Live from Dubrovnik!

Greetings from the port in Dubrovnik! If there are spelling errors, I apologize. The "z" and "y" keys are switched on this keyboard. I will attempt to catch you up. After our surreal day in Sarajevo, we headed off to Mostar. The bus ride was absolutely amazing and the mountains are huge! We found accommodation in Mostar the way we have been finding accommodation since- we get off the bus and there are people offering rooms so you figure out where the room is (usually they have maps to show you) then figure out if it is a price you want to pay. Our room in Mostar was great! We walked down to the old part of the city where the streets are made of stones and saw the Old New Bridge. This bridge connects the Turkish side to the Christian side of the city and was destroyed in the war. People were devastated at the destruction of the bridge and when they rebuilt it, they did not use modern technology. They used the 15th century craftsmanship. The destruction of the Bridge in Mostar symbolizes how bad things got during the war. There were some shelled buildings along the river. The river was an amazing shade of aqua and men dived from the bridge itself. The streets of Mostar in the old part are narrow and made of stone. There are lots of balconies and terraces covered by grape leaves and it was on such a balcony Dao and I ate lunch. In the evening, there happened to be a music festival so we watched a local Bosnian band then a Croatian funk band called Soul Finger. It was a fun evening under the stars, by the Bridge, on the river bank.

We only spent a night in Mostar then we were off to Split, Croatia. The bus ride was miserably hot and we had the strangest non-line forming border crossing. Upon arrival in Split, we found a room we thought would be great. Turned out it was sweltering hot and super loud as the window opens onto the busy street 3 floors down. At any rate, we saw the palace of Diocletian, found a sculpture that if you rub the toe, you get good luck and took a ferry to the island of Hvar. What we quickly realized in Croatia is that the beaches do not have sand, they have big rocks. At first, I think Dao and I were disappointed, but then we quickly realized that no sand means no sand EVERYWHERE so we made ourselves comfortable on the rocks. We went to Starigrad (Old City) on Hvar and had an amazing dinner in a little alleyway. We rode the ferry back to Split and after our second night, we left and came to Dubrovnik.

So here we are. Yesterday, we walked around Old City and were amazed at the level of tourists. Our first night here, we stumbled onto a music festival on the port here and ate fresh grilled calamari. In the Old City, we went to a war photo museum that had an exhibit on child soldiers. You can probably imagine how horribly sad it was, but it was very moving. We had another dinner in a little alleyway and then went back to our cool, quiet room.

We are waiting to catch another ferry to an island to lay on a sand beach. We leave for Kotor, Montenegro tomorrow and from there, we will head back to Skopje. I will try to write soon!