This was the day for John and Janice's prostate awareness ride. Thanks for posting pictures - looks like it was a success again!
Mike and Walter flew out of Syracuse Sunday afternoon so Mike was able to get in a quick ride sunday morning with the prostate awareness crowd. Their route was: Syracuse-Chicago-Munich-Dubrovnik.
I decided to drive to Boston and travel with Stu. We left at 10:00pm and I am writing this from the Frankfurt airport.
All four of us will arrive in Dubrovnik within an hour of each other.
However, I had a small mis-adventure that goes to prove to expect the unexpected or Murphy's law ("if something can possibly go wrong it will" or something like that).
After getting on the Thruway, I blew out my right rear tire. While I have roadside assistance on my auto insurance policy, the arrangement with roadside assistance on the Thruway is limited to a single provider so after numerous phone calls including one to 911, I was able to set up an appointment and within an hour, I had a donut installed on my car. Since I lost about an hour, I had to cancel a visit with Andy Anderson (another college buddy) who lived in the greater Boston area.
While the flat is unexpected, traffic in Massachusetts should be expected. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper for about 10 miles around Sturbridge and another 5 miles around 495. Surprisingly, it was smooth sailing on 128. Despite one unexpected delay and one that I should have expected, I arrived at Stu's place on schedule.
Moral of this story: plan extra time and it still may not be enough.
Kathy, Stu's wife, drove us to the airport and again, it was surprisingly traffic-free. It was also surprisingly quick at the TSA checkpoint and we arrived at the gate with about two hours before boarding.
Stu upgraded his ticket to business class so we decided to check out the Lufthansa Club. I was able to get in with paying the one-time visitor fee and we enjoyed a pleasant and very civilized wait that included comfortable chairs, big-screen TVs tuned a number of different channels and an open buffet.
I joked that I could probably eat $35 worth of food (the price of a one-day pass). We watched Nadal destroy a Swiss guy in the French Open and the first few innings of the Red Sox play Detroit on Sunday night baseball.
The Lounge Lizards:
VBT upgraded me to "premium economy" which sounds a little oxymoronic to me but there were some nice touches: more leg room, double arm rest, small goody bag with toothbrush, handi-wipes, eye mask, water bottle holder with water bottles. Nice.
We had a lay-over of a couple of hours and funny that on a day when we had plenty of time, the gate for our next flight was the same gate where we arrived.
We walked the airport and while it looked pretty much like any airport, it was fun to see signs that required pictures to translate and to hear german. We spent a little time in an atrium with a coffee and light breakfast and watched people walk by. I am working on this page with function buttons in german. Hooray for google translate.
One interesting difference: the bathrooms were spotless (that's not necessarily different), there were people cleaning the bathrooms (also not that unusual) but what was unusual was that every time I went into one, there was a woman cleaner.
Time to board a Croatian Airlines flight for Dubrovnik.
The flight was uneventful and although I had an aisle seat, as we approached the airport, the scenery outside the window was spectacular: mountains rising out of a perfectly blue sea, islands dropped into the water and brilliant sunshine. It could have been a travel brochure.
We were met, as usual by a guy from VBT who drove nine of us to the hotel in a minivan. We met two couples from the greater Boston area who were probably on the same flights as us. The hotel was about 20 minutes from the airport along a winding two-lane road cut into the mountainside. While the views were equally spectacular, it would have been pretty difficult to get good pictures past other passengers and through the glass. The only picture I was sorry to miss was an approaching picture looking down on Dubrovnik
But once we arrived at Dubrovnik, we were rewarded with more views closer to the water. Here is the view from the terrace just outside the hotel lobby.
This is a pretty typical look.
We met a guy (Mario) hired by VBT to be our local guide at 6:30 and he took us downstairs to a conference room. There is gave us a short introduction to the city and tour options. We will meet him tomorrow at 9:00 for a walking tour of the old city.
When he finished, Mike, Walter and I walked down to the old city, about 15 minutes, to look for food. Stu stayed home to settle his stomach.
Here are some of what we saw on the walk. Since Dubrovnik is built into the hillside, to our left were buildings going up the hill and to our right was a precipitous drop off to the sea.
This picture is looking back toward our hotel. This was not our hotel but probably looked something like this.
Old town is for tourists and here is the west entrance, complete with guys dressed up like they are historically accurate. (They're not.)
That's Walter (burgundy shirt) and Mike's (black) backs.
This is one of the famous fountains just inside the gate. Jane calls this "Mike on his speed tour".
And here is the main walkway through the old town called the Stradun.
We settled on a place for dinner in a plaza with lots of foot traffic and live jazz.
And despite the fact that Dubrovnik is known for fresh seafood, there was none on the menu.
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