Croatia/London Travelogue

Summer Vacation 2005

This is the travelogue for the Summer 2005 vacation (June 27 – July 13) for Jeff Cook, Sylvia Aroth, and Mika Cook. We are traveling to London on our way to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where we are staying for 9 days, then back to London for 4 days before we head back to Los Angeles. We know two sets of people in London we might visit – Gretchen and Scott Lloyd-Davies and Don and Janet Vernon. We have been given the phone number of one person in Dubrovnik we might contact – Erika – a friend of Doug Lewis’, husband to Jane Vernon-Lewis, and daughter of Don and Janet Vernon.

During vacation we typically take hundreds of photos (most of the photos below were taken with my Konica Minolta DiMAGE X50 5.0 megapixel camera). Only some of them turn out good enough to be included in a travelogue, and of these, only a few are either spectacular, poignant, or just plain fun. Below are some of my favorite photos taken during this trip.

	Dubrovnik from the grounds of the Excelsior Hotel
	Sunset view of Dubrovnik from the concrete wharf of the abandoned Hotel Belvedere
	Mika in Lopud Bay
	Mika the Frog Jumper
	Sylvia’s necklace with live tree frog pendant
	Late afternoon on the seashore near Cavtat

Proposed Itinerary

June 27	6pm United Airlines Flight from LAX to London Heathrow
June 28	12pm Arrival, Accommodations at Hazlitt’s
June 29	12pm British Airlines Flight from Gatwick to Dubrovnik, Accommodations at Hotel Excelsior
July 1	New Accommodations at Apartment in Old Town of Dubrovnik
July 8	12pm British Airlines Flight from Dubrovnik to Gatwick, Accommodations at Hazlitt's
July 13	11am United Airlines Flight from London Heathrow to LAX

Exchange Rates

Money	Symbol	Rate Per Dollar
Dollar	$	1.0
Pound	£	1.8
Euro	€	.83
Kuna	Ku	6

Reading List

Listed below are the books we either read or consulted during our vacation. The reason that Mika has so many books listed is that she hopes that this amount of reading will get her off the hook for the rest of the summer. And by the way, she just started and has not finished “Gone With the Wind.”

Tour Guides

The Rough Guide to Croatia, by Jonathan Bousfield, Rough Guides Press, June 2003.
London City Guide, by Martin Hughes, Sarah Johnstone & Tom Masters, Lonely Planet, 2004.

Jeff

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, by Haruki Murakami, Vintage Books, 1997.
Monster Regiment, by Terry Pratchett, Corgi Books, 2003.
Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks, Bantam Books, 1992.
The World Is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005.
Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross, Orbit Books, 2003.

Mika

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, Vintage Books, 2003.
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue monk Kidd, Penguin Books, 2002.
As if I am Not There, by Slavenka Drakuli, Abacus, 1999.
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, Riverhead Books, 2003.
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella, Black Swan, 2000.
Shopaholic Abroad, by Sophie Kinsella, Black Swan, 2001.
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, Pan Books, 1974.

Sylvia

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, Riverhead Books, 2003.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, Vintage Books, 2003.
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, Mariner Books, 2004.
A Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss, Ballantine Books, 2001.

June 27, 2005: Flying from Los Angeles to London

Our flight from LAX to London Heathrow departed at 6pm from the United International terminal at LAX. Because it did not leave from the main Tom Bradley International Terminal, and because we flew business class (upgraded via United Miles), check-in and security were almost trivial and we spent over an hour in the red-carpet room (we had arrived at the airport at 3:45pm).

The flight was straight through and overnight, arriving in London at noon the next day. After dinner, we reclined our seats and Sylvia and Mika slept almost all the way through, but I had little sleep, because Monster Mika was in the seat next to me and kicked or poked me almost every time I fell asleep. The flight was from 6pm to noon, with a time change of 8 hours, so the entire flight took only 10 hours. We are to be in London for only 24 hours (no appropriate flight to Dubrovnik that day), and then on to Croatia the next day.

