Tuesday, October 11, 2016

A Visit From Mom and Dad - Walking the Walls of Old Town Dubrovnik

One of the nicest parts of our stay in Dubrovnik was that my parents came and met up with us for a few days. They are avid travelers and realized when planning one of their numerous trips abroad that we'd all be fairly nearby. They caught a flight to Dubrovnik from the south of France where they'd been touring around and stayed down the street from us.

Mom and Dad arrived with ridiculous requests from me, like some New York Timeses (please correct me on pluralization), a rain jacket, vitamins, curriculum info, a travel yoga mat....
...and nutritional yeast, which no self-respecting vegan would leave out of her/his suitcase, no matter how small it may be
We had fun seeing sights together and one of the absolute highlights of that experience was walking the walls of Old Town Dubrovnik. This is a popular tourist activity and every guidebook and blog will tell you not to go during mid-day (too sunny!) and at high season (too crowded!). Nonetheless, we went at mid-day. It was really pleasant in September but we could see how one could get scorched. The views, however, would be worth a reapplication of SPF 100 and fighting crowds. Incredible!













As we began the last leg of our walk, giant grey clouds began rolling in, suffusing the beautiful view with even more drama. Soon after we were seated in our restaurant for a welcome post-walk lunch, it began pouring. In fact, the restaurant briefly lost power! Completely nonplussed, the tourists (ourselves included) simply turned on the lights of their cell phones and continued enjoying their meal by cell phone flashlight until the restaurant's generator kicked in.

My favorite!




The newer roof tiles are replacements for damage done in the war in the 1990s


Lunch in the dark (but not for long)
Walking the walls of the old city was a special high point (*get it?*) but we also had fun walking around in general, riding the cable car and visiting some local cats -- my mom saved chicken from a meal she didn't finish and kindly diced it for kitty consumption. She and Otis doled out handfuls as treats that were appreciated by the community cats.

Mom and I checked out the Franciscan church next to the monastery 
Do you like diced chicken? (the answer is yes)
 We also played lot of games! My dad brought over a cribbage board (and let us keep it), and we have a long history of playing Uno and Wizard together, so we really packed in the card games. Otis wins an outsized number of them.

My parents are sweet-talked into playing yet more Wizard while Chris reads an article about Montclair from the LA Times
Uno in the old town
Cribbage tutorial
We are looking forward to meeting up with more family and friends if your schedules allow. Say yes!

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