Croatia/London Travelogue

Summer Vacation 2005

Copyright 2005 Jeffrey Valjean Cook

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.

Photo 31: Dubrovnik Wall Walk

Next I include a four-shot panorama of the rooftops of the old town as visible from the highest point on the wall.

Photo 32: Panorama of Old Town Rooftops from City Wall

One thing I should to mention about the rooftops of the old town is that all of the orange tile roofs have recently been replaced. During the shelling of Dubrovnik by the Serbs, most of the roofs in the old town, and some of the walls, were damaged. The town has been completely rebuilt since then. In the photo below you can see the striking difference between the old roofs (to the right) and the new ones (to the left and behind).

Photo 33: New and Old Tile Roofs in Dubrovnik

Next is a view that includes both of our residences in Dubrovnik. Our current apartment is highlighted in yellow and the Excelsior Hotel is highlighted in green.

Photo 34: Our Apartment and the Excelsior Hotel from the Wall

Finally, here is a really pretty view from the wall of the divide between the old (left) and new (right) cities of Dubrovnik.

Photo 35: Dubrovnik Divided

When we walked down from the wall and back into the main square of the old town, there was a troupe of small girls in white and black striped outfits performing with batons to recorded music, backed up by a school band in yellow and black uniforms whose crisp playing intermingled with the baton-twirling.

Photo 36: Old Town Square with Baton Twirlers and School Band

After the wall walk, we went back to Banje Beach and rented three lounge chairs for 50 Ku apiece, and Mika got her ride on the inflatable pulled by a rope behind a speed boat, accompanied by her Daddy, me! In the first photo, you can see Mika looking back and waving. In the second, we are blasting away over the surface of the water and holding on for dear life! I fell off three times, due to centrifugal force and bouncing, and Mika fell off only twice, although she claims that one time she did it just to be with me when I was left behind.

Photo 37: Jeff and Mika's Fun Ride Behind a Speedboat

After the ride we sat out on the beach for a while, and I took a picture of Sylvia and Mika from the water line.

Photo 38: Sylvia and Mika Lounging at Banje Beach

We contacted Erika, Doug Lewis’ friend today, and made plans to meet her at 8pm at a restaurant called Lokanda in the harbor. Sylvia called her at 7:15, but a young boy answered. We got into line at the restaurant, which was quite long, a good sign, and then Sylvia called her back when she didn’t show by 8:15. Somehow, Erika had “forgotten” her arrangement with us (but she had a good excuse the next day). We stood in line for a few more minutes, then debated going somewhere else, whether to eat the grilled squids for €6.99 or east the fresh grilled fish we had seen earlier at the Bistro Teatar just off the main square in old town. We chose the fresh grilled fish.

Photo 39: Grilled Fish-To-Be at Bistro Teatar

Be warned; do not eat at the Bistro Teatar! My grilled fish was just OK, the octopus salad had rubbery octopus, Mika’s Pasta Bolognese was just OK, and Sylvia’s Pizza Marguerite was downright awful. Ah well, should have gone for the squids.

July 4, 2005: Fifth Day in Dubrovnik

[This day’s entry written by Mika, lightly edited by Jeff.]

Today, my mom woke me up by talking on the phone (which she does quite loudly) at about 9am. She was talking to Erika. Erika said she had asked her father, who was a ship captain, and he said that today would be a good day to go on a boat tour of some islands. We were about to leave to buy tickets, when my father reminded my mom that we needed to figure out our flight schedule, so we could get it over with. I was really mad, because I was looking forward to going on the boat. We decided to go back to Hotel Excelsior and ask the travel agent there to try and book us a flight out of Croatia on the 10^th instead of the 8^th, because the two other travel agencies we contacted said that they didn’t deal with airlines. On the way to the Excelsior we stopped at a bakery, I got a chocolate doughnut, and my mom got a “walnut horseshoe” (some kind of bread pastry with a walnut filling). They were both quite good.

When we got to the hotel my dad and I talked to the travel agent, while my mom got her daily cappuccino. The travel agent told us that she didn’t deal with airlines, and gave us two phone numbers, but it took us about half an hour for us to just get this information out of her.

We then decided to walk to the “Atlas” travel agency in the middle of old town, which Erika had told us about. When we got there, we saw that it was closed, due to remodeling. Then, we went to the old church, which was full of old religious sculptures, and everything seemed to be gold trimmed, nothing special.

We then went to the Croatian airlines office, on the other side of the old town. On the way, we stopped at the second oldest Synagogue in the world. They had a museum on the first floor with many cool artifacts. We saw a silver headdress, with both my parents were surprised by, because they didn’t know that Jews wore things like that. We then continued to the Croatian Airlines building, where the lady told us, that we had been waitlisted for the flight on the 10^th. We learned that tickets were €284 each, which we already knew, but then the lady told us that there was a %50 tax on the tickets making them altogether about $1500. We thought that that was very expensive, so then we called British airways. They said that their tickets were €302 including all the taxes. We then asked them if they had any available, and they said that they had two available, but one of us had to be waitlisted, and if they got on the flight, their ticket would cost €450. Then, the lady from Croatian Airlines said that she had a better deal, which would be about $150 less. We decided to book the Croatian Airline flight.