June 28, 2005: London and Hazlitt’s

The first choice we had to make at the London airport was how to get to our hotel (Hazlitt’s) in SOHO, Central London. I believe I made the wrong choice, by choosing a Black Taxi over the Underground/Tube/Train. A Londoner at Heathrow advised me that a Black Taxi would be cost effective (same price as the three tickets for the Underground), and I knew that the taxi would drop us off at our hotel and we wouldn’t have to walk far with our bags. The problem was the bumper-to-bumper traffic once we entered London, and the taxi took 1:15 to get us to our hotel, whereas the underground would have only taken us 15 minutes to arrive at Central London, and we could have taken a taxi the (short) rest of the way. Ah well -- we got an automotive tour of the streets of London, Kensington and Hyde Parks, Harrods, etc. Mika’s commentary on London was: “It has a bunch of messed-up old buildings and too much graffiti”. The lush green landscape and the old brick buildings reminded me of portions of the eastern United States – Baltimore, Maryland, for instance.

Our hotel was extremely funky, to say the least. We occupied the “Prussian Resident” room on the second floor, up two flights of steps. Hazlitt’s was named after a famous English writer and literary critic, William Hazlitt (1778-1830), a biographer of Napoleon Bonaparte. Hazlitt’s has two rooms per floor over four floors, was decorated in old English style, with musty old paintings, books, and wall coverings, and had subsided quite a bit over the years, so much that the kick plates on the doors were inches taller on one side than on the other. We only intend to stay here one night, and have cancelled our Hazlitt’s hotel reservations for the return trip to London.

Photo 1: London - Hazlitt’s Subsidence and Our Bathroom

Photo 2: London - Hazlitt’s Prussian Resident Room

We were exhausted when we arrived at the hotel, so first I took Mika out for some food (Steak and Frites [fries], with hummus and bread for an appetizer, two lemonades for Mika, and a glass of red wine for Jeff, for a total cost of £26), attempted to buy a European card for my phone, but the activation period of up to 24 hours convinced me wait until we got to Croatia. And after only a brief walk, we determined that London was EXPENSIVE! The exchange rate between the English Pound (£) and the American Dollar ($) is approximately 1.8:1. But the prices for food, drinks, and lodging, which appeared to be slightly above average for prices in American dollars, were actually twice as expensive due to the exchange rate. For instance, a typical cheap meal special for one, with choice of appetizer and entrée was £6.99, which is about $13. A good hotel room is £300, which is about $540, and does not include the 17.5% VAT (Value Added Tax). After our brief walk, we went back to our hotel, left a voice-mail for Gretchen, and then joined Sylvia in a 3-hour nap.

Refreshed after our nap, about 7pm, we took a walk and looked for a place to eat. SOHO is a crowded place full of people and businesses, comparable to Times Square in New York, and most of the bars were full to overflowing. As soon as we started our walk, it started to drizzle, and later on the rain came down like cats and dogs and we had to stand inside a bookstore or under an arch. Meanwhile, there was thunder and lightning in the distance. Early on in the walk, we had spotted a hotel, and we decided to check it out for better accommodations. It was called the Soho Hotel, and was a nice new hotel with big rooms, so we decided to book it for our return trip, at £295 a night. The reception area of the hotel was in a ground-floor space that was also occupied by a bar and a restaurant, whose food looked interesting, California Cuisine-ish, so we decided to eat there.

We will never again order “California Cuisine” from a restaurant in England! We ordered five appetizers – red bell pepper soup, rocket (arugula) salad, crab risotto, grilled tiger prawns on couscous, and a tomato tart. The tart was excellent, the soup and salad passable, but the risotto tasted like it contained reconstituted crab, and the tiger prawns were just some small and uninteresting variety of shrimp. And the bill came to £86.30, making it a $150+ meal. On a positive note, we ended the meal with an excellent dessert, a passion fruit soufflé, served with chocolate ice cream on the side, and where the soufflé cup seemed to be coated with a high-quality unsweetened chocolate powder (cacao?). We think we can replicate this dessert using the passion fruit sorbet ice cream we buy at Trader Joes, and will certainly try when we get home. At least the dessert was good, but for this price, all of our appetizers should have been exceptional.

