CROATIA!!

I know this blog is really late, but here's the story of my time back in Croatia.  Greece blog is forthcoming as well, as soon as I find the time to write it!

Thursday:
Thursday morning, after the boat cleared all the customs checks in Croatia, a couple of my friends and I took the bus into the old walled city of Dubrovnik.  The city bus is only 8 kuna per ride, which is around $1.50 or so.  (Kuna is the currency of Croatia - it runs about 5.50 - 6.00 kuna on the US dollar.)  We got pizza at a place right outside the city walls (margherita) and then walked around inside the walls for a little bit.  Then I took the bus back to the ship and got on a 1:00PM tour of the city walls themselves.  We took a panoramic drive up the mountain a little and stopped for various photo ops along the way.  The tons of islands in the distance and the walled city with all red roofs was really cool to see from above.  Then we went into old town and walked up onto the city walls.  Then, in the 100+ degree heat, we proceeded to walk around the ENTIRE thing.  The views were awesome, but about 3/4 of the way it got to be a little hot for my taste.  A group of us decided to come down off the walls and walk around until we had to meet up on the bus again.  But on the way down, I actually found my friends, who coincidentally happened to be lost in the random alleyway I came off the wall into!  It was such a random coincidence, but we were excited!  Instead of going back to the boat with the SAS trip, I stayed in the city with them, and we to a restaurant on the outside of the city walls called Cafe Bujo.  We went cliff jumping.  Don't hold your breath - I'm a wimp.  I jumped off the lowest possible point into the darkest blue water possible.  It was around a 15-20 foot fall, I'd say, but I was terrified.  I didn't realize I would be so scared until I got up there on the rock, and I felt like my feet were glued to the rocks.  I'm pretty sure I had a mini panic attack, actually.  Meanwhile, the local children are running up onto my little rock and yelling at me to move so they could jump.  I'm pretty sure they were calling me a scaredy cat in their language.  Eventually I got enough nerve to jump, and it was admittedly fun; not fun enough to make multiple jumps like my friends, though.  I stayed in the water.  The waves were pretty strong that day too!  When getting out, you had to climb up onto the rocks again, which is really hard.  You had to stay about 4 feet away, wait for a wave to push you into the rocks a little bit, hold on for dear life so the receding wave doesn't suck you away from the rocks, and then miraculously spiderman yourself out before another wave comes again.  I cut my knee a little :-/  After this, we walked around the old city more and got dinner at a restaurant off the main street of the old city.  I got lamb kebabs!  Oh heyyy, mediterranean food.  After dinner we went to an irish pub, which was so fun!  (i'm sensing a trend in my bar choices)  The bartender's name was Blajenka (no idea how to spell it, but Brett is friends with her on facebook now) and she was so fun.  We also tasted this yummy, really mild liqueur she called "Pear."  To me, it tasted like maple syrup, and it was delicious.  I'm determined to find it again somewhere; i looked it up online and i think it was actually a dessert brandy (?).  After hanging out there for a while, we went back to the boat to get some sleep before the next big day.