After that was done with we were all really tired, but still wanted to walk through all of the side streets in the old town. We stopped at the oldest pharmacy in the world, which I thought smelt bad. It looked very old and Greek looking, with columns inside. There were also very old drug remedies all over the walls, but the pharmacy still sold modern drugs. My mom bought some Xanax for 17 Ku (about $3), which, at home, costs about $50, and you need a prescription.

Then we went to Proto (the restaurant we went to the first night), so my dad would be happy and get his breakfast of grilled squid. My dad ordered a delicious grilled squid; I ordered anchovies, which were very salty, but still good. My mom ordered an octopus salad, which was also very good, and we shared everything. Sitting next to us were two American siblings from Houston. The girl (Erika) had just graduated college and was planning on moving to L.A. and becoming an entertainer. The boy (Ben) was 20 and in college. They both liked to talk and ordered about 5 courses, which they ate half of. They were on a cruise with their parents, and it seemed that they were very well off, and had been just about everywhere. Anyway, for desert we ordered chocolate iced cream, topped with sour cherries. We decided we would be happy eating at Proto every day.

Photo 40: Half-Eaten Grilled Squid from Proto

After that we just walked around the side streets of the old town. We found nothing very interesting, but we decided to look for the rocks that we saw from the city wall, where you could jump into the ocean, and they were very easy to find. Then my parents decided they wanted a drink, so we went to this funky little outdoor lounge. I ordered a Blueberry Sky, which was a mixture of blueberry juice, limejuice and sparkling water, and it was very good. My parent both ordered daiquiris, which they claim were terrible.

Photo 41: Mika at Hemingway’s Outdoor Lounge

After that my mom decided she wanted to go back to the jewelry shop we had gone to last night. My dad and I agreed to go back in, but for only ten minutes. My mom walked around the store and tried on everything that interested her previously. She finally chose a very modern looking necklace made of many strings of orange and black spherical beads with silver wires in between (see Photo 59). It cost 3500 Ku, but he gave us a 20% discount for paying cash.

Jeff: The necklace below leads to [Idea#2], which is to try to replicate it using amethyst for the stones instead of clear crystal and jade.

Photo 42: Necklace Idea From Dardin

Jeff: The paint job on the iron bench below leads to [Idea#3], which is to repaint our existing iron furniture using a similar technique.

Photo 43: Purplish Silver Chair and Wine Cushion from Dardin

While my mom was paying, my dad and I went to another jewelry shop next door, which was also very cool. I bought some wooden earrings, which were a turquoise color, and a toothpick held them in my ear, for only 100 Ku. I also wanted to buy this long necklace, with small back beads and the dolphin charms hanging off of it, but it was about 600 Ku. After going jewelry shopping, we went back to our apartment, and relaxed, and my dad said that we could go jump off the rocks at 7pm, it was then about 6 pm. We ended up going to the rocks at about 7:30 pm, but first we went to check out the restaurant that Erika had recommended. The wait didn’t seem that long, so all of us went to the rocks. My mom didn’t want us to jump in, because she thought that we would hurt ourselves, but we did anyway, and it felt great.

Photo 44: Mika Frog Jump

Photo 45: Mika Ballerina Jump

Photo 46: Sylvia's New Hat and Mika

My mom decided to leave 5 minutes before us, so we wouldn’t have to wait in line for the restaurant. When my dad and I arrived, we saw that the line had doubled, but my mom was close to the front. When we were seated we saw that the food was really cheap, and we ordered a bunch of appetizers, for about 20 Ku each. We ordered marinated anchovies, fish pate, grilled squids, fried squids, and cuttlefish risotto. All of it was amazing.

Photo 47: Mika and Sylvia at Lokanda

Photo 48: Grilled Squid and Cuttlefish Risotto from Lokanda

Half way through our meal, Erika called and said she would meet us at the restaurant. She arrived just as we had finished our meal, and told us that she would take us to a place to get a drink. My parents talked to her for about an hour, but then I was really tired, so we said goodbye. She said that she would take us out to dinner tomorrow night.

Photo 49: Mika, Erika, and Sylvia on the City Walk

July 5, 2005: Sixth Day in Dubrovnik

Today was a peaceful, lazy day, even though it involved a boat ride to the three Elephite (Deer) Islands. We arrived at the harbor to make our reservations at 10am, booked three tickets to an 11am island tour from a local boat (The Karuzo), and then had breakfast while we were waiting for the boat. People around here don’t really do breakfast, but we did find one place where Sylvia could get a good cappuccino, and that also served omelets. Of course, we ate fresh fruit from the Green Market and mini-pastries from the Kiwi Fornetti stand.

Photo 50: Dubrovnik Kiwi Fornetti Mini-Pastries

The boat tour schedule was to travel to Kolocep, stay an hour, travel to Sipan, stay for less then an hour, travel to Lopud, stay for two hours, and then travel back to the Dubrovnik harbor. The trip cost 250 Ku for adults, 125 for kids. The boat was small and full, with less than 30 passengers.