When we got back to the hotel, Gretchen called us in our room, and we decided to meet her at her house at 7:30am the next morning, so we could see her before we left for Croatia. We asked her where we (Sylvia and I) should go out that late at night (11pm), and she said we should go to Covent Gardens, but when we looked out the window, we noticed it was raining hard, so we demurred. We set our alarm and a wake-up call for 6:15am, read a bit, and then went to sleep.

June 29, 2005: Flying From London to Dubrovnik

At 6:15am we awoke, Sylvia went to get a Cappuccino from the Italian restaurant Tortufo next door (she had two, they were so good), and Mika and I got up, did our toiletry, and started packing. We had the hotel call us a cab for 7am, we checked out, paid our bill of £234.73 (£199.77 + £34.96 VAT), and then took the cab to Gretchen’s place in Notting Hill. Below is a photo of Mika standing next to our Black Taxi cab in front of Hazlitt’s.

Photo 3: London - Mika and Black Taxi at Hazlitt’s

We arrived at Gretchen’s at approximately 7:30am, and were met at the door by her husband, Scott, and then Gretchen came out and greeted us. Gretchen was a friend of mine in the mid-80s when I lived on 27^th Avenue in Venice Beach, and her life story could fill a book or two. She grew up with musicians David Bowie and Brian Eno in England, and is an outgoing person who knows an incredible collection of people and has her pulse on what is happening wherever she lives. Scot, her former and current husband, now refers to her as “The Matriarch.”

Gretchen and Scott served us some breakfast food; we talked together, took a quick tour of their house, and then loaded our suitcases into Scott’s car. Gretchen walked us through the neighborhood for a few minutes, and then Scott picked us up and drove us to Victoria station. Upon arrival, we boarded a train to the Gatwick Airport, which left the station within a minute after we boarded. Our British Airways flight to the Dubrovnik airport departed from Gatwick at 11:30am.

Photo 4: Mika and Sylvia on the Gatwick Express

The flight to Dubrovnik was only 2 hours, after which we collected our bags and passed through Croatian customs, which was almost nonexistent. We then grabbed a cab to the Hotel Excelsior in Dubrovnik, a ride of just less than half an hour. The Excelsior is rumored to be the best hotel in Dubrovnik, just east of the old town, and it is certainly nice, new, and popular.

Out room had a beautiful view of the walled portion of Dubrovnik, the old town, and the first thing we did after unpacking was to go downstairs to the private landing near the ocean and jump into the water (see photos below). The water was cool, refreshing, and extremely salty and buoyant – just incredible! Now our vacation had really begun. To top it off, we ordered an octopus salad (delicious) and Sylvia ordered a tiny bottle of Moet champagne (less than 2 glasses worth). The tiny bottle came to 250 Ku, or $40! This will remind us not to order French champagne in Croatia, or at least certainly not from a hotel! We went back up to the room, showered, and picked out a place to eat seafood that was recommended in our guidebook.

Photo 5: Dubrovnik - Excelsior Landing

I once read a book called “The Light That Never Was,” by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., about an alien painter whose magnificent works incorporated colors and sights never perceived or imagined by human senses. This is how I felt when we took our first walk from our hotel down into the old town to go to dinner. The colors of the lavender bougainvillea twining through the trees growing on the limestone hillsides, illuminated by the light of the setting sun, were magical. In my limited experience of the Mediterranean area, certain places possess this quality, and Dubrovnik is definitely one of them.

You enter the old town through two large gates, one to the east (Ploce) and one to the west (Pile), each “guarded” by a pair of pike-men in traditional garb. The white cobblestones that pave the streets have been polished smooth and glossy by the passage of innumerable people over the centuries, even to the point of looking wet, when they are not. The town center reminded us of a number of medieval cities, including Rome, Venice, and Lisbon. The streets were thronging with tourists from America, England, Germany, Italy, and Croatia, to name just a few. The streets were crowded with outdoor seating for restaurants, and street musicians, actors dressed in medieval garb and armor, jugglers, and stilt-walkers performed in various squares and on the wide avenues.

