Day 34 (Travel to Dubrovnik)

Today is sunny and 71 degrees. I was not able to work in a swim yesterday so my time is slowly running out. There are a lot more people at breakfast this morning and it is quite loud. There are 2 rugrats in the area slinging their long hair by the food and darting around as if they were just fed a bale of Pixi Sticks. Where are the parents? Maybe they are just the resort pets? At least there is chocolate pie.

Our ferry back to Split is at 11:30am then we have about a 3hr drive to Dubrovnik where Lori has already set up another 5 star hotel and a few tours of the city. This city is where they filmed a large part of GOT (Kings Landing).

They parked us on the top row above the buses and other cars. It is amazing how many vehicles that they can fit on these things. We exited the ferry and headed south for Dubrovnik. We decided to take the more direct route instead of along the coast. It was still beautiful! This country has surpassed Italy as our favorite country. The scenery is awesome, there is no litter, the roads are well maintained and the food is delicious. We stopped about an hour outside of Split for lunch and had pizza. We continued on for another hour enjoying the mountain scenery. We came around a mountain bend and spotted a coffee and wine stand overlooking a bay with several islands. Lori yelled out “super cute” whip in there! I followed the command and executed the maneuver. I was able to avoid a roll over and make it into the parking lot unscathed. This is a popular stopping point as the parking lot was already packed. This place was a gold mine! Lori purchased some coffee and we sat and enjoyed the view for about 20 minutes.

About a minute down the road we crossed a large bridge that routed us over to a peninsula that avoids Bosnia. The country boundaries are crazy in this region. Croatia owns most of the coast line in front of Bosnia on the Adriatic Sea. Then Bosnia owns a small portion then Croatia picks up again with a thin strip of coast. It is easier to see on a map which I included. I am curious to know the story behind the boundary lines and why they are drawn the way they are.

Lori did it again and found us a nice resort with her credit card points. It includes a room upgrade, $100 resort credit and free breakfast. The resort is about 25 minutes from Dubrovnik so it is not as convenient but it is really nice! Lori did not want to risk the possibility of another night in an ancient town with ancient smells. We had to extend the rental on the green machine which is only costing us about $440 for 2 weeks. We arrived at the resort and Lori requested that I drop her off away from the front door because she didn’t want them seeing us pull up in the green machine and risk not getting special treatment. I started to drop her off at the front door and she said “I’m not kidding, drop me off away from the door!” So I drove around the circle drive and dropped her off by the Mercedes parking.

The receptionist was really impressive and set Lori up with an impressive sea view room. We can watch the sunset and still see Dubrovnik castle from our room which is a 25 minutes down the shore line.

We walked around the resort where there are 4 restaurants and found one to sit at along the shore. The waiter made us feel like we were royalty and suggested some red wine which we ended up finishing the bottle. As we enjoyed our wine we discussed the next stop. We decided to stay here for another 4 days (6 total) then fly to Bari, Italy. That way we can take another break and spend some time exploring Dubrovnik and enjoy the resort.

We headed back to talk to the receptionist and see if we could extend our stay. If we can’t then we will just head to Italy earlier.