One of the first things we spotted on our way away from Dubrovnik was a large hotel complex built into the hillside, that actually looked quite nice. Sylvia commented that such a place would be suitable for her mother, Rita, and we spotted at least one other instance of a similar complex, with another being built across the bay to the west.

Photo 51: Dubrovnik Hotel Complex for Rita

The first island we visited was Kolocep. It was tiny and picturesque, with a small sandy beach. The sea bottom was covered with small black sea urchins. I waded out into the water just to get wet, and then we all lay on our beach towels and read until it was time to go, a short half-hour later.

Photo 52: Kolocep Island Sandy Beach

Before we left our mooring at Kolocep Island, but after re-boarding the boat, we were served a fish picnic that was cooked up by the crew. It consisted of fresh bread, a tomato salad, griddled fish, sausage, and chicken, and griddled zucchini. The fish appeared to be mackerel and was delicious. All the kids had fun after dinner by tossing food scraps to the schools of little fish circling the boat at the mooring.

Photo 53: Griddled Fish on Boat Karuzo

The next island, Sipan, was even smaller, and we stayed an even shorter amount of time, so we just picked out a bench near the harbor and read until the boat left.

Photo 54: Sipan Island

Photo 55: Mika Reading on Sipan Island

The final island on our tour was Lopud, the largest of the three. This island was quite charming, with a couple of large hotels, and was known for a pretty white sand beach on the side opposite our landing, that Sylvia walked to while Mika and I jumped into the sea, in between bouts of laying on our beach towels on a stone landing and reading.

Photo 56: Lopud Island

Photo 57: Lopud White Beach

Our boat left Lopud harbor at 5pm, and arrived back in Dubrovnik harbor at 6pm. All in all, we had a relaxing, if slightly boring, island tour. We had arrangements with Erika to pick us at 7pm up in her car and take us to dinner at Konavoski Komin Restaurant, so we walked back to our apartment, showered, and got dressed. Erika drove us up the winding coastline to the east of Dubrovnik, where we saw the town of Cavtat (pronounced soff-taht) and the airport from the hillside, and we ended up, after ascending quite a ways, at a restaurant sitting by itself on the hillside. The hillside was reminiscent of Tuscany, with a similar climate and foliage. The restaurant specialized in cooking meat over coals, and had numerous mounds of coals cooking at various stages of readiness, in preparation for the final grilling process. The special that we were served, which had to be ordered in advance because it took two hours to cook, consisted of roast meat (pork and lamb) and potatoes, apparently cooked in an iron pot surrounded by coal embers. The meat was falling apart and delicious, and it reminded me somewhat of the pot roasts my mom Pat used to cook on Sunday, in the oven while we went to church. There was a baked octopus dish on the menu, but it also took two hours and was not ordered ahead of time, so now we know what to anticipate next time.

We were met at the restaurant by a large group of people including Erika’s two boys, Mario (10) and Edward (6). All together, in our party there were 8 adults, Mika, and 7 kids age 10 and under. We started up eating outside, but, before we were served the main course, there was lightning and thunder in the distance, then it started sprinkling. So we ended up moving to a table inside, whereupon a hard rain started and continued until just before we finished our meal.

Photo 58: Dinner Party at Konavoski Komin Restaurant

The part of our meal that the kids enjoyed the most was the presence of green tree frogs on the grounds. We caught the frogs and the kids played with them during the meal. Below is a photo of the necklace that Sylvia purchased at Dardin, complete with tree frog accessory.

Photo 59: Necklace from Dardin with Tree Frog Accessory

During the meal, Doug Lewis called Erika to see if she had met up with us, and she told him “I met them and didn’t really like them, so I won’t be seeing them again.” As you can see, Erika has a well-developed sense of humor! Sylvia then spoke to Doug, and Mika spoke to his daughter Malia.

July 6, 2005: Seventh Day in Dubrovnik

Mika got to sleep as late as she wanted this morning, so she and Sylvia both slept past 11am. Then we all got up and went to Lokanda for breakfast, where Mika and I had grilled squid and shrimp, and fresh bread to dip in the garlic sauce left over in the bottom of the pans. Yummy! But Mika got a stomachache later in the day, so perhaps this is not the best food to have for breakfast!

Photo 60: Grilled Squid and Shrimp for Breakfast at Lokanda

Sylvia was not hungry, so while we were eating she went off to book hotel reservations for our last night in Croatia (at the Albatros in Cavtat), and she also went to a pharmacy to buy some cheap drugs. She can buy 20 of her Ambien here for $3, where they are ten times as much in the states. The same applies to most of other prescriptions, but the newer drugs, such as my Crestor anti-cholesterol drug, were not available yet in Croatia. The Cipro 500 antibiotic was $2 a pill, and I am buying some for Karen Black because she loaned me some for the trip, but we don’t know how that compares to prices in the U.S.A.

Before our breakfast, Sylvia took the photo below of the wall of a building near the only Mexican restaurant we have found in town.

