Fin

OK, the trip is all over. Boo. Although it's certainly nice to be back home and sleeping in my own bed. After an entire month of staying in budget accommodations with cardboard towels and limp, flat little pillows, I was rather shocked last evening when I started drying myself off. The internal dialog was "Oh, so this is what a fluffy towel feels like". I guess this wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't such a tight wad and spent some more money on accommodations, but alas, I am.

Dubrovnik was absolutely fantastic. It's a walled medieval town right on the Adriatic coast. Being able to walk the town walls and take pictures of the town and the coastline has been one the highlights of the trip. Dubrovnik also provided a unique opportunity to talk to some people that have experienced war first-hand. The city was besieged for over a year during Croatia's war with Serbia in the early nineties. I was able to speak to my kind lady whose home I was sleeping in while I was there, and having her explain the kinds of depredations experienced by everyone in the town, not to mention the loss of life, was rather moving. It's also rather profound to be speaking to someone and be told that within recent memory an artillery shell had crashed through their front door (which at the time I was currently sitting 5 ft. away from) and completely destroyed the stairwell and first floor of the building you are sleeping in. She actually pointed out some patches in her bookshelves and wall with were repairs from shrapnel impacts from the shell. Her father wanted too keep the shelves with the visible patches rather than replace them because he thought it was important to be reminded about what happened. They also still had their nameplate from the front door as well as a portion of the artillery shell mounted on the wall.

Like Split, Dubrovnik had great seafood. It seems that due to the mass of tourism the locals have been priced out of the market by wealthy westerners with superior means for fish, so the locals eat a lot of mussels, oysters, shellfish, squid, cuttlefish, and octopus. Tasty. The two restaurants I was hitting a lot which my hostess said they were the best places to get the local flavor (it's nearly impossible to get a purely local flavor as the town isn't that big and there are so many damn tourists there) didn't even have anything with fins on the menu. Well that's not entirely true. One had marinated sardines (badass), and they both had something translated as "fried little fish". That's basically a huge plate piled with fried minnows. So neither really had a fried/grilled/sauteed/roasted fish fillet or whole fish. Because I felt obliged to at least try some fish while I was there, I asked her and another local for a recommendation on the best place to get fish at a place a local would actually go to (not a tourist trap). They both recommended the same place so I gave it a shot, got the fish, and was a little disappointed. I guess I should have gotten the fried minnows instead. Or my favorite, the black cuttlefish risotto. That's risotto made with cuttlefish (think a cross between a squid and an octopus) with it's ink in the risotto (hence it's literally black). Yum!

The second day I was staying in Dubrovnik I took a bus tour to Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's a town with a large Bosnian, i.e. Yugoslav Muslim, population. It also was a sight of a lot of the fighting in the Balkans during the nineties, albeit in a separate conflict from that which occured in Dubrovnik. It's a quaint little town with some nice mosques and a few bridges over the river running through the middle of town. Also ate some yummy Balkan cuisine while I was there. Got some great photos during the trip there, as well. They will be posted very, very soon!

Now that I'm back I just need to work off my post-vacation funk. I was so out of it this morning I forgot to bring my cell phone and wallet with me while running errands. I also hit the gym today, and let's say it was a less than impressive showing. I hit the scale after excercising, and it appears that I lost 7 lbs on my trip. Not in a good way. Yes, I'm now a flaccid and disguisting pukesack. I guess I should have done pushups and crunches once in a while in the morning when I got up. I can't believe I lost that much weight in just 4 weeks considering how much I was eating. I guess I need to double up on the squid my next trip.