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First blog entry that isnt delayed--woohoo!
Today Josh and I did a Peljesac Peninsula wine tour. When we arrived in Dubrovnik on Friday our host (the woman than owns the apartment we are renting) gave us an overview of the area and mentioned good wines nearby, and of course, Josh's ears perked up and she then set us up with a driver who took us to the peninsula and to a handful of private wineries. This was my first wine tour and it was really fun! Our guide's family has been in the wine business for a while so he was very knowledgeable about the wine and since he is a Croatian knew everything about Croatian history which was interesting too. Whats really interesting is that all the wineries only date back to 1991 or more recent, as before 1991, Croatia was under communist rule and it was illegal to have your own winery, except to make enough for family (and some friends), and all grapes beyond a given amount belonged to Yugoslavia and there were a few large companies (owned by govt of course) that made all of yugoslav's wines. After the end of communism, local families were once again able to open up shop and make wine for profit and now there is a large wine industry in the peninsula (they didnt even get roads until the 1990s! before you had to go by donkey!) and we saw lots of tour buses on the road and even ran into one group at one of the wineries we went to. Josh was in wine-heaven and I got to learn a little something about wine, though I am about 10 years behind his knowledge :)
We also stopped in the town of Ston, at the base of the peninsula which has a HUGE stone wall, 2nd in length only to the great wall of china (though I think significantly shorter...) built in the 1300s for protection of the city and its vast salt mines (still in operation today) it was quite impressive (given our long hike yesterday we chose to forgo climbing it :) ). Ston also has an old city which is very small but quaint. Much of it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1996 but much has been rebuilt but there were still obvious remnants from it which they are continuing to improve.
Again, pics will be posted on facebook soon, you can use a link from an old post as I will just keep adding to the same album.
Tomorrow we are actually going to stay put in Dubrovnik and check out the sites it has to offer itself :)
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