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Gotta Go . . .
Rain has been forecast nearly every day of the trip but we managed to escape it every day except today. We shuttled into Dubrovnik and opted to walk the old city walls first thing in case the rains descended upon us. We saw some wonderful sights and enjoyed viewing the handcrafts made by local women. The specialty is hand stitched table clothes, runners, etc and they sold items right from their homes that were tucked into little corners along the path. Those who didn't live along the way sat up tables in the square and under the tunnels. About halfway along the wall it began to rain so we looked for the staircase back down into the city. And then it began to pour! To escape the rain we ducked into a tiny little cafe. We asked the owner for coffee and he said "No coffee, only beer or wine". You can see from the photo that we had bread and beer at about 10 AM. He served us fish soup and olive oil loaded with garlic to go along with the bread. It was the most scrumptious, simple meal and one of those memorable experiences that would never have happened but for the rain. As we were finishing our snacks it began to thunder ominously so we hurriedly gathered our possessions and headed out of the city to find our bus back to the port. Unfortunately the hardest rain of all began to fall as we waited for a bus to appear. After waiting for 20 minutes in the drenching downpour we hopped on a bus for another cruise ship since they were heading back to the same pier. When we reached their ship and asked the bus driver if he could drop us at our pier he threw us off the bus. Not nice! That meant Dwain and I had to make a trek of about a mile in our wet clothes and sloshing shoes to get back to our appropriate transportation. I guess we got two weeks worth of rain in about 20 minutes in Dubrovnik and sadly didn't get to see the entire area. As you might imagine, cities built on hills in ancient times didn't have good systems for water run off and we experienced flash flooding conditions from the heavy rainfall. People in other places try to drive small cars through bumper-deep flowing water just like they do in Central Texas. Fortunately we didn't see anyone have any problems but we worried that our big motor coach would create such a tidal wave that we would swamp them completely. Everything we had heard indicated that Dubrovnik is beautiful and it certainly was. We sailed out of Dubrovnik heading for our final destination, Venice, and the end of our two week odyssey.
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