Photo 61: Sylvia's Pink Building Wall

Photo 62: Chihuahua Mexican Restaurant in Dubrovnik

After shopping for drugs, we spent some time shopping for souvenirs, then some time at the Internet Café (where I discovered that Karl Rove has been implicated in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, and, if true, I hope to God that this traitorous slimebag goes down hard for it) and then Mika and I went back to the apartment to read and rest, while Sylvia caught a taxi to the large harbor in the new part of Dubrovnik, and did some shopping. When she came back, we went to eat at the pizza restaurant “Mea Culpa,” owned by the owner of Lokanda, and recommended by Erika, but we considered their pizza to be inferior to the pizza we had previously eaten at Pizzeria Castro.

On our way back to our apartment after dinner, Mika and Sylvia of course did some more shopping, and they stopped at a Benetton store near the main square that had these amazing crinkled paper light fixtures, hanging by 1/2-inch tubes from a central round fixture. We could make these and use them at home [Idea#4], but they might require a high ceiling to look right.

Photo 63: Benetton Crinkled Paper Light Fixtures

July 7, 2005: Eighth Day in Dubrovnik

Today Sylvia is starting to get antsy, after staying in the same place for seven days in a row. So we decided to rent a car and drive down the coast towards Montenegro. On the way out of town, a policeman diverted us from the main highway onto a side street, which dead-ended at an abandoned building called the Hotel Belvedere. It didn’t look like much from the street, but Sylvia and Mika took a walk down the stairs toward the sea while I took a photo of Dubrovnik. When they got back, Sylvia and Mika were ecstatic, and were talking about how they wanted to buy the hotel and re-develop it (more on this later).

Photo 64: Dubrovnik from the Hillside Near Hotel Belvedere

The border with Montenegro is very close, about 30 miles away, and there are many small villages and towns between Dubrovnik and the border. We drove to the border crossing and stopped, and I got out to confirm that the crossing was actually the border. It was. Unfortunately, when I tried to start my car and drive away, it would not start. I had added gas to the tank on the way down the coast, and what had happened is that I had added regular gas to a diesel vehicle! Uh Oh!

We called the car company, they sent the main guy (Jasmine) down, and he arrived a little over an hour later, with a new car. We continued our trip back up the coast towards Dubrovnik. But in the meanwhile, during the hour we sat at the border, I watched the guards at the border crossing. The crossing into Croatia from Montenegro was much tougher, on the Montenegran side, than the other way around. Every car and piece of luggage was searched. Just after we had arrived, they searched the luggage of a couple of guys in a car, and pulled out what looked like three pharmacy-purchased packets of pills, in their original wrapping and small cardboard boxes. These two guys were detained and had not been released by the time we left. Apparently, it is a serious offense to buy any type of drug without a prescription and attempt to carry it past the border.

On our way down we had passed signs for the seaside village of Molunat, so we stopped there on the way back, 9 kilometers off the main road. Jasmine had informed us that this town had a population of 100 during the regular year but 1000 during tourist season, and was essentially a tourist trap. But we wanted to see it, and it was another of those idyllic Mediterranean villages spread over a couple of bays by the sea, but there was really nothing going on, so we continued our trip without stopping.

On our way down we had also passed signs for a restaurant near the river, something that Erika had told Sylvia about earlier in the day. Since it was after 5pm and we were hungry, we looked for the sign, found it, backtracked, and ended up at a lovely restaurant perched on the edge of a small stream, with holding pens for fresh trout, water wheels, and seats under the trees and next to the streams. It was called Konavoski Dvori.

Photo 65: Sign for Restaurant Konavoski Dvori

At the restaurant, we had yet another delightful meal, with some delicious bread and either freshly churned or at least recently whipped butter, another great octopus salad (octopus, sliced onions, parsley, capers, sliced green and black olives, olive oil, lemon, on arugula), a local smoked eel platter (a first in Croatia, also delicious!), some so-so farmer’s cheese in olive oil, three filets of fresh fried trout, and Mika had some gnocchi with meat and brown sauce. I took some photos of the grounds, which you can see below.

Photo 66: Konavoski Dvori Grounds

After our early dinner we continued up the coast towards Dubrovnik, and stopped at the town of Cavtat, where we have booked a room in the Hotel Albatros, for our last night in Dubrovnik, because Cavtat is very close to the airport, and our flight leaves at 8:30am on Sunday. We checked out our hotel, which reminds us of a San Diego resort hotel, but we are going to stay there anyway, just for a change of pace.

Next we headed back to the abandoned Hotel Belvedere, to jump into the sea before the sun went down. We only took one detour, going down a road that led to what looked like an idyllic beach, and, surprisingly, there was an abandoned hotel at the end of this road also!

We got to the Hotel Belvedere at about 7:45pm, and the sun goes down around 8, so we hurried down the 100 or so steps to the ocean. Below is a photo of Mika and Sylvia sitting on a concrete landing on the beach below the hotel, just after taking our sunset swim.