Photo 6: Mika on the Cobblestone Walk

Below is a photo of the walk as seen from the town wall in the background, on the horizon above Mika’s head.

Photo 7: Old Town City Walk from the Wall

We ate at a seafood restaurant called Proto, and it was the first decent meal we had since going on vacation. We ordered fisherman’s stew, shrimp spaghetti, carpaccio of fish over arugula salad, grilled potatoes, and grilled squid. The grilled squid was marvelously smoky, charred, and had savory drippings that we mopped up with bread. The stew was tomato-based and savory, the potatoes were good, and the pasta was perfect for Mika. Only the carpaccio disappointed us, as it was too vinegary, incorporating too many capers for our taste. The cost of the meal was 500 Ku, about $83, and was the cheapest evening meal we had consumed to date.

Photo 8: Sylvia and Mika at Proto

By the time we walked home to our hotel, a 15-20 minute walk, it was 11pm, we were exhausted, and we passed out in our beds.

June 30, 2005: First Full Day in Dubrovnik

I woke up at 7am, and decide to sneak out of the room so that Sylvia and Mika could continue sleeping. I worked out in the gym for half an hour, went out into the balmy morning with a gentle breeze coming from the east, and went for a swim off the private landing for the Excelsior Hotel. I read my book for about an hour, slipped back into the ocean momentarily, and then went up to the room to see what the ladies were doing. They were still semi-asleep, so I went downstairs to partake of the free, extensive, and delicious breakfast spread out for the patrons of the hotel. This meal included freshly baked breads and pastries, butter and jams, fruit and nuts, fresh squeezed juices (mango, cherry, orange), various types of granola and muesli with milk, more than ten types of cold meats, and the typical hot breakfast repast of eggs, bacon, sausage, etc.

I got Sylvia and Mika up at 9am and took them down to breakfast, so they would not miss the 10am end of service. After this we took a walk into the Dubrovnik town center, to check out our previously reserved (over the Internet) old-town accommodations. The price for a room up 30 steps from the main street, with two small rooms containing beds, and a small kitchen and living room, was 154 Euros (€154), which is approximately 185 dollars ($185). This was almost as expensive as our hotel room, was very close to the busy center of town, up a considerable flight of steps, and a long ways from the beach, so we decided to search for another place to stay. We found a place for €90 a night that was slightly larger, further from old town but not too far, and closer to the beach, so we booked it, making use of Sylvia’s newly acquired phone card. Her cell phone number in Croatia is 38 5 911 934265 (but will surely expire by the time anyone reads this travelogue).

On our walk from the first non-hotel residential booking to the second we eventually chose, we found a farmer’s market (the Green market) just off the main street in the old town, where we bought some figs, cherries, and tiny pears, and that we will certainly use frequently during the rest of our stay here.

Photo 9: Dubrovnik Green Market

Photo 10: Green Market Fruits

We walked back to the Hotel Excelsior and spent the rest of the day on the landing next to the beach, reclining on beach chairs, with 2-3 umbrellas for protection from the sun, and read our books. Mika and I jumped into the water 4-5 times, and the first time we swam to the landing immediately to the east. There were long sets of wind waves rolling in from the southeast, bouncing off our landing and heading to the southwest, and the ocean was a little rough, especially when attempting to climb up the water stairs to the landing. But, the roughness added a new and exciting element to our swims, and the ocean was completely refreshing each time we took a dip. Mika had been trying to push me into the ocean from the start of her stay, and got her wish with Sylvia that afternoon, after which I pushed Mika in, and then Mika and I jumped in together a number of times.

Doug Lewis had informed us of a really hip bar called Buza outside the city walls on the side facing the open sea, where people jumped off the rocks into the ocean, so we looked it up in our tour guide, found a route on the map, then walked there. As described, it was just an opening cut out of the city walls, with a sign saying “Cold Drinks” pointing to the entrance. And yes, it was hip, filled with Americans and other young hipsters. But no one was jumping into the sea, perhaps because of its turbulence. We met a very friendly guy called Pete from New York who seemed to know everyone at the bar, who told us we absolutely had to take a trip to Hvar, the center of the lavender industry in Croatia.

