Elaphite Island

Little Lopud was one of my favorite places in Croatia

(Dateline - Chris)

If you spend ten minutes in Dubrovnik, you'll notice Croatians standing around on the street trying to make eye contact with you. One batch of these are greeters at restaurants. Their job is to stand out in front of their restaurant and entice you to a table. The other group are barkers for ADVENTURE. These guys stand on the sidewalk, at booths, at corners in Old Town or in storefronts. They would love to rent you a jet ski or hook you into a parasail, but judging from their ubiquity, what they really want to do is out your butt on a tour leaving Dubrovnik.

As I recall, these guys offered four main itineraries, and we wanted to do them all. One was a day trip to Kotor, Montenegro, you'll recall that we rented a car and went there ourselves; Jen wrote about it, and didn't much like it. The second was a day trip to Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina; we didn't do this one, running out of time and budget for it, but if we had done it, we would have taken the tour. The third was a boat ride to Mljet, one of the Dalmatian Islands and site of an eponymous national Park; we didn't make it to Mljet either. The fourth, and most ardently advertised, is for the Elaphite Islands.

The Elaphites have no connection at all to elephants, unfortunately; the name is from the Greek for deer, ελάφι, and while we didn't see any, I don't doubt they're lovely places for deer to live. According to Wikipedia, there are 13 Elaphite islands, but the three main ones are Šipan, Lopud and Koločep.

The tours will send you on a ship to these three islands, but if you're cheap enough, you'll discover that ferries run to each of them out of the port a few times a day for far less money. So with Jen working on a grant for Hakensack Riverkeeper, Otis and I hoofed it down to the Jadrolinija ferry dock at the port and laid down 70 or so Kuna for a round trip ferry for two to Lopud.

We chose Lopud primarily for its beach, and secondarily for the little hike you need to get there. Otis and I like beaches and we like hiking. Lopud's beach is called Sunj, and it was easily the nicest beach we had been to so far. It was quiet; the sand was fine and soft; the water was clear, clean and brilliant; and while there were two restaurants, they didn't fill up the entire beach with for-rent lounges and umbrellas (shots fired, Italy).

Needing to leave our Lapad Airbnb the next morning for our road trip, we couldn't stay nearly as long as I would have liked, but I loved Lopud. I'd even consider staying on the island and taking the ferry to visit Dubrovnik, rather than vice versa, if what I was looking for was primarily a quiet and peaceful beach trip.

Lopud's harbor is super beautiful, with crystal water and light sand, but we were looking for more

Sunj beach was maybe a two kilometer walk from the dock; if you're liquid and or lazy, dudes will drive you here in a golf cart for not-too-many Kuna

Good sand for castles

In addition to this sea horse, we also saw a number of founders hiding in the sand.

When I first found this little guy, I thought it was dead

Otis poses by his completed mountain range, with a shell on each peak

The hike had nice views in both directions, and was a little steep, but never too demanding 

Its not too bad waiting for the ferry when the sea is like a high definition television showing a wealth of fish-based programming.

Vidimo Se Kasnije Hrvatska! (See You Later Croatia!)

(Dateline Chris)

Hello everyone! It has been a few days since we flew to Athens and then took a ferry to Santorini, but we have officially concluded the Croatia and environs portion of the trip, so let me give a rundown of our route:

1. August 30-31: Ferry from Bari, Italy to Dubrovnik, Croatia

Jen and Otis on the ferry bunks

2. September 16: Dubrovnik to Kotor, Montenegro and back

Jennifer turns her back on Kotor (More like Kot-BORE)'s beauty

3. September 23 and 24: Dubrovnik to Split, Coratia and back

Port of Split from the church tower

4. September 29: Dubrovnik to Plitviče, Croatia

Otis at the Big Waterfall at Plitviče

5. September 30: Plitviče to Ljubljana, Slovenia

Birthday standup paddle board expedition on the Ljubljana River

6. October 2: Ljubljana to Tapolca, Hungary

Otis in the Lake-Cave

7. October 2: Tapolca to Budapest, Hungary

Sunset over the Danube

8. October 4: Budapest to Vienna, Austria

Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna

9. October 6: Vienna to Bratislava, Slovakia

Bratislava Airport

10. October 6: Bratislava to Athens, Greece

Derps up for Greece!

And now we are on the beautiful island of Santorini, casting our eyes toward Crete and beyond. Updates to come!