Photo 67: Sunset Swim at Hotel Belvedere

The hotel was much larger than it looked like from the street above, and we have since learned that it had 220 guest rooms, multiple conference rooms, two swimming pools, etc. It was built only 2-3 years before the Serbs starting bombing Dubrovnik in 1991, and has been abandoned ever since. Mika wants to buy it and only fix up a room or two and live in it like it’s a haunted house. We are trying to convince her that is not an option. We discovered on the Internet that there are shareholder owners, and the value of the stock in the company is close to $11 million, so this puts the property out of our individual reach.

Even thought the property is abandoned, there were at least 20 people on the grounds when we did our walk-through. Someone is fixing cars in the lobby at the top, a family is living in and claimed to be renting our one of the rooms near the beach, there was a bar near the concrete landing, someone was renting a jet-ski on the beach, and there were many people just enjoying the beach. The photos below are somewhat representative of the hotel.

Photo 68: Hotel Belvedere Grounds

Note the mortar damage at the top in the photo below. There doesn’t appear to be any structural damage to the buildings, but the cost of the cosmetic work alone would seem to be prohibitive.

Photo 69: Mortar Damage to Hotel Belvedere

When we got back into Dubrovnik, our car had been fixed, so we waited for it to be delivered to us, which took about half an hour. The thing I didn’t realize when I rented the car was how hard it would be to park it close to the old town, since there are no parking spaces inside the old town, and the residence have to park there cars somewhere. But I noticed someone pulling out of a spot on a narrow dead-end drive on a hill, and rushed to park our loaner rental car there, and then replaced it with our original car when it arrived.

July 8, 2005: Ninth Day in Dubrovnik

First thing I did was walk up the road to the Excelsior to attempt to get a good photo of Dubrovnik and the pair of guards dressed in traditional garb at the east (Ploce) gate to the old town. Well, one out of two ain’t bad. I passed the spot with the guards many times, but always found them standing in the shade and never in the sun. I wonder why?

Photo 70: Dubrovnik Through the Palms

Photo 71: Dubrovnik Old town Guards

Mika and I read until just before noon, and then we drove our rental car to Erika’s house. We met her husband Steven, logged into her network connection to do email and the Internet, and hung out at their house and talked for some time. Erika then drove us up the coast west where we went to yet another a restaurant on the beach to the west of Dubrovnik, over a bay and across a very cool suspension bridge.

Photo 72: Dubrovnik Suspension Bridge

The restaurant was called Orsan, and it was another very good Croatian seafood restaurant. We had octopus salad, marinated anchovies, fried tiny fish, fish carpaccio, scorpion fish filet in garlic sauce, white shrimp risotto, and black risotto with clams and cuttlefish and mussels and langoustine. I surreptitiously paid the bill, because the last time we ate out Erika’s friends paid for us. Another idea [Idea#5] that came to me at the restaurant, after they had pulled down bamboo shades to protect us from the sun later on in the day, was to use such shades as sunbathing screens on the third floor of our beach house.

Photo 73: Orsan Frontage and Table

Erika took a fairly good photo of me perusing the menu at Orsan.

Photo 74: Jeff Scrutinizing the menu at Orsan

After eating, we all hung out on the beach next to the restaurant. You can see the restaurant in the first of the three photos below, the pontoon we swam to in the second, and Mika with Erika’s two sons, Mario and Edward, in the background.

Photo 75: Orsan Beach Scenes

We hung out at the restaurant and the beach for hours, just chillin’. Then we drove back to Erika’s where I copied my journal onto her computer and copied some photos she had taken onto mine. In the meantime, Sylvia and Mika went down to the Erika’s beach. The beach frontage of Don and Janet Vernon’s hotel for the fall trip to Dubrovnik can be seen in the background of this photo.

Photo 76: Mika on Steven and Erika's Beach

Next is a photo of Steven and his son Edward on the same beach above, included because I just realized I the travelogue had no picture of Steven.

Photo 77: Steven and Edward on Their Beach

Before leaving Erika’s about 6pm, I took a photo of Sylvia and Erika from her bay view balcony. Before then, I had noticed a Bose remote that Steven used to turn off his stereo system, which was plugged in through his TV, and it gave me the idea [Idea#6] that I need to research a wireless control system so, when upstairs in the new lounge area on the roof, I can listen to and control the music from my Mac downstairs.

Photo 78: Sylvia and Erika at Erika's House

July 9, 2005: Last Full Day in Croatia

The following photo was taken on the morning drive from Dubrovnik to Hotel Albatros in Cavtat, and this photo is for Frank McKevitt. Frank, let’s get a goat and do this to it!

Photo 79: Whole Goat Roast on a Spit

Before our drive, Sylvia went into the old town to drink her cappuccino and do her final touristy stuff (the Rector’s Palace) and do some last minute shopping. Then we packed up and drove to Cavtat, where we met our rental car guy (Jasmine), who charged us 1000 Ku for the “misunderstanding” (plus we still owed him 300 Ku) so I gave him $240, which was $25 more than what we owed, for his troubles, since he was a very nice guy. Then we checked into Hotel Albatros, and lugged our bags to our first-floor room, which has a view of the pool area.

