Diving and dining in Dubrovnik

Old habits return quickly (when given the opportunity) and so we slept through a perfectly good sunrise to awaken when all the colours had been washed away by the high in the sky location of the sun. Perfect day weather wise though so it's really great to be here appreciating the picture perfect location in fabulous conditions. The aim of the morning was to get as many clothes washed prior to our incarceration over the next week. So loaded up with our dirty laundry we jumped on a hot crowded bus into town duly creating more. It's a never ending cycle. Thinking that maybe the crowds would be less in town today was totally wishful. If anything it was worse.

Yesterday we heard there were 5000 people off a cruise ship. Today there could have easily been two in port. Tomorrow we'll know more about this. In the meantime we behaved like locals (or Led Zeppelin) and walked in through the out door. After all we weren't there to do touristy stuff. We were doing laundry. So totally self justified in our outlandish behaviour we weaved through the milling millions on our sacred quest for a case of clean clothes. Stopping ever so briefly for a quick purchase of art work (oh .. and some clothes fittings ..but nothing else as we're not really like all those tourist hordes). Snapping a shot (or sixty) of the fortress walls and harbour beyond an the way, the laundromat was conveniently located next to a restaurant.

So we could admire the view, the aforementioned artwork whilst keeping an eye on tumbling linen. Once that was all sorted we headed back to base camp (yep it's pretty high up the hill) to catch a rare opportunity to speak to K1 and K2 via Skype and learn that they're doing Ok without us. Super...or maybe we're superfluous. Something like that. We then headed down to the local beach. Which was something of a misnomer. All there was was rocks and water. That's a good thing about traveling, you're constantly challenged to consider the world from outside the perspective of your own thinking. E.g. Beach equals sand + water. No. ..Beach equals land + water. Land can be sand. Land can be rocks. The good thing about this beach was the locals had smoothed over the rough rocks with concrete, put steps in and even mounted a nice new stainless steel ladder to get in and out of the water. Every piece of sand beach we have seen around here is covered in deck chairs, umbrellas, waiters and portable EFTPOS devices. This just had a few people lazing about on the rocks (emulating seals) and enjoying the peace and harmony (and the harmonics overhead from a persistent helicopter).

The water was warm and extraordinarily clear. Thanks to advice, we had swimming goggles so we could also see the teaming fish underneath. We'll the blogger did. Non blogger will require more encouraging before venturing in. Swimming in the Adriatic Sea..tick!. After climbing the plethora of steps back up the hill. A clean up and grooming was in order before heading off to our extremely salubrious dinner at the most prestigious table in town. The harbour in the old town is defined by 3 large arches.

Under one of these we sat and watched the busy scene of boats coming and going with people wandering past (all obviously extremely jealous of our exhalted position - as were the people further back in the restaurant) as we wined and dined whilst the colours changed from blue to yellow to red to brown and then into black as the lights then took over in their twinkling reflections over the harbour. The chirping flocks of darting sparrows overhead were probably repeating the same dance that they'd be doing for many centuries at this time of the day in this place. Well.. practice makes perfect so they say. Apart from forgetting a pin number on a credit card (key pads are upside down in this part of the world ... A trap for the tipsy traveller) it was a fantastic evening. Yet another highlight event. Another local bus home up the hill. It's far better than walking and it's also nice to be able to experience travel using your own nouse... and under the smelly armpits (or groins in this case...yeech) of the locals instead of being bundled around in a group via luxury coaches being chauffeured from one location to another under the protective gaze of an official tour guide like the daily hordes of 5000 people who do that from all the cruise ships that come into town via the main commercial harbour. Hang me up if it ever comes to that....