Castles, Cake, and Open Road

On our first full day in Croatia, we woke up to this beautiful view from our balcony! But we weren't going to stay in Croatia long--it was time for a road trip to Mostar, in Bosnia & Herzegovina. It's famous for its old bridge (called the Stari Most), which stood for 427 years and was a famed symbol of Islamic architecture before it was bombed by the Croats. It has since been rebuilt, and you can find videos of the bombing on Youtube if you're interested. But first, the drive! Mostar is about two-and-a-half hours from Dubrovnik by car, and I can report first-hand that Bosnian drivers are almost as scary as Romanian ones--they drive in the middle of the road, go either 30 kph or 140 kph, and generally act like they have 17 extra lives to live.  Taylor wasn't feeling well, but I didn't want to give up my day trip, so I made my international driving debut while he slept in the passenger seat. I don't know if you can tell in the video, but it was a...

Our flight to Dubrovnik was at 6 a.m. New Year's Day, and London was so loud with celebration that I didn't even try to sleep. From about 11 p.m. on it was all sirens and yelling in the streets! Which meant that of course our flight got delayed, and then rerouted to a different city with a connection, and then what should have been a three-hour journey took eleven hours. Such are the exhausting perils of travel.  Luckily, our hotel was very close to the airport in Dubrovnik, so it took very little time to pick up the rental car and zip to the Sheraton. The Sheraton isn't actually in Dubrovnik--it's about 10 minutes outside of the Old Town--but it's peaceful and on the water. It's also spacious and new, which was a nice change after the shoebox London hotel. We got upgraded to the corner executive suite with two balconies! Below is the living room, the view at sunset, and the bedroom. Despite being zombie tired, we went into Dubrov...