For lunch, we went to the Taverna Damizano right on the beach next to the grounds of the hotel, which also fronts on the beach. For only 150 Ku we had a cover of freshly grilled bread with fish pate, a mixed grill plate that had seven different kinds of meat (chicken, steak, pork chop, calves liver, lamb skewers, lamb sausage, thin sausage), and a pizza whose topping had figs and walnuts, plus a peach juice drink, a beer, and a glass of red wine.

Photo 80: View from Taverna Damizano

Notice the book that Mika is reading at lunch. The title says it all!

Photo 81: Mika Reading at Taverna Damizano

We spent most of the day lounging by the pool, resting, sleeping, and reading. During this time, I took the following photo for my friend Dave Balenson (and all other red-blooded males).

Photo 82: Lounge Chairs around the Albatros Pool

In the evening, at about 7:30, we walked into the main walk of the town of Cavtat, walking around one bay and then across the island to another bay. We walked on a narrow road amongst the pine trees lining the shore, and the view was magnificent. In the photo below, Lokrum and Dubrovnik are just behind the mast of the ship in the middle.

Photo 83: Late Afternoon over the Bay at Cavtat

We walked along the road, through the short walk through town, and kept walking until the path disappeared. On the way back into town on our way to Restaurant “Leut” that had been recommended by Erika, I took the following photo.

Photo 84: Mika Near Cavtat

Nearing town, we came across a water polo field in the harbor, marked out of the sea by white floats, in which a group of little boys were practicing with a coach. Mika wanted me to take a photo so she could replace boys’ heads with hers and Eilla’s, so they could claim to their water polo coach that they had been practicing while on vacation. Good luck, Mika!

Photo 85: Water Polo in Cavtat

Next we sat down at Restaurant “Leut” for dinner. Anyone care to explain why “Leut” is in quotes?

Photo 86: Mika at Restaurant "Leut"

How many good dinners can one family suffer through! At Restaurant “Leut” we had a cover of fish pate (like butter) and bread; a good arugula salad; a so-so octopus salad; a fish carpaccio on arugula that paled in comparison to the one we had at Konavoski Dvori; a dozen delicious ice-cold oysters on the half-shell with lemon; and after waiting a while, a delicious lobster salad that consisted of a whole “Pacific” lobster chopped on some lettuce; and then a dish called Shrimp Noodles “Giovanni” that consisted of 1/4 inch wide black fettuccini noodles with shrimp in a cream sauce, slightly spicy, which contained chunks of a vegetable the consistency of tapioca but in bite-sized pieces. The price of the dinner was 771 Ku.

After dinner, Sylvia left early, Mika put on her Mariah Carey look, and then Mika and I walked back to our hotel in a gentle and soothing twilight rain.

Photo 87: Mika Carey at Restaurant "Leut"

July 10, 2005: Croatian Departure, London Re-Arrival

We received a wakeup call from our hotel at 6:30am so we could finish packing, eat quickly at the breakfast included in our stay, and then take a taxi van to the airport. The Dubrovnik airport is about 10 minutes from Hotel Albatros. We arrived a little after 7:30am for an 8:35 flight to London. We had plenty of time, as the airport was small, check-in was fast, and security was non-existent. Below is the airplane we took to London Gatwick Airport, and we are now on the Gatwick Express train to Victoria Station in central London.

Photo 88: Croatian Airlines

There was a fairly long line at Gatwick for customs, but the line went quickly and there was no apparent extra security. The wait for luggage was fairly long, the ride on the Gatwick Express took about half an hour, and then the taxi to our hotel was quick, with hardly any traffic on the streets. Apparently the streets are less busy because of the recent subway bombings attributed to Islamic terrorists. At our hotel, the Soho Hotel, we had been upgraded to a Junior Suite, at our original price of £346.63 per night. The room is slightly bigger, with a king-size bed, a couch that turns into a bed for Mika, and a coffee table and two chairs around the couch. “Quite posh,” as Jane Vernon-Lewis would say.

After a brief rest in the room, I was shanghaied into going to Camden Town to the “flea markets.” My definition of a flea market is quite different from what we found. I expected to find people selling antiques and collectables and other such things, where what we found was like Melrose combined with Venice Beach, with hordes of people and loads of shops selling every product imaginable. The Camden Market was a concentrated set of booths selling clothes, and I think is why Jane directed Sylvia and Mika to go there. They both bought some skirts, dresses, and pants there.

The first thing we noticed was booths selling “Magic Mushrooms” on every block. We couldn’t believe it was for real, but I read the literature and fresh mushrooms had been exempted from the drug laws passed in the seventies (but not dried or processed). However, a law had just been passed making sale, distribution, and possession punishable by life in prison, which was to take effect on July 18, 2005. So customers were urged to buy now and rally against the unfair law illegalizing a natural product!

Photo 89: Camden Mushroom Company

While Sylvia and Mika shopped, I sat around, looking at bookstores and keeping my eye on the punks, whose major hangout was the Camden Bridge. Look carefully and note the finger-pointing in the photo below.