Photo 11: Buza Bar Outside the Dubrovnik Walls

For dinner, we were planning on going to Nautica, recommended by our tour book, but Mika spotted a pizza place along the way, and just had to have pizza. So we went to a pizza joint on the square that holds the Green Market, which looked like it had deep-dish pizza, and we ate there (Pizzeria Castro). We had two pizzas, Mika’s was a foursome with ham, artichokes, mushrooms, and cheese, and Sylvia’s was a seafood pizza. They were both very good, with excellent crust (but they were not deep dish). Right next to us was the Kamenice “Buffet” restaurant (in name only, no actual buffet) that looked like it served really good seafood. I kept walking through the tables, and determined, by observation, and with the help of two French girls that noticed me looking, that the best dishes were octopus salad, fried calamari, squid ink risotto, mussels, and langoustines. We will have dinner at this restaurant tomorrow night.

During the course of the last two days I took a set of pictures of Dubrovnik from our hotel room, at different times during the day. The result is shown below. The photos of Dubrovnik are marred by the presence of a large dredge in the channel to the harbor. Note how the dredge moves closer to the chore with each succeeding picture. Hopefully, it will disappear by the time we leave.

Photo 12: Dubrovnik at 8pm, 7am, 8:30am, 9:30am, 1:30pm and 7pm

July 1, 2005: Second Day in Dubrovnik

We all got up after 9am and ate breakfast at the Excelsior, dragging Mika along with a promise to let her sleep as long as she wanted tomorrow. Sylvia walked into town, and Mika and I went down to the landing. The ocean was still surging, but we took a refreshing initial swim, then I lay out to read my book, and Sylvia came back from town. The ocean was surging more than the previous day, with waves coming up over the landing and getting people and possessions wet. Eventually, hotel staff removed the water stairs from the landing so that patrons would not go swimming, declaring it was too dangerous to swim. As Mika would put it, “That sucked.” We were intending to spend the day on the landing after we had checked out, but if we can’t jump into the ocean to cool off then we might as well leave the hotel for good.

Photo 13: Jeff, Mika, and Sylvia Just Before Leaving the Excelsior

We checked out of the Hotel Excelsior with a total bill of 4,548.16 Ku ($758) for our two-day stay -- quite expensive. On our way out, a fat old English lady with a cane tripped over her own feet at the self-opening front door, fell sideways, and her back smacked against the doorframe. She screamed “My Back!,” and the staff helped her to lie down prone on her back. She lay there for a while, complaining a bit, then got up of her own accord and complained that the door shouldn’t just open automatically like that, or something to that effect. But she ambled off on her own accord, and was probably not actually damaged, except for some scrapes on her arm. (Mika made me tell this story.) We then boarded a taxi to our new apartment. Although it was no more than a 10-minute walk, we didn’t want to lug our luggage, and because of the layout of the city streets, the taxi drove a distance that was about 5 times as far as the actual distance from our hotel to the apartment, just to drop us off out front.

After unpacking, we decided that our new digs were actually quite nice. The apartment has two big bedrooms, both with air conditioning, and Mika’s doubles as a living room, with a small kitchen and a bathroom, and a washing machine. We then walked down into old town, bought some books and postcards, some clothes for Mika, and had some delicious mini-pastries. We had a drink during Happy Hour (5-7) at the Gaffe Pub, where drinks were 18 Ku ($3), instead of 41 Ku ($7) at the café’s in the walkway.

Photo 14: Jeff and Mika at Happy Hour

We then walked up the steep set of steps out of old town to our apartment, with some liquid refreshments to put in the refer for the next day.

