Justin was up at 06:00, and went walking around and through the Walled City Old Town.  There were lots of delivery trucks, making the city not as serene as you might think early in the morning.  There were also tons of doves and cats as well.  Outside the city, along the perimeter, things were a lot quieter. Fisherman were setting up their boats, the ocean was calm, the beaches were empty, and it was quite peaceful. When the sun started to directly shine on the city, the colors started to really pop.  Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Crystal did her yoga as well as her computer games (Wordle, Connections, etc.) 

At around 07:45 we went out together for a bit, as our tour didn’t start until 09:00.  Justin showed Crystal some of what he’d seen last night and this morning.  When he took her by Primo to suggest we come tonight, it was already open.  When in Dubrovnik…so we got some breakfast drinks.  Crystal tried to get an Irish coffee, but they didn’t have coffee, so she got espresso and some whiskey and drank a “deconstructed” Irish coffee.  Justin ordered rum and Coke Zero, which was a little easier to come by.  So, a couple cocktails in, we met our group at the hotel at 09:00.

Our local guide for the day was named Ivana.  She gave us some background on the city, and explained what was facially obvious walking around town, which was that Dubrovnik bore a striking resemblance to Venice, minus the canals.  It turns out Dubrovnik and Venice were “frenemies” for centuries, and that the City Walls are a direct result of Dubrovnik being concerned that the Venetians wanted to build something themselves.  Dubrovnik, having a relationship with Venice (even if not the friendliest, at least it was respectful), and also having a relationship with the Ottomans, was the perfect middle man for facilitating trade between the East and West, and became quite wealthy because of it.  Dubrovnik managed to avoid being under the thumb of any major power for centuries, until Napoleon put an end to that in the early 1800s.

Ivana also explained where the famous checkerboard on the Croatian flag came from.  In 1102, the Kingdom of Croatia entered into an agreement with the Kingdom of Hungary, when the Kingdom of Croatia had a succession crisis.  To resolve the crisis, a Hungarian was crowned King of Croatia and Dalmatia, and the new Kingdom bore a red and white checkerboard flag.  As Croatia went through various “re-organizations” over the years, the checkerboard remained a part of the various flags, up to and including today.

After this brief introduction to Croatia and Dubrovnik, we went inside the walls and then up on top of them.  We had seen the City Walls open at 08:00 when we were wandering through the town by ourselves.  Because of the demographics of our group, the walk up to the top was a little slow, but we all made it, and everyone agreed the walk up was worth it.  Once on top, there were great views of the West Harbour and Fort Lovrijenac.  We slowly walked south, then east, stopping frequently to take in the views and also for Ivana to explain little things here and there.  It got cloudier and colder as the morning progressed, which was unexpected, and Crystal was glad she brought her scarf – she wrapped it over her shoulders to keep a bit warmer.

We candidly didn’t catch much of what Ivana said, as everything was so photogenic we were focusing on getting photos and taking in the sights.  Alan was wearing a bright red shirt, so we knew we weren’t going to lose the group, and neither Martin nor Ivana seemed concerned we were wandering off.  Peter was often with us hunting for photos, and we assume we weren’t the first nor the last to do this whilst in Dubrovnik.  Along the walk, on the south side facing the Adriatic, we passed by a bar that we’d written down that was on the side of a cliff, but saw it was temporarily closed, so we crossed it off the to-do list.  For whenever we return, it definitely looked like a stellar location.

Martin and Ivana told us that we’d be walking only half of the city walls, the side that was a little more flat.  And, for whatever reason, we couldn’t use our ticket do walk the other half later in the day.  So at 10:45 we came to a decision point – to go to the Monastery with Martin and Ivana, or to continue on the walls.  We thought at least Peter and/or Joyce might stay on walls, as they’d been discussing it as we were walking, but it ended up being just the two of us.  So we separated from the rest of the group and continued along the walls.  Martin told us to just meet the group at the lunch spot, Arsenal, at noon.

We walked a little slower than we had been, as the views from the mauka side were arguably even better, because the Adriatic was in the background of all the shots.  As we were walking we saw the restaurant Justin had seen the night before (Lady Pi-Pi), and it had grape vines growing on the roof.  We decided we should at least check out the menu, as it was in one of the quieter parts of the city.  Seemingly out of nowhere, there was a basketball court near the bastion, but angled because there wasn’t enough space for a straight court.  There weren’t really any groups on this portion of the wall, perhaps because there were so many more stairs.  We took photos of several people who wanted their picture taken.

We eventually headed down the wall around 11:45, walked by the Lady Pi-Pi restaurant, and looked at the menu - it looked good, but not so good that we’d ignore the other restaurants we’d previously identified.  We met the group at Arsenal at noon, right by the marina.  We asked about the Monastery and it sounded like we hadn’t missed much.  The highlight of the monastery, at least according to Bill, was Jesus’ diaper, which was made of asbestos and survived a fire.  [Sorry if we have that wrong, it’s admittedly second-hand.]  We figure we made the correct decision in staying on the wall. 