Photo 90: Punks at the Camden Bridge

Just after the photo was taken, a punk walked across the street with a large half-full plastic bottle of Dr. Pepper, and told me that I couldn’t take a photo unless I paid him a pound, or he would pour some Dr. Pepper on me. I replied, “No Thanks.” He said, “OK.” So it wasn’t really that confrontational, and later on I was thinking of giving him a pound for a photo with Mika, but the opportunity did not arise.

One last photo is shown below, that of a woman creating huge soap bubbles on the sidewalk.

Photo 91: Camden Sidewalk Soap Bubble Lady

After getting back to the hotel from Camden Town, I took a nap and Sylvia and Mika went to Covent Gardens. After they got back Mika stayed in the room watching TV and Sylvia and I went in search of a place for fish and chips. Two were mentioned in the Soho Hotel guidebook, but the concierge downstairs inferred (incorrectly) that we wanted fish and chips from in a traditional pub atmosphere, so he sent us to The Porcupine on Charing Cross Road.

Photo 92: The Porcupine Pub

The Porcupine claims to have been in operation since 1725, and was definitely an authentic English pub, but the fried fish had a limp crust (which should have been crispy), the chips (French fries) were good, but slightly soggy for soaking the in tartar sauce that underlay the fish, and the accompaniment was a small mound of a strange green substance that somewhat resembled mashed potatoes. The one redeeming element of this pub experience for me, and that my friend Carl Kesselman would appreciate, was the half-pint of Fullers London Pride that I had with my meal. I don’t drink beer as a rule, but Fullers London Pride on tap was something I could not forgo.

Photo 93: Jeff with a Fullers London Pride at The Porcupine

July 11, 2005: Second Day Back in London

Sylvia is determined to do the tourist thing, so we set off walking towards Buckingham Palace. On our way, we spotted a Deli on Charing Cross Road. Before our trip, we were discussing food choices in London, and Jane Vernon told us categorically that there were no Delis in London where we could order bread, meat, and cheese to make sandwiches. Below is the photo that proves her wrong.

Photo 94: Gaby's Deli on Charing Cross Road in London

Our first tourist stop was Trafalgar Square, where I took some photos.

Photo 95: Trafalgar Square

Photo 96: Mika on Lion in Trafalgar Square

Next we proceeded south towards Buckingham Palace, but all of the streets were blocked of, because of the discovery of an “unidentified package.” We could not get anywhere close to the Palace, the houses of Parliament, or the Westminster Abbey. So we walked across the Thames to take a ride on the “London Eye,” a magnificent Ferris wheel that gives tourists a birds-eye view of the city.

Photo 97: London Eye

Photo 98: London Eye Close-up

The London Eye made a very interesting target for photography, both for the machine itself and for the views it enabled.

Photo 99: Views of the London Eye

The landmarks visible from the London Eye, started at the top left corner and moving clockwise, are (1) the houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey; (2) Buckingham Palace; (3) Whitehall Palace; and (4) a recently completed egg-shaped building called the Swiss Re Tower.

Photo 100: Views from the London Eye

I took the following photo from the eye just because I love this color. Of course, it never comes out in the photo like it looks in real life.

Photo 101: Love this Color Green

After our tour ride, we decided to walk to the Tate Modern Museum. On the way we spotted a few mimes doing there business, and Mika gave a pound to the best one, so I got a photo of a mime posing as a statue.

Photo 102: Mika and the Mime

The Tate Modern was further away than we had anticipated, and our feet were aching by the time we got there, but we did a quick walk-through of free portion of the museum anyway. Sylvia really liked the museum, but I was underwhelmed. Modern art, which “In My Humble Opinion” is more conception and idea than execution and depth, just doesn’t excite me. But we did get four ideas from our walk-through.

Photo 103: Tate Modern Dot Matrix Beetle on Concrete

The first idea [Idea#7] is contained in the photo above, which shows a concrete panel on which has been “printed” the image of a rhinoceros beetle. The printing was achieved using an automated process driven by a dot matrix rendering of the image. This is a cool idea, and perhaps we can use it in a building project some day. The second idea [Idea#8] is Mika’s, derived from a wall installtion at the museum, and it is to cover parts of the wall in her bedroom with colorful found objects. The third idea [Idea#9] is to buy an old wooden display case that is a combination of glass cabinets and pullout drawers and fill it with found objects and fossils, and use it as a display case for stuff we have collected over the years. We could put an interesting finish on it and make it look cool. The fourth idea [Idea#10] was derived from a wall panel at the museum, and consists of a wall decorated by gluing on sections of wooden cylinders cut at oblique angles, and then painted to look like the rest of the wall. As photos were not permitted in the museum, I was only able to sneak a shot of the first idea.

For the evening, we had tickets to a musical theatrical production called “Dancing in the Streets” that celebrated the music of Motown at 8pm, but first we went to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Garlic & Shots for dinner. The restaurant turned out to be only a block from Hazlitt’s, the hotel we stayed at on our first night in London. Every item on the menu contained garlic, as did most of the 50 “shots.” We ordered a garlic guacamole with crayfish, a roasted dates stuffed with garlic and wrapped in bacon, shrimps sautéed in garlic and butter, and octopus (actually squid) in a mustard garlic sauce. All of these items were served on top of a single tortilla. Sylvia and I had two “Blood Shots” that were essentially Bloody Mary’s condensed into a single shot, with a healthy dose of garlic. The food wasn’t exceptional, but it was good and hit the spot, and would certainly serve to ward of vampires and any theatergoers who got too close.

