Dubrovnik: Day 5

Croatia has been at the top of my "must travel" list for some years now. So, I wasn't about to miss out due to a silly little (read: horrible, near-death) cold.  Luckily the port was only 10 minutes from the old town, so I roused myself out of bed to go.

It was drizzly and cold (and had a little bit of the Venice "Disney-land-for-adults" feel), but it was still gorgeous.  Blake kindly took the day at my snails' pace and we wandered the old town for several of wet and muggy hours before heading back to the ship to sleep it off.

Old town Dubrovnik is tiny, but it packs a punch.  There is no space on the winding streets for cars, and there are impossibly steep and narrow stairs everywhere.  Combine that with the rain, and it probably wasn't a good idea to do while sick, but hey, it's not every day you're in Croatia, right?  Carpe diem, I say!

We took a break in the town square with a cup of delicious and rich hot coco.  Due to the exchange rate (and the fact that the cafe didn't post prices - making it impossible to determine in advance how much we'd be paying) the coco was something like $15.00 for the two of us.  But it was so worth it.  We took it easy for a while, watched the passers-by and escaped the drizzle.  We even learned how to "thank you" in Croatian: hvala (pronounced "chwala"), which brought joy to my nerdy linguist heart.

We started walking around the city wall in the harbour, but didn't make it very far.  The photo below makes it look all calm and un-assuming, but don't let that fool you like it fooled us.  The waves around the corner were so high and so violent that they were crashing up over the walking path.  We didn't dare brave it, so we stayed on the protected side.

This is a view from the old town harbour up to the newer part of the city:

And here's a photo of my Blake with old town in the background.  A sick/coughing/sniffly wife, rain, and soggy shoes and he's still happy.  What a guy!

Here I am perusing the map of old town to make sure we'd seen it all. 

And here we are in the harbour trying to look as dry and presentable as possible.

Note: the mis-matching purple scarf has a purpose. I wore that constantly so that I could cough into that instead of into my hands (or into the hairdos of the unsuspecting persons walking in front of us). Ingenious!