Friday:
I got up and got on the bus at 8AM to go to Mostar, in Bosnia & Herzegovina.  Along the way, we stopped at a little town called Pocitelj.  I got dried apricots from a little lady selling fruit out of a basket, and they were a yummy snack :) Coming into Mostar, we saw an enormous cemetery for all the people of the town - mostly all brand new graves from the recent war.  Mostar, during the Yugoslavian implosion, was pretty badly hit.  A lot of buildings have tons of bullet holes in them still, and the famous bridge was completely destroyed.  They used it to separate the muslims and christians on different sides of the river.  The people were really optimistic about rebuilding the city though; they said that even though they didn't have enough money to rebuild it all now, they would do it when they can.  The bridge was completely restored after the war, and it's one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture i've ever seen; it looks like something that would fit in Rivendell in LOTR.  We also visited a traditional Turkish house that was somehow not destroyed during the recent war.  That was pretty cool - everything was super intricate.  After that, we also went into a Mosque.  That was also really neat - i've never been in a mosque before.  It was very small and simple - nothing extravagant or over-the-top.  Next: probably one of the best meals i've had yet on the trip.  As an appetizer we had what i think was a Bosnian form of spanakopita.  It was shaped like an egg roll.  There was one regular one with spinach and cheese and one with just cheese too.  It came with really really thick greek yogurt - it was like a cube of it - kind of the consistency of a jello cube but more delicious and fit to put on a spanakopita roll.  Next we got a cabbage and carrot shredded salad thing.  Our best description of it was cole slaw, without the cole.  I don't know if that makes sense at all.  Next, they told us we were going to get a meat dish, which was a gross understatement.  It came out, and there was so much food.  A huge slab of chicken, a circular meat patty thing, a couple smaller meat things shaped like lil smokies but called "dumplings", a huge sausage running around the edge of the play, and an enormous pile of roasted potatoes.  Ah. I forgot to mention the bread.  It was like super thick pita bread, and we had to stop ourselves from eating our weight's equivalent of the stuff.  After the piles of meat, we had dessert, which was a soggy, spongey cookie soaked in really thin honey.  Don't let the word soggy throw you off - it was soggy with honey, and anything soggy with honey is automatically delicious.  After that, we had free time to walk around and shop at all the little venders' stands in the town.  I got a pair of pretty little earrings for my port pal (on our hallway on the boat, we have anonymous "port pals" for whom we're supposed to leave little presents and happy notes).  After that, we drove the 3 hour drive back to Dubrovnik and I went out to dinner with my friends in the old city.  I got a yummy chicken risotto dish.  The sunset that night was so pretty over the water!

Saturday:
Saturday I borderhopped into another country - Montenegro.  The drive was also about 3 hours, and our first stop was at the port town of Kotor.  Out in the water, there were these two teeny tiny islands - one natural and one man-made.  Apparently back in the olden days there were these two fisherman that found a rock with the face of the virgin mary on it in the water near the natural island.  They dove down, got it, and took it to a church.  The next day, the same thing happened, and it kept happening for about a week I think.  Eventually they realized that Mary wanted to stay out there, at which point the townspeople built an island, upon which they erected a church honoring the virgin mother.  There's some Montenegro history for you.  We had around an hour to walk around Kotor, which was neat.  They had a cool gothic church that looked a lot like the churches we had seen in Italy, just built with completely different materials.  We also got gelato; you can guess what flavor I chose.  After that, it was time to get on the bus again and drive to Budvah, another port city in Montenegro.  We went to lunch there, which was most definitely not as good as the meal in Mostar the day before.  There was this weird pork wrap thing that was as hard as a rock, some watery soup with chopped chives in it, and some pretty disgusting looking peas.  I tried everything but the peas; like father like daughter with that one. After lunch we walked around a little bit, then got back on the bus to go back to the ship.  I think it would have been a much more fun trip, had we not tried to go to two different cities within Montenegro; everyone agreed it seemed really rushed.  That night, when we got back to the boat, we showered really quickly and went into the old city of dubrovnik to see all the festivities for the opening of the summer festival - sooooooo fun!  We got great seats and sat on the end of the pier to watch the fireworks over the water.  Then we went back to our favorite irish pub Katie O'Conners and our favorite bartender Blajenka, hung out for a while, and went back to the boat - I had a realllllly early trip the next day.

Sunday:
Sunday morning I got up really early and got on a bus to Medugorje, a place in Bosnia to which Christians make pilgrimages.  There, the virgin mary appeared to six children playing on the mountain - they call them the "seers."  We climbed up the rocky mountain to the site of the apparition - the tops of most of the jagged rocks were worn down and polished from the masses of people making pilgrimages there.  After climbing the mountain, we went back down into the town and walked around.  We missed mass at the church (our tour guide said they had them every hour, but they didn't), but I sat inside to escape the heat and pray for a little.  It was nice to be in a silent place for a little bit.  We got lunch at a restaurant that was really nice and really cheap.  I got a pita that was wrapped around a ton of the little sausage things they called "dumplings."  It was enormous and came with fries and it was only 5 euros!  After that, we got back on the bus and drove back to the ship just on time for on ship time.