Photo 104: Sylvia and Mika at Garlic & Shots

The musical production was completely entertaining, with up about 20 musicians, 15 of whom were singers. All of the singers were black, as was the bass guitar player. They performed at least 20 Motown classics, from acts such as the Temptations, the Four Tops, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Gladys Night and the Pips, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder. The actor/singers impersonated both the groups/individuals and their voices, and did a really good job. There was quite a bit of audience interaction, which made it the event more fun. By the end of the production, there were theatergoers dancing in the aisles, and this continued through two encores. The show ended at 10:30, and then we walked back to our hotel and ordered two passion fruits sorbets for Mika and I, which were delivered to our room within minutes.

July 12, 2005: Third Day Back in London

Since we are traveling to visit Don and Janet Vernon in the afternoon, Sylvia and Mika need to get their last fix of shopping in, and I would like to peruse the used book stores on Charing Cross road, and take some photos of the Soho Hotel and our room before I leave. But first we ate some croissants at the Patisserie Valerie down the street. There is a chain of these in London, and they make some passable pastries and croissants.

Photo 105: Patisserie Valerie

I bought five books in all, a book on how to design and make ceramic tiles, one on the mathematical origins of Islamic geometrical designs, a large-format book containing plates of M. C. Escher’s artwork, and two books on the E-Type Jaguar. The latter two books were purchased as a gift for Don Vernon, who is in the process of rebuilding an E-Type in his garage.

The first set of Soho Hotel images is of our fine room, which Sylvia really liked, and compares to our room in Hazlitt’s like the Ritz compares to a fleabag motel.

Photo 106: Soho Hotel Room

Our room gave us a couple of ideas. We really liked the light switches, which were large chrome toggle switches [Idea#11]. And we liked the art over the couch, which was two horizontal boards painted black, over which were glued old pieces of wood, vertically [Idea#12].

Photo 107: Soho Hotel Ideas

The second set is of the hotel itself. As you can see, the approach to the hotel is downright scary, but the interior is nicely done.

Photo 108: Images of the Soho Hotel

I got a call from Sylvia at about 1pm at the hotel and was instructed to pick them up in a taxi in front of Selfridges on Oxford Street.

Photo 109: Mika at Selfridges

The store spans an entire city block, so, of course, when I got there, I had to wait 15 minutes for them to come out, but then the taxi took us to Waterloo Station, where we boarded a train for Basingstoke. On the way, I updated my travelogue, with Mika’s help.

Photo 110: Jeff and Mika Updating the Travelogue

Don picked us up from the train station in Basingstoke, just a few minutes after we called him to tell him we had arrived. We boarded the train only a few seconds before it left the station, so we didn’t have time to find a public telephone and call him before we left Waterloo Station, as we had planned.

When we arrived at Don’s cottage (after stopping at a local supermarket to buy a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne and some Lindt dark chocolate for a mini-celebration when we arrived), I took a photo of Don and Janet in a little garden area just beside the back of the house.

Photo 111: Don and Janet Vernon

We hung around and talked until about 8pm, taking a short walk around the neighborhood in the meantime, then Don and Janet treated us to dinner at an English restaurant just a short drive away. Don and I had some delicious steak and ale pie topped with pastry (a traditional English dish), Janet had crispy duck pancakes with Hoisin sauce, Sylvia had a plate of various fried veggies and shrimp thingies, and Mika had a smoked chicken salad followed by a children’s dinner of 4oz steak and fries. Don and I each had a pint of local ale with dinner. The food was satisfying and perfect for the occasion. By the time we got back to the cottage, it was 11pm, so we all went to bed.

Don and Janet are absolutely lovely people, and we have spent some considerable time with them when they have come to Los Angeles to visit their daughter Jane, but this is the first time we have had the opportunity to visit them in their native habitat.

July 13, 2005: Back to Los Angeles

We set our alarms for 7am, but Don woke us up at 6:50. We finished packing, ate some toast, and were on the road for Heathrow before 8am. Just before we left, I took a photo of Don and Janet’s house, which, now that I think of it, reminds me somewhat of a Hobbit house.

Photo 112: Farleigh Cottage

The house is called Farleigh Cottage and was built over 400 years ago. Its address has no number, just the name of the cottage on Farleigh Road in Cliddesden, near Basingstoke. The cottage is small with short ceilings, two stories tall and roofed in clay tile, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, and another bathroom downstairs. It is situated on a narrow but deep lot, has a garage and workshop behind the house, behind which is a garden area.

Don and Janet drove us to the airport, and we made it there, with only a few spots of bad traffic, before 9am. Now I am on the plane, with Sylvia and Mika asleep beside me, looking forward to going back home to our home and the sun, ocean, and sand in Venice, California.