the waterfront to the park...

We made it home just before some rain and wrapped things up and packed for the morning.

Birthday trip: Day 9

Day 9 had a gloriously slow morning. At over half way through our trip and after all the driving the day before, we decided to take the morning off. We slept in and caught up on emails and looked through the guidebook and did another load of laundry and hung it out to dry. Nathan walked to buy some coffee beans and stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few things on his way back so that we were able to just eat a simple lunch at our AirBNB. Nathan also checked in with work and was able to get a few things done in that regard. 

In the later afternoon, we decided to head out. We walked to the entrance of Marjan Park (a few blocks from our AirBNB). It overlooked Diocletian's Palace in Split...

From there, we climbed to the highest point (more than 500 steps??)...

...for some wonderful views...

Then we headed back down and out of the park...took some photos with the large plants (pretty sure these were agave) and Nathan learned that he shouldn't touch the prickly pear plants, lol.

And then we continued down the next 300ish steps from the park entrance to the waterfront. We had to take a picture at this spot, where The Amazing Race once had a pit stop mat.

We then wandered a bit, found an ATM and stopped for dinner. I enjoyed this Croatian traditional buzara...

Then, of course, we got gelato (at another Rick Steves recommended spot) before retracing our steps...back along the waterfront, up the 300ish steps to the park entrance...

...and then the few blocks back to our place for the night.