Croatia!

Soooo yesterday I had my first and most likely last shot. It was pretty nasty. But more on that a little later.

Croatia is so gorgeous!! When we had our logistical pre-port meeting 2 nights ago, they surprised us by saying we were going to be docking that night instead of in the morning. We still couldn’t get off the ship but we went up to the decks to see the city. The area around the port is the new town and the houses are built into hillsides. The majority of the houses are white with red roofs, which is really pretty when put against the blue water. The water here is even prettier than it was in Capri! I just want to jump off the side of the pier and go swimming! I’m soooo excited to go snorkeling tomorrow!

Yesterday I had my FDP to the Osojnik village for a folk show, and Steven went to a tour of the walls of the old city. We drove across a bridge that spans the harbor and we were able to get off and take pictures of the water and the town. I have never seen water bluer than this! We then drove to a little abandoned town and walked through, our bus picked us up on the other side (I really didn’t see the point of this, our guide didn’t tell us anything about what we were seeing…). Finally we started making our way up a mountainside and into the little mountain village of Osojnik. We went into a small church that had been completely destroyed by fire in the Yugoslavian conflict about 20 years ago. They rebuilt the church using some of the stones that survived the destruction.  Most of the buildings in that area of town were completely destroyed and have since been rebuilt. While we were walking around the area, a breeze blew through and it just smelled like flowers! There is no industry in Dubrovnik, so there is no pollution, the sky is clear and everything is just clean! It reminds me of Switzerland. =)

So we got to the house where we were going to eat and watch the folk show, passing by some cute donkeys on the way, and the second we got there, we were greeted by shots of their local drink, a plum-flavored brandy. Our tour guide said it was a form of welcome, and, following my try-anything-once mentality, I tried it. Only after I drank it did she say that it was about 80 proof. She said it’s basically Croatia’s moonshine. It was extremely strong, like drinking pure alcohol. Not pleasant at all! =P I washed that down with some delicious candied figs and orange peels.  While some people stayed back for more brandy (some people had 5 or 6 shots…yikes!) I went into the little courtyard where the patriarch of the family was starting to play a kind of fiddle and women were dancing around him. SAS people started dancing too, I’m sure the brandy helped! After that, we went down to another little courtyard covered by a lattice with grapevines. The women brought out plates of bacon, cheese, and bread, as well as their homemade wine made from the grapes above us.  We put the bacon on a stick and cooked it over a flame, then put it with the cheese on the bread. A bacon s’more! Yummy! I had a taste of the wine and it was pretty good, not strong, very sweet. After people had time to enjoy the wine, we went inside to a cellar-like room for the main meal. It was dimly lit and we sat at long benches. Out came more wine! (I stuck with water, the people around me were getting a bit out of hand).  Following salad, platters of (what we think was) pork and potatoes came out.  The people reminded me of the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding: we asked what kind of meat it was and they said, “It’s meat! Just meat!” Yep, helpful! It was tasty nonetheless. The dessert was little pinwheels of cake with chocolate frosting, those were quite good too. After dinner, we went upstairs for more dancing and singing.  I just enjoyed watching. =) It was a fun trip!

When I got back to the ship, we grabbed dinner and then headed to the supermarket that is right outside the ship. We stocked up on drinks: a can of fanta or coke here is 4.99 Kuna, which is about 88 cents! We were paying 3-4 euro per can in Barcelona and Italy, and soda on the ship costs $2! Yay for savings! I also got a little bag of “crazy sours” Skittles to see if they were the same as our sour Skittles, and they are nothing alike! These taste like sweet tarts and aren’t really sour =(

So today was our trip to Trsteno, Ston, and Korcula. This was actually our alternate choice trip since we didn’t get the service visit to the orphanage.  In the end, I kinda wish we hadn’t picked an alternate. We were at the bus bright and early at 0700! First we went to Trsteno (slept on the way there), got off the bus, and walked to the botanical garden.  At the entrance was a HUGE 500-year-old tree. That was cool. We walked along a path and our guide showed us a fountain from the 17th century.  That was it. Back on the bus and off to Ston. Again, slept. We get to Ston, where we walked to a field of salt mines, basically just pools of salt water that they let evaporate to get sea salt. We spent approximately 5 minutes there, then got back on the bus. Back I went to sleep for the hour bus ride to the place where we would catch the ferry to the island of Korcula.  Korcula is gorgeous!  We first went to the Museum of Icons, which is really just a room with icons. Adjoined to that was St. Mark’s Cathedral. A woman told us all about the architecture and artwork there, and our tour guide translated for us. Our final stop was the Municipal Museum, where there were a lot of artifacts of the town and area. Lots of coins. Understandably, everything was in Croatian, so we didn’t really know what we were looking at. Lunch was included in our trip, so we went to the restaurant next (we were all starving!) The first course was a piece of lettuce with a cold seafood salad consisting of mussels, clams, and squid. I did try it and ended up eating only the lettuce—all the seafood tasted really fishy—not good! I think only one person in our entire group actually ate the salad, I felt bad about all the food going to waste. The entrée was grilled fish with potatoes and green beans. Of course, Steven doesn’t eat seafood so he was mad that he wasn’t going to eat anything. Also, there were a couple vegetarians and one person allergic to seafood in our group! The main server was being pretty rude, one of the vegetarians asked if they had anything without meat and they said “that’s fish, not meat! You can eat that!” and they said they wouldn’t switch their meals for anything else. I flagged down our tour guide and told him that Steven doesn’t eat seafood, so thankfully he went to tell a server and Steven got a nice piece of pork thrown in front of him. I wish I had pork instead of my fish! There were still bones in the fish, and even though I picked them out, every mouthful still had 3 or 4 bones. Not a pleasant dining experience. I felt bad for the girl allergic to seafood, I don’t think she ate anything. The dessert was the saving grace of the meal, it was a custard-like cake thing that’s hard to describe but tasted really good. After lunch, we had an hour of free time. Steve and I checked out some jewelry shops and wandered around, then we went back to our meeting point early and put our feet in the water while we waited for the ferry. We got the ferry back to our bus and immediately got on for the 2.5 hour ride back to the ship. More sleep time! We finally got back around 6pm, feeling like we spent the majority of the day sleeping on a bus (that’s because we did). Every SAS trip before this one had been amazing, I guess there had to be one dud. Our tour guide was so nice and knowledgeable, I just wish we were seeing more interesting things or we stayed more than 20 minutes in one place. Oh well.

Tomorrow we are snorkeling near the island of Kolocep! I’ve heard from other trips (there have been snorkeling trips every day) that it was amazing so I’m sure we’ll have fun! I wish my camera were waterproof, though! After that, we’ll be exploring the old city for the rest of the day, possibly hitting up a beach or something. Exciting!