A Relaxing Vacation

Well it is the 3rd day and we figured out that this cruise is not relaxing and looking ahead to the rest of our days it isn’t going to get any better.  We set the alarm for 5:30 am yet again. Our tour starts at 8:15 am we are back by 1:15 then the walking tour at 1:45.  After that I wanted to walk some of the wall surrounding Dubrovnik-Neretva and the go up in the cable car for a birds eye view of the city.  A full day but the ship is in port until 11pm.  We have to be up at 5:30 am for our next days activities

Well all the reading and planning is great except for a few small issues.  The first being the access to walk the walls around the city closes at 3:00pm and our walking tour of the city doesn’t get over until 4:30 pm.  The cable car closes at 5pm but it has started to get a little foggy and visibility has dropped majorly. The last and probably most important reason is that Dan has hit the wall today and it is all I can do to convince him he wants to do a walking tour that will include several churches, a discussion of Croatian history and a little time for shopping.

Our organized tour went to the Trsteno arboretum   This garden was a mix of plants and not really only trees as in the name arboretum. It is a relatively small garden only about 50 acres although some of it was closed due to fire recently

We were given a “snack” of honey fresh donuts, cheese and prosciutto as well as locally produced wine and brandy. Of course there was even some grappa.

Back to the boat and off to the walking tour.  Dubrovnik-Neretva has both the old town dedicated to the tourism and the new town full of hotels and apartments as well as services for residents.  After completing the walking tour back to the ship. There is a major planning part of the trip that I need to do that I wasn’t able to do before we left

Back on board early and I head to the on board computers.  I needed to make ferry tickets so we could leave Athens next week and spend a day on Hydra the make a second reservation to get to the peninsula where we will finish up the trip and hopefully get down the coast some and over to Sparta before heading back to Athens and home.  I was unable to do online reservations and found only 1 ferry a day.  This didn’t make much sense but as we continue on this trip everyone keeps saying the tourists season has not started. If this is the case then the lack of ferries makes sense.

So the good news is after 45 minutes I was successful. It took texts to my phone and the ferry I wanted to take was sold out.  This will mean we have 3 full days to explore Athens.   I then emailed the hotel and alerted them we will not get to Hydra until late.  

Good news is Dan has recharged and is ready to get up again at 5:30 am for tomorrow’s full day