Cavtat

Cavtat is a very small town on a beautiful little harbor - palm trees line the wide road, along with a dozen small cafes and restaurants.

Small boats, taxi boats, and excursion boats hang around the promenade.
Oh, and yachts. Lotsa yachts.

The water is so clear and so turquoise blue, and the beaches are mostly giant rocks.

We have 4 days in Cavtat, which is a long time for such a small place. We'd decided to stay here instead of Dubrovnