An incidental tour
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
91
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Dubrovnik,
Croatia
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Upon arrival at the hostel, we were greeted by mama Malka with snacks and a homemade organic plum and honey liquor. After we put our stuff in the room, Malka served dinner to the four of us staying at the hostel that night claiming that she had so much extra food since her husband was in Zagreb, Croatia on business so we all had to eat it. Although we couldn't understand how one man could eat the same amount of food as four people, we happily obliged (she even made me some cheese-bread since I couldn't eat the moussaka she had cooked earlier that day). The four of us then went out that night into the Old Town to a bar run by a Canadian expat.
Saturday morning the other two guys headed on to their next destination while Russell and I went into the Old Town to explore. As we were heading into the entrance to the Old Town, we saw an English-speaking tour group of people I'd place in their 50s-70s who I had also seen while walking around Split. I started following them at enough of a distance where I could hear everything the guide was saying but not close enough to be part of the group, until a couple of the women came up to talk to me. Russell was too scared to listen in on the group, so he walked away for a bit, but came back right as the women were starting to talk to me. They got very excited to learn that Russell was Australian and immediately introduced him to the three Aussie women in the group. He got embarrassed and didn't like that they were paying more attention to him than the guide, so he headed off on his own for a bit while I stayed on listening to the tour. I was still keeping my distance for a while until a couple of the women who had first started talking to me told me I should come closer and join the group. They even encouraged me to come into the monastery with them, a site that normally costs an extra fee that I wouldn't have paid on my own. But I figured why not join them since I was invited by the group.
I continued on with the tour group for the next hour learning all sorts of interesting facts about Dubrovnik, some of which I had read about in the guide book and some I hadn't. The Old Town of Dubrovnik is another UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been destroyed a couple of times - in a big earthquake in 1667 and again in 1991 during the Yugoslav war. You can tell which buildings were hit during the war by the color of their roofs. The new roofs are a much brighter orange than the brownish old roofs.
As the group was walking between different points, I ended up talking to a number of people and found out that they were on a cruise that started in Italy and went along the coast. After Croatia they were going to spend a day in Montenegro and then head back to Italy to end their tour. At one point I stepped away into a nearby bakery to buy a cheese burek since it was 4:30pm and I still hadn't eaten any lunch. When I returned, half the group was more interested in my burek than in the tour guide. One woman gave me money and asked me to go run and buy her one (and keep the change) and another man asked me to write down the name of it and how bakery is spelled in Croatian so he could go buy one later. They were so funny as they were talking about how they weren't learning about any of the local food since most of their meals were served on the ship.
Sunday morning was rainy, so Russell and I decided to hang out in the hostel in the morning watching movies until the rain cleared up. Once it finally did clear up, we headed back into the Old Town and spend some more time exploring the little passageways and trying to find a place to climb to the top of the wall without paying the $10 entry fee. For the most part we were unsuccessful, but we did get to see a small part of the top of the wall.
Since it was the middle of Hannukah and I didn't want to miss out on latkes just because I wasn't at home, I decided to make them for dinner that night. I also needed to make applesauce since it isn't sold in the stores here (and I didn't want to have to eat my latkes with sour cream - yuck!). Malka was very interested in what I was making and had me explain the significance to her a couple of times. She was a bit apprehensive about trying them, but seemed to like them once she finally did taste one.
Monday brought more rain, more relaxing, and also more time walking around the Old Town, seeing things one last time before my bus into Montenegro on Tuesday.
