Leaving Venice, starting our cruise, and our day in Croatia

Written by: Dan
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We finished up Venice with a bang. During the day we went to Murano to tour the glass factories. They have the most elegant artwork. The families who own the factories have a special glass “sauce” that allows them to work with the glass at lower temperatures. This allows them the ability to sculpt and mold the glass into very impressive shapes and colors. We purchased our first piece of artwork! It is hard to explain, we will have to show it to you sometime. The best way to explain it is: It is made of glass, and it is pretty.
We ended our night with a trip to Harry’s bar. It is a famous restaurant on the Grand Canal. It is one of the most fancy (and expensive) places I have ever eaten. It was something we will never forget. After that we turned in early to get ready for our cruise.
The next morning, we woke up late, checked out of our hotel, and took a water taxi to Venice Port. It is quite a site. They drove us right in between the large cruise ships. It was a little too close for comfort at times. Made us feel like quite the small fish.
We arrived to the boat, checked into our room, and explored the ship. For those of you who have been on a cruise, I apologize for this paragraph. It will be an “of course” moment. However, this is our first cruise, and was something quite new for us. First off, our room is excellent. It is small, but has a small living area and balcony. As I type this we are passing by a Greek Island that looks nearly uninhabited. It is most stunning. Many tall cliffs and mountains, and a few white houses on the shoreline. We have taken to setting up the camera on a tri-pod outside so it only takes a moment to catch a spectacular site.
Besides the facilities, the atmosphere is something to get used to. Americans are in the minority on this ship, and English is one of a handful of languages spoken on the ship. It takes forever to make an announcement because they have to repeat the same thing in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, etc… I find this to be so interesting, and humbling. Most people on the ship speak multiple languages; and I don’t even talk English good.
After a great dinner and show we retired to our cabin for a good night’s sleep. Our ship traveled throughout the night to arrive in Dubrovnik, Croatia in the morning. We left the ship in the am for a day exploring the city. Again, I was quite interested and humbled by this experience. Being the naive American, I knew nothing about Croatia - besides I remembered something about a war. We soon found Croatia is making many strides to enter the European union and the tourist marketplace – so they are quite inviting to guests and do a great job to explain Croatia, and Croatian history to everyone (even us naïve Americans). Old town Dubrovnik was elegant and awe inspiring. We took about 600 pictures. We started the day by walking on top of the city walls. This gave a great view of the city, coast, and countryside. After a walking for a few hours we stopped for a nice lunch along the waterline. Fresh shrimp and a seafood Risotto. After lunch our waitress gave us directions to a local beach. Since the temperature is about 85 and sunny, a dip was in order. We swam in the Adriatic Sea for about an hour before drying off and returning to our ship. Croatia is something we will never forget. I would not be surprised if we were back one day. I would expect many other Americans to start to look towards Dubrovnik as a vacation destination in years to come.