Thursday 21st - Dubrovnik

We had a holiday today. Started with a little bit of culture by visiting the synagogue (the oldest Sephardic synagogue left in Europe, and 2^nd oldest overall). A tiny wee place tucked in a back street, and remarkably simple and powerful. Both of us are reading books about the Jews in Poland at the moment, and it was sad seeing discrimination edicts dating back to the 1500s.

Banje Beach

On a brighter note, we spent the afternoon at Banje beach 200m east of the old town. We walked past it yesterday, but already tourism is hotting up and there were clearly more people on the beach today. We went for a swim against our better judgments, the water being a very brisk 15 degrees according to my watch (and confirmed on websites). It certainly looked a lot warmer! We didn’t feel we could be this close to the Adriatic and not jump in it. We emerged feeling very brave and refreshed. Hopefully things will be a darn sight better when we reach northern Italy in May/June. There were obviously Italian and Spanish-based cruise ships in today, and French and Spanish yesterday - the numbers swelled in the old town yesterday, then dropped off abruptly about 8pm, when they must have headed away to their next whistle-stop.

We’ve decided the Croats need a bit of Latin help in the fashion stakes. People seem to get quite a bit right, then spoil it all for example with a totally inappropriate pair of footwear – there are many girls wearing short skirts, black tights, then a pair of brown woolly boots to stuff it all up. Of course we in our “traveller” garb don’t look too good either, but at least we will admit to it.

We spent a few hours back in our room planning our next 5 days of travelling. It certainly complicates things having to work around just 2 ferry sailings a week between Italy and Croatia and Italy and Stromboli. We have booked for the ferry crossing tomorrow afternoon to Bari, Italy and this gives us a pretty tight timeframe to research quite a number of small villages plus hopefully spend a bit of time on the famed Amalfi Coast. We sail off to Stromboli on Tues evening. Of course it is Easter weekend now too, so that might make things tricky for seeing museums etc, as well as finding bakeries and grocery stores that are open. We were thinking that we might see quite a festive atmosphere here in Croatia building up to Easter weekend but, apart from seeing some handmade Easter eggs in shop windows, there has been very little to show for it. Maybe it is more of a religious thing here (fair enough) than the chocolate frenzy we get in NZ. We will be on the Amalfi peninsula/Massalubrense for Easter Sunday/Monday.

Back to the restaurant we went to a few nights ago where we so enjoyed our meals. Unfortunately the new dishes we tried weren’t as good as the first time around but John made up for it by ordering an additional ½ serving of fried anchovies. He enjoyed them greatly when we were in Spain two years ago and we have been on the lookout for them since we have been here. They were just the trick.