Dipping Our Toes Into Dalmatia

(Dateline: Chris)

Our AirBnB host picked us up from the Port of Dubrovnik and dropped us off at our flat, where we would stay for a month. We were all on our own, in a country none of us had ever been to, where we didn't speak the language at all and there were signs everywhere for things like ljekama, ulica and tisak. For example, here's what it says on our wine bottle: Vinarija Dingač Plavac 2011 Kvalitetno vino plavac mali Vinogorje Pelješac. Right, I'll have the red.

????!!! Go right I guess?

In Italy, sure, I don't speak Italian, but with the French I have and a fairly solid grounding in English (My mom says so!), I can often figure out what a sign means. In Croatia, we saw our first road sign and never thought we'd know anything again.


Luckily, it turns out that Croatia is super easy. Everyone here speaks nearly flawless English, way more so than in Italy. Jen, Otis and I have tried to learn some Croatian so that we could at least say hello (dobar dan), please (molim) and thank you (hvala) to the very many helpful Croatians who stopped us from stepping in front of a bus.

It also made it easy on us that we chose to stay in Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is a small city (50,000 some residents) on the Dalmatian Coast, that looks like it is out of a fairytale (and indeed, it is where a lot of Game of Thrones is set). As you may have seen with Jen's Facebook art piece "What's In Port Today," Dubrovnik gets tons of cruise ships with tons of tourists and the locals are very used to us, and accept us, I believe, as the cornerstone of the Dubrovniki economy.

See more comparison photos between real-world Dubrovnik and Game of Thrones here

Dubrovnik has cheap and easy busses, 12 Kuna ($1.80) for an hour's worth of rides. It is geographically small and easy to walk, and it is largely set up on cliffs above the crazily beautiful Adriatic so every walk will provide you with a view. 

The sunset at President Beach, a mile or so from our flat

Dubrovnik has a number of neighborhoods. Most important for a tourist are Old Town, where all the fairy tales are, and Lapad, where the swim and sun resorts are. Our Airbnb being in Lapad also helped make life easy.

Jen and Otis at the Croatian "beach," which is often a nice rock to sit on, with maybe a ladder to help you in and out of the crystal clear water

Just up the road from us is a small market called Pemo, and (while it took us a few days to realize this), there's a larger market another two blocks away called Tommy (which comes in regular, super and hyper sizes) so shopping is easy, and Lapad has a promenade that leads down to the bay. Lapad is like the Epcot Center version of San Diego. Sun, sea, resorts, gelato and palm trees.

So, after few days of acclimatization, we found ourselves in a VERY easy place to live. Some of the best swimming we've seen is a short walk away, a magical UNESCO world heritage site is about 2 miles away and our comfortable and affordable apartment was a perfect base for explortation. We will stay in Lapad from August 30 to September 29, with a few side trips (Kotor Montenegro, Mostar Bosnia & Herzegovina, the Elaphite Islands and Mjliet are popular junkets), and catch you all up on our adventures as soon as we can manage.

Otis with the sub-marine GoPro selfie

One of our first views of Kings' Landing Old Town Dubrovnik

One of our favorite spots in Dubrovnik is this bar that advertises itself has having "Cold Drinks With the Most Beautiful View;" the drinks were fairly cold, but the view was as advertised 

A panoramic view of Old Town from the top of the Dubrovnik Cable Car

Old town from the City Walls, I am told that the homes with bright orange tiles were homes that replaced their roofs after the shelling perpetrated by Serbia & Montenegro during the Siege of Dubrovnik in 1991-1992

Greetings from Croatia!

(DATELINE - CHRIS) Hey guys, I am about to finish off our Italy reports, but before I do, here's a quick greeting from Croatia. We have been holed up in the Lapad neighborhood of Dubrovnik, which is a peninsula on a peninsula between the Adriatic and Port of Dubrovnik, and seems to be a bit of a resort area.

Speaking of Croatia, did you know that while Croatia joined the EU in 2013, it still has its own currency? Apparently, the Euro-zone financial crisis delayed Croatia's EU currency adoption, which is now projected for 2019. In the meantime, enjoy the Kuna, and its little sister the Lipa! There are about 6 2/3 Kuna in a dollar, so figuring out prices is a bit more difficult than my dropped-out-of-math-for-good-in-12th-grade-mind, but we all muddle through somehow.

Close observers will notice that the 1 Kuna coin (about 15¢?) has a weasel on it for some reason. RESPECT.