Photo 15: Mika on The Steep Walk Back to Our Apartment

Photo 16: Sylvia and Mika on the Steep Walk Down

At 6pm we walked down to the beach just to the west of the Excelsior, in front of a restaurant/bar called the East-West Club at Banje Beach. This beach was just like the beach at Positano, Italy, a rocky beach crowed with colorful throngs of the young and old, with a sea of white lounges and umbrellas to rent. We jumped into the ocean and swam out to a pontoon used to stage inner tube rides from a speedboat, which had just left for the day. We then swam back to shore and ordered some tropical drinks from the East-West Club (Mai Tai, Piña Colada, Cranberry Cream for Mika – 45 Ku apiece), and sat outside in their outdoor lounge area facing the beach. Sylvia commented that the lounge reminded her of Bali was her favorite type of setup -- wide benches covered with outdoor cushions against a wall, with low tables in front. We would like to attempt to replicate this environment in our new dream house, and so for [Idea#1] we will erect a functional mock-up on the third floor or our current beach house.

Photo 17: Banje Beach Pontoon with Lokrum Island Backdrop

Photo 18: Lounge Area at the East-West Club

We walked back to our apartment; all took a shower, then walked back into old town to go to the restaurant we had discovered the evening before. We ate at the Kamenice “Buffet” seafood restaurant, which we found out was basically peasant food (basic, home-cooked, and down-home-good). We had a large bottle of bubbly water, some bread, a plate of mussels in garlic, a plate of fried squid, and some squid ink risotto (rice). We were hungry and gobbled this all down, so Sylvia ordered a green salad and Mika ordered a plate of small fried fish, basically minnows, and literally hundreds of them, way to many to eat. But Mika exclaimed that they were just the right touch to end the meal. The bill was 317 Ku ($53).

Photo 19: Mika and Sylvia at Kamenice “Buffet”

July 2, 2005: Third Day in Dubrovnik

The first night in a new place is typically somewhat uncomfortable. Our neighbors came home loud and boisterous just as we were going to bed, and I barely heard them, but they made a big impression on Sylvia. The sheets are slightly too small for the bed, and the bed is not quite long enough for me (only 6’), and it has a footboard, so I can’t hang my feet over the edge (same with the Excelsior). Also, I had my computer plugged into the stereo for music during the day, and, when the music was turned off but the stereo turned on, the computer produced a ground-hum that came out of the stereo at regular intervals, and seemed to get louder as the night wore on. At 4:30 I finally figured out it wasn’t the small refrigerator, or the air conditioner, and finally solved the problem by turning off the stereo.

We got up after 9am, and walked down into the old town, where Sylvia had two cappuccinos and I went to the Green Market to shop mainly for fruits (purple figs, green figs, dried figs, small ripe sour cherries, tiny firm pears, fresh farmer’s cheese) then on to the grocery store (slab of bacon, pound of butter, assorted fresh rolls), then on to another store (peach jam, raspberry/blackberry/blueberry jam, Nutella), then to the pastry store (peach, vanilla, chocolate mini-pastries), then back up the stairs to our apartment.

When we got back, Mika was still in bed but almost awake, having slept for only 12.4 hours, and she got her own version of breakfast in bed (I just kept feeding her food, one item after another – purple fig, dried fig, sour cherry, chocolate pastry, and so forth. She said: “This is much better than the stinking hotel!” I think, however, she was referring more to the breakfast in bed than the accommodations. Mika finished up her breakfast with some Nutella on a white roll.

On the afternoon of July 2, both Sylvia and Mika read my completed journal up to this point. Sylvia commented that she was surprised that I had described everything in such glowing and positive terms. Well, Dubrovnik is a great place, and regardless of the personality conflicts between Sylvia and I that tend to lessen our enjoyment of travel, I can journalistically separate the place from the conflict. No more shall be mentioned about this, unless the situation devolves into Sylviacide.

We took our first day-trip today, to the island of Lokrum, just off the coast of Dubrovnik, and seen in the background of Photo 17. Lokrum is accessible by a water ferry that runs every 15 minutes from morning until 8pm, at a cost of 20 Ku per person, and the trip takes only 10 minutes.

Below is a panorama of the harbor taken just minutes before we boarded the boat to Lokrum, which can be seen in the background to the right.

Photo 20: Panorama of Dubrovnik Harbor

We spotted this magnificent black sailboat on the way to Lokrum, and Mika told Sylvia that she would buy her one in 15 years!