The restaurant was going to bring out an octopus salad, but almost no one wanted it, so we got green salads instead.  Justin got a cheese plate, however, since they knew ahead of time he didn’t eat any seafood.  We were kind of surprised at the amount and frequency of last-minute changes to food requests - we wonder if this is commonplace, and how many times Martin has had to negotiate different food for large portions of his group.  We ordered a glass of wine each, again.  Crystal got the seabass, whilst Justin got chicken (again, the restaurant knew ahead of time, so had changed his dish accordingly).  Everyone froze at lunch, as we were in the shade and there was a good breeze coming in off the marina.  Bill even used one of the blankets provided by the restaurant.  We chatted most of the meal with Bill and Joyce.  Near the end of the meal there was a drone out over the marina - we were all surprised, and debated who it might be.

After lunch we walked over to the cable car/gondola/whatever that went up the mountain for a nice viewpoint.  On the walk we realized we’d inadvertently left Andy - our first loss of the trip.  We quickly found him, unscathed, with no issues.  [Thankfully this was the first and last time this happened on the trip.]  On the cable car we had a good view at the front (back?) of the car, which unfortunately turned into eh view by the time we got to the top, as we had ascended into the clouds.  Once out of the cable car, Ivana told us where the best viewpoint was, so we went down that way, along with Peter, Bill, Joyce, and Andy.  The clouds eventually parted enough for a couple of good shots before they returned.  Once we had those shots we turned around, and went to check out the view of both Bosnia and Montenegro over the mountains to the northeast.  The view was literally Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. 

When we got back down into town, we parted ways with Ivana, and everyone split up to go their separate ways for the afternoon.  We were hoping to go to aquarium, but it wasn’t included in our Dubrovnik Pass (which we received from Ivana when we split from the group to walk the second half of the city walls in the morning).  So we walked around for a bit to the restaurants we’d previously identified, seeing what looked best for dinner.  One was the restaurant in our hotel, and we’d had dinner there last night.  One was in between our hotel and the walled city, and we were fairly sure we’d already walked past it multiple times.  We checked out the remaining two that were in town.  One had a weird menu, and we wondered how it was so highly rated - maybe the food tasted better than the menu looked.  The second place had a great looking menu, albeit pricey.  We tried to get a reservation there, but it was not possible.  Instead the guy told us to just walk in after 19:00, and that they’d be able to find something for us.

With that figured out, we looked for something else to do.  Justin went to the War Photo Exhibition, but Crystal didn’t want to get bummed out, so she decided to just window shop around the city.  The War Photo Exhibition was very interesting (with some truly outstanding photos), but it was very sobering, so maybe Crystal made the better decision.  We decided to head over to the Fortress, earlier than expected, because we saw something indicating it was closing early today.  On our walk up the stairs to the fortress we heard someone say “pick up the pace” – it was Joyce passing us on her walk up.  We did not pick up the pace; instead we stopped at various lookouts on the way up.

There was no issue using our Dubrovnik Pass to enter the fortress, and once inside, we wandered around inside and then outside on the terraces.  One of the best lookout points was taken up by two women taking dozens of posed IG shots, for minutes on end.  We wondered what the best case scenario of doing something like that is – a free hotel stay somewhere for being an “influencer”?  We talked again of starting a second IG page, with the new page just being videos of people putting together their IG shots, spending minutes on end trying to create a “candid” shot for their followers.

Back to the fortress, several of the cannons pointed in directions we didn’t understand, such as towards the walled city, or conceivably not aimed high enough to even clear the Fort itself.  Hopefully they were just posed for tourists without any serious thought given to the direction.  After descending, we stopped at a bar next to Marina, Orhan.  There were two bars right there, Orhan and Kop.  Kop had a bunch of tables right on the water, on either side of Orhan.  We were going to sit at one of the Kop tables, but after looking at the prices we decided on Orhan instead.  As we sat at our table, we saw at least 6-7 people ask Orhan employees about getting a table, only to be told they needed to go next door and ask the Kop people.  Justin made a joke about the bars being the coastline - ton of Croatia, a bit of Bosnia, and then more of Croatia.  Both of the bartenders laughed pretty hard at that.  We enjoyed a beer (Justin) and a prosecco (Crystal), and then went back to the hotel a little before 18:00

Back in the room, Justin had to charge his watch and phone, which were giving him problems ever since he’d updated the iOS (or, more correctly, it updated itself) in Belgrade.  He also took a quick shower.  Crystal listened to podcasts, and read some hilarious examples of guys mansplaining things to female athletes (e.g., telling them to read a training book from a famous runner, when the person they were talking to was the author herself).  We wrapped up our “chores” around 19:00, and then decided to head back into town for dinner.

We headed back over to Lucin Kantun, and sure enough they found a table for us, outside the restaurant on one of the narrow side streets prevalent in Dubrovnik.  The table was on a pretty good angle, so we made a mental note to not order any soup.  We shared a crispy fried pulled pork appetizer, which was kind of like Boudin Balls.  Crystal got a salad and crispy sardines as well, and Justin got a beef ragout pasta.  Crystal got a prosecco, and Justin got a lavender gin and tonic.  Overall everything was quite good, even if noticeably more expensive than Belgrade and Sarajevo.  After dinner we went to Primo again, about 12 hours after we’d first visited today.  We ended up getting 4 rounds of rum and Coke Zero (Justin), gin and tonic (Crystal).  We were watching the Champions League semifinal between Dortmund and PSG, and watched almost all of the match before the smoke became too much for us and we headed out.  We got back to the room around 23:00 and tapped out.