At Sea

Saturday, June 7, 2008 

As the phone’s ringer blasts through the cabin, Ariel continues snoring, while I just about hit the ceiling.  As I jump out of bed to grab the phone, I realize the deal we had made was that she was going to answer the wake-up call since she made it for 5:45 a.m., yes in the morning!  Of course, she sleeps right through the blasted thing…Once I got past the shock, I dragged my tired body around the cabin, trying to pull myself together for the day.  Ariel finally gets up when I tell her she’ll miss breakfast if she doesn’t get up right then, a tad bit of a lie, but never-the-less. 

We head over to Mom and Auntie’s room, but of course, they did not answer.  This is par for the course, they seem to always go missing whenever they should be in a certain location.  We decided to go to breakfast without them, so off we trek, another bazillion steps and elevator ride to the Lido deck for breakfast.  On the way back down, we stop by their room again, no answer…of well, we figure they will eventually show up. We are suppose to meet the tour director in the theater for our tour of Dubrovnik, a quaint town in Croatia.  Mom has been harping on us from day one about being at least 15 minutes early for every excursion or you will be left behind, so we head down a few deck but across almost the entire ship to get to the theater.  We really have no idea what is going on, so we stand in line, get our stickers, and find a seat to wait.  We save seats for them too, thinking we will be nice.  Ten minutes pass, no Mom and Auntie; another five minutes pass, still don’t see them, a little panicky, I send Ariel out the door to see if she can find them, which she was totally unable to do; another five minutes pass, and still no sign; the meeting time comes and goes and still not even a peak.  They are not only frustrating us, but worrying us.  Five minutes after the meeting time, they show up as if everything is completely normal; of course I scold them and remind them of their rule.  They were lucky there was only 200 folks going on this excursion or else we would have been in completely different groups all day, but the tour leader let them stay with us. 

We head off towards the departure deck, slide our cruise card through, and “walk the plank” into the belly of the tender.  It starts raining, just what we need, another freezing cold day with no sun!  From the tender, we get on a bus, well not a bus, they call them coaches, and head out of town.  We go up to the top of the hillside, just to stop for a picture-op, which I took advantage of, as the rain starting pouring down as I stepped off.  Oh well, I little wetness never hurt anyone.  The coach continued on its journey, then did a U-turn at the entrance of their airport, then returned to the beginning of the town-very mystifying.   To enter the city, you have to go over the drawbridge and under the archway.  In olden days the drawbridge was raised (closed) at sunset and put back down at sunrise.  This was the way the citizens were kept safe from their attackers during the night.  Take a quick turn and there is the beginning of the city walls, which we walked.  Up the first flight of stairs gives a little insight as to what will come.  When the tour description indicated that there would be some walking and 600 steps, they did not do this justice!  There were way more than 600 steps for sure, and since it was wet, they were extremely slippery. 

We went up and down steps, walked along single-file pathways on the top of the wall, and twisted and turned throughout the journey.  Our tour guide walked at a fairly quick pace, making it impossible to take pictures.  Everyone was huffing and puffing, and many stopped to take pictures anyway, so I think she figured it out and started giving us picture stops.  You could tell that she had memorized the script on what to say at certain points; when asked a question, she was rarely able to answer.   She recommended that you do not climb the highest tower and just bypass it, as it was not worth the climb.  We had traveled extremely far to see some of these “attractions” and there was no way we were going to skip that one.  Ariel and I climbed up the tower, which wasn’t bad at all; the steps were a tad steep, and the second set was very narrow.  We got to the top and it was glorious.  The views were incredible; you could see a panoramic view of the ocean and other islands to the front; and towards the back was a view of the hillsides with the local people’s homes.  Our tour group was dispersing quickly as were looked down, worried we would lose them, we tried to scurry down the tower.  I say tried because the top set of stairs was very narrow and really only one person could go up or down at one time; there was a group of folks that kept coming up, not waiting their turn so we could go down.  We waited for what seemed like forever, before finally just stepping into the mix and forcing these people to allow us to exit.  We were not thinking the stairs would be any more challenging on the way down, but we were wrong.  The stairs were quite scary, especially since they were slippery and steep.  I clung to the railing for dear life on the top set; on the bottom set, I was holding on to the railing, trying to make my way down, when another group tried coming up; they were also holding the railing and refused to move to the other side; the general rule is those going down get the railing.  I had to be a little pushy until they figured out they needed to move to the side.  I continued my journey down and when I finally got all the way down, my group was nowhere to be found.  Fortunately for me there is only one way you can walk on the wall, so I headed off in the only direction they could have gone.  Eventually I did catch up to them, but I couldn’t believe that the guide knew we were in the tower and she did not wait-that lowered my rating of her instantly. We continued going up and down steps, walking on the narrow pathways, and stopping to enjoy the views.  We saw a fabulous little cove off to the right, but our guide made no mention of it nor any explanation as to why no one was swimming in it.  We reached the half-way point in our journey, which stopped on the terrace of some of the local people’s homes.  The villas, the restored ones, were a beautiful white with many flowers blooming and vines running up the terrace sides and forming an awning over-head.  These were the villas I always envisioned this area of the World would look, not like some of the others we had seen along the way.  At this one particular terrace, an older local lady, was selling her needle-point work, handmade postcards, and local tree ornaments, OUT OF HER BEDROOM WINDOW!  I wished we would have taken a picture of her, that would have been very cool, but at least we have the memory in our heads. 

We continued on our journey, passing by the cutest little café’ on the top of the wall, just to keep walking to get to a museum.  When entering the museum, we noticed that it would be an in and out thing, but of course the guide wanted to point out everything, which took 45 minutes, seriously, 45 minutes for a room with few displays.  With her thick accent, poor accustics, and other people in the room, it was nearly impossible to understand what she was saying.  Ariel and I wandered around on our own, then sat in the window until the guide was done with the others.  She sent us on our way, but told us to wait for her at the bottom, which she then had us go down some more stairs, just to tell us that the street we were on, had shops-no kidding, we couldn’t see them!    We wandered through the shops a tad bit and then decided to catch the bus back to the ship.  We went directly to lunch and for the first time was able to eat in peace.  Since we came back so early, there were no activities going on and it was not nice enough to lie by the pool, so we thought we would go to the sports deck to check it out.  We found the miniature golf course, which was not really miniature golf, more like a putting course, with the background of the islands.  We picked up the clubs and headed to T-off on hole one.  We played 18-holes, had a lot of laughs, and was thoroughly impressed with Grandma’s putting skills.  She, of course, took the game very seriously, while the rest of us played for fun.  By the time we finished, we had enticed several other couples to play as well.  Playing on the top deck, overlooking the beautiful island and deep blue sea was picture-perfect.