Dubrovnik, sort of

   Hello all, We're in Mlini now, about 8 km south of Dubrovnik. We got here after an 8 hour bus ride from Zadar and then another 1/2 hour on the public bus to here...and well it's been raining here ever since. When we got to our room, the family had welcome shots of brandy for us, I love this country, by the way did I mention you can basically buy alcohol everywhere, for example, the gas station, it's like the anti = Indonesia, where we couldn't find alcohol anywhere. Well since it's raining and we're sitting at a restaurant drinking, I thought hey it's a good time to write something.

   Even though the room thing in Plitvice didn't really work out , I think in the end, it was the best. By staying in the park we only had to buy a one day pass, instead of 2. We didn't have to take a bus back and forth to our other room out of the park and well we were right there. So.. according to Glen math, everything was a wash, a little high on the financial side, but way high on the happy scale...ohh ok I forgot about the food, the food in the park is horrible, really??!!! boiled pork chops in some sort of oily saucy thing...Yum?? no I think not, something masquerading as a hamburger, good? NO! OK I think you get it.

  The park however is ABSOLUTELY beautiful, really probably the most amazing place we have ever seen, I mean we haven't been everywhere, by any means, but I think that's saying something.We posted some pictures on facebook, they only give you a small idea of how beautiful this park is, I could go on...and I will, only on a slightly different tangent.. cause that's what I do.

   So we had been walking around the park for 5 or 6 hours and we decided to go back to the hotel for a beer and a rest. From to the lake to the hotel is about 500 metres, almost all uphill. The park is also filled with people on tours from all over ( and most of these people are older than us, or at the very least look older than us) OK so we are walking up the steps on the way to our hotel and we are behind one of these tour groups, slowly we are making our way through the group until we reach 4 ladies spread out across the whole width of the steps. So imagine the blocking wedge they have in football on kick off returns, this is the same thing and just as effective, they are not going to let us get around them. I started thinking... maybe if we just chucked one of them off the trail the others would get scared and let us pass or maybe if we separated one from the rest of the herd, they would sacrifice the one for the benefit of the rest of the herd...so we started looking for an older, slower tourist the herd might sacrifice, when, I think,sensing our intentions,  opened a hole for us to pass through.

  We grabbed a bus to Zadar on Wednesday, have I mentioned it's been stinking hot here, I am not complaining, but I did make an error in packing, it's been in the low 90's since we got here.So.. Zadar, lots of what I am assuming is communist era ugly apartment buildings, but really that has been everywhere we have been so far in Croatia. Old town in Zadar is just great, the stones on the walkways are shiny from the centuries of people walking on them. This is my first time in Europe and this may get old, but for me, it was beautifully old and choatic, crammed with people from all over, speaking all these different languages, these amazing old churches, small hole in the wall shops, the predictable and tacky tourist souvenir shops, the families out for the day, the women all dressed up in heels and nice dresses and the men dressed. The sea organ and the sun salutation are definitely very cool, in our mind a perfect example of a city supporting the arts and in turn that art creating a tourist attraction that benefits the city.

   Ok well I'm running out of gas here and well... the wine is starting to work, the wine so far has been pretty good, is mostly served cold and it won't probably win any awards, but it tastes ok and it's 2 bucks a glass, so who's complaining, not me!

Hey the sun's coming out, yup definitely time to go.

love and warm thoughts from mlini

glen and carrie

  

Here we go!!!

  Ok so....  for a little recap. We have sold almost everything we own and put the rest in a small storage room. I quit my job at the winery, so I think that means I am now retired. We each have a backpack and a day bag and that's all. The plan really is no plan, the next month or so with the "kids" is more or less planned, can't really travel with your own baseball team without plans. After that though is sort of whatever we feel like doing until our return flight in October. We haven't been freaking out or anything so far, so I guess having no house and travelling the world, is OK for now. We have been asked a few times how long we plan to do this, and well my answer is ...until I tip over and can't get up. I think Carrie's answer is different, but maybe not.
  We arrived in Croatia this past Thursday, after 24 hours, from home. Pick your expletive here, although it was less time to get here than going to Indonesia, we were crushed. I think I made it for 2 hours after we got to the apartment in Zagreb before I started experiencing total system shutdown. I think we fell asleep at 5pm and slept for 12 hours. Zagreb what we saw of it, is a nice city, somewhat eclectic maybe, but with a nice vibe. Just a small note about Croatian.... is not pronounced the way it is spelt, I'm just saying, not trying to be judgy. There is alot of graffiti here, I don't know if that means jack, but it seemed a little curious. So it seems the major food groups in Croatia are coffee, beer and cigarettes.....another curious thing, the streets are clean, we saw street sweepers, but they don't pick up the cigarette butts, not sure why. We wandered around town for a couple of days, did touristy stuff...another thing and I don't know why, but I was suprised to see so many of my tribe in this part of the world. OK one more thing, if your dressed like your going to comic=con but your not actually going to comic=con, then you look stupid.
  The big public market in Zagreb was great fun and the amount of bars and cafes is mind boggling. We figured out how to catch the tram to the bus station this morning because we couldn't figure out how to call a taxi, or flag one down for that matter. We did figure out how to get a bus to Plitvice national park, although we didn't figure out that our room we booked, wasn't actually in the park. So we decided to splurge a little and get a room here in the park. This is us so far, stumbling around in the world but slowly getting our feet under us...  yup that's me , mister profundity!

Love and warm thoughts from Plitvice