Soggy Underfoot
It was a ridiculously early start this morning, our alarms sounding out at 3:30am. Meeting in the lobby at the eye-watering time of 4am, none of us were too compos mentis and we were all a bit on the grumpy side. When we rocked up to the bag drop to find that Air France doesn’t believe in pooling the group’s baggage weight and therefore at least 3 of us were overweight (the bags that is) we had to offload a few kgs each into the luggage of our light-packing patriarch, who was cursing the over-packers.
Our film camera enthusiasts, Molly and Toby, were once again singled out when requesting their film, containing precious footage from all the places we’ve been (and incidentally worth a lot of money), be excused from the scanner and swabbed instead. The impatient security officer was adamant they subject their film to the scan, showing zero tolerance and zero care factor. She didn’t have the capacity for negotiation or compromise and in my opinion seemed unnecessarily cruel. All the films had to go through and will most likely be wiped. What a bummer.
All 6 of us were flying from Lyon to Paris, where we’d farewell Maisy who has to return home for uni. She was planning a day of sightseeing in Paris before flying home tomorrow morning. With tight hugs and lots of kisses, we waved her off - goodbyes are hard.
Sam and Molly purchased some macarons for breakfast (as you do) that were packaged so beautifully, wrapped in paper and then placed in a cute ribbon-handled bag. The packaging turned out to be better than the taste. My health conscious breakfast - I’m kidding- consisted of 2 giant French shortbread biscuits and 2 cups of tea, courtesy of Air France (1 set on each flight). We loved the rubbish robot that cruised around the Paris airport terminal, blinking its eyes and collecting everyone’s scraps.
The views as we flew over the Croatian coast were spectacular, the colour of the water so blue. By the time we touched down in Dubrovnik though, the rain was bucketing down. We’d been given detailed instructions regarding our accommodation. We were to take a taxi to the ‘Pile Gate’, walk a few hundred metres and proceed to a certain restaurant where we would approach the bar and ask for Predrag. It felt a bit like a spy movie.
‘Walking a few hundred metres’ doesn’t sound like a big deal, though when it’s pouring, the uneven tiles and cobblestones are slippery and wet and contain lots of grates and bumpy wooden bridges and you’re trying to wheel a 20-something-kilo bag on dodgy wheels, in a heaving crowd with umbrellas, it isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
Sure enough, when I approached the bar and gave the code word, Predrag materialised from the back corner of the room. He was a tall character, quite serious and committed to his mission of getting us to our rooms in as short a time as possible. He barked out the rules of engagement before, with one swift movement, he lifted my bag and backpack and said, in his thick Croatian accent, ‘Follow me!’ There were stairs galore, with alleyways, archways, lefts, rights, ascents, descents. The old town was like a maze! Our accommodation is so cute, up a steep staircase, (not fun to get to with bags in tow) it’s a modern little apartment in an extremely old building. We love it.
Sam’s friends Sam and Amelia recommended a great sandwich place which we somehow managed to find. There was one serious sandwich artist in residence, making those so-called Subway sandwich artists look like total amateurs. This gloved man had purpose, skilfully, unflappably crafting his doughy masterpieces. Toby picked one from the menu and asked for prosciutto to be added but the guy refused, stating that it would upset the balance. Don’t mess with an artist at work.
The sandwiches were absolutely delicious when we actually found somewhere out of the rain to sit…er, stand…to eat them. To give you an indication of how good they were, several groups of people stopped to watch us eat and demanded to know where we bought them.
Thankfully the sun came out around 2pm, just as Predrag had predicted. Ross had his heart set on doing a Game Of Thrones tour, being a big fan of the show that was filmed here, so booked himself in for an afternoon session. The rest of us walked up some very long and steep staircases, then led by Molly down some sort of sketchy, unsafe building site with questionable OHS, to emerge at a cute little beach for a swim. There were only a couple of other people there - one fully decked out James Bond spear fisherman and a couple also keen to get wet. I chickened out (it wasn’t super warm) but the other 3 had a beautiful splash about between the headlands. There was a tiled shower alcove, a basketball hoop and a bar high on the rock that looked like it had closed for the winter.
Post swim, as the sun was on its way down, we made our way up to the cliff-top to see the warm, orange glow hitting the side of one of the rocks facing the little bay below, sending warm ripples
