"If I can't eat it or wear it, I'm not buying it."
This is the motto that my Great Grandma announces before we buy her Christmas presents, and its also the motto of the Golden Girls while souvenir shopping. Another shopping expertise they announced was "Well 5 Kuna is only a dime!" Nope. No it is not. Five Kuna is almost a dollar.
Today we saw Dubrovnik by day! The amount of people in the city had multiplied drastically compared to last night, so the real lesson of the day was in patience. This only lasted for the city tour with a local guide, though. We walked around with Inga for a couple hours and she pointed out important buildings, told us some history and lead us to museums. We passed a lot of distracting cats along the way, so that is why there isn't a full report of the tour. My favorite parts of the day happened afterwards though, so you're not missing much.
We finished with a walk through the Rector's museum where I took pictures and touched things and got yelled at both times. We were supposed to meet up with Rok and Ivan next for "a little something special." When we learned about this surprise, I figured we'd get a special tour of some building, or meet an important Croatian person I'd never heard of. That is the last time I'll ever doubt Rok and Ivan.
Our surprise was meeting Ivan's family! He grew up here, and his grandpa repairs fishnets, something that isn't common today. Not only did he invite us to see his grandfathers workshop, but his mother also made some snacks for us, and his grandmother let us try some of her home brewed alcohol. Everyone was smiling the whole time, and we loved meeting the family of the guy who's been leading us around the Dalmatian Coast. Repairing the fishnets reminded me a lot of making friendship bracelets at Camp Tecumseh. We should really make a fishnet clinic. Everyone would love it!
On the way back to the bus last nigh, Ivan told Scarlet and I all about growing up in the city. There is this pedestal type thing sticking out of the wall. According to Ivan, the cool thing to do was try and stand on this stone and take off your jacket. Doesn't sound hard, right? Wrong. The stone was really skinny and worn down from people standing on it. The challenge was that if you could keep your balance while standing on it, taking your jacket off would throw you off balance and you would fall, mostly because you were so close to the wall that doing anything but standing stick straight meant falling. Scarlet and I were up to the challenge. Honestly, I thought it would be a breeze! I thought wrong. In fact, I couldn't even stand on the stone without falling. Scarlet could at least get that far. Ivan claims to have done it before, but I have my doubts.
We spent from 8:30 to 4 off the boat in the city. During this time Scarlet and I made Grandma and Grandpa trek all around the city. Including a walk of the entire city wall, a gondola trip up to another viewpoint, and a hike up to St. Lawrence fortress. The walk of the wall had a different view everywhere we turned it seemed like. So I have a lot of pictures that actually look exactly the same.
Once Grandma saw the steps leading up to the fortress, she just turned around and said she'd see us later. Grandpa came, but told me to get ready to resuscitate him at any time. Once at the top we groveled for some water from the catering company hanging out on the roof of the fortress, but they "didn't have any." YEAH RIGHT! We snapped some pictures and headed back down where we met Grandma and some other friends from our boat at a cafe. We ordered tap water as quickly as possibly and emptied our glasses in one gulp.
We had an hour or so when we got back on the boat to get ready for our night out. I took this time to engineer a clothes drying rack on our balcony, and admire my new farmers tan. Summer has never felt better. At 5:30 we loaded the buses to head for a small town north of Dubrovnik where we would all split up and have dinner with a local family.
All 50 or so uf us were split up between 5 houses. I might be biased, but my group had the best family. They had a daughter Brody's age named Lorena, and Lorena had a small two week old kitten she carried everywhere.
In America, the houses all have the same idea behind them. Houses are not as regular when they are built into the sides of mountains. So on top of meeting a great family, and having a great meal, we were in a super unique house. The family is very self sustainable. Most of our meal was made with what they grow themselves. We also learned about their wine making, an had the best olive oil I have ever tasted. On top of the meal and the company, we learned some traditional dancing and got a small tour of the house. This family was very open and friendly, there was never a dull moment!
I think every family was very generous with their wine tasting and the bus ride back was much louder than usual. Most of the time as soon as we board the ship after a long day like today, everyone heads straight to bed and I head straight for the wifi in the lobby. Tonight though I had a lot of company! Grandpa says there is to be no public mention of what we discussed around the table.
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