Photo 21: The Sailboat Mika Will Buy Sylvia in 15 Years

The walk around the island of Lokrum was spectacular. The island is a wooded nature preserve that was purchased by Maximilian Hapsburg (Emperor of Austria) in the 1850s, who planted a botanical garden on the island. Below is a photo of Mika, taken through the trees and overlooking the water that separates Lokrum from the mainland.

Photo 22: Mika Amongst the Lokrum Trees

The first item of note on the walk was a rocky nude beach, but no cameras were permitted, so I did not get any photos. The walk continued to wind clockwise around the island, and we passed some spectacular sheer cliff drop-offs into the water, then came to the so-called botanical garden, of which no trace could be seen, and then we arrived at the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is a tiny land-locked lake filled with fresh seawater, slightly warmer than the surrounding sea, and with a 20-foot cliff off which boys were jumping into the water. So of course, Mika wanted to also, and so, guess who else got the privilege?

Photo 23: Jumping into the Dead Sea

Before reaching the Dead Sea, while hiking through the forest, we heard the cries of a wild animal in the distance, and I told Mika it was a troupe of the famous “White-Faced Monkeys of Lokrum.” It ended up being a flock of peacocks, including female with a couple of chicks, so we had to get a photo of them.

Photo 24: Peacock and Chick at the Dead Sea

After leaving the Dead Sea, we walked through the unimpressive grounds of the ruined and abandoned monastery, and then walked back to the boat landing on the other side of the island (Lokrum is small). When we got to the rocky beach near the landing, Mika and I swam to the landing from a point near the far left in the photo below.

Photo 25: Lokrum's Rocky Beach from the Landing

After taking our water taxi back to the Dubrovnik Harbor, we went back to our apartment, showered, and then walked to Nautica for dinner.

Photo 26: Dubrovnik Views on the Walk to Nautica

Nautica was highly recommended in our tour guide. All I really wanted for dinner was a whole grilled fish, and it was obvious from the Nautica menu that it was expensive and considered itself to be “haute cuisine,” with fix priced menus from € 66-98 ($80-120). I didn’t really want to stay, but was overruled by both Sylvia and Mika. The waiter had to serve four courses of bread before we were served good bread. The first bread course was hard cold burned toast. The second seemed to be day-old buns. The third was wonder-bread-like. Finally, the fourth resembled thick-sliced ciabatta, and was delicious. We ordered a bottle of red wine and three seafood salads for appetizers – lobster, shrimp, and octopus. They were all excellent but the lobster was the best. For our main course, we ordered three additional items – fettuccini pasta with fresh Istrian truffles in a cream sauce, escargot, and grilled sea bream with charred rosemary and a light sauce. The sea bream elicited moans of satisfaction from me, and was excellent, as verified by both Sylvia and Mika. The escargot were some of the most tender we had ever tasted. The bill came to €250, which we charged to our credit card. We had no cash, and asked the waiter how to leave a tip on the card, but, apparently, that is not possible here in Dubrovnik (Croatia?), so the waiter had to go without a tip, after all his trouble. We attempted to get money for a tip from an ATM close to the restaurant, but without success.

Photo 27: Mika, Sylvia, and Staff at Nautica

Photo 28: Mika Pretending to be Tipsy at Nautica

July 3, 2005: Fourth Day in Dubrovnik

This morning we intended to get up at 8am and walk the walls of Dubrovnik, but we didn’t get up ‘til 9, and didn’t make it onto the walls until 10. We wanted to get an early start to avoid the heat, but, when we started out on our walk, it was cloudy and breezy, so we initially achieved our objective, anyway. The sun was out in full force before we finished about an hour later, however. The photo below shows you how the harbor looked, with Lokrum in the background to the right, and with two monstrous cruise ships parked offshore, just after we had started on our wall walk.

Photo 29: Dubrovnik Harbor on a Cloudy Day

The entrance fee for the walk on the wall cost 30 Ku for adults and 10 Ku for kids, and the views from the wall were simply spectacular. I took way too many photos to show here, but I’ll include the ones I consider to be the most representative.

The first is the obligatory shot of Mika.

Photo 30: Mika on the Dubrovnik Wall

Below is a view of the top of the wall from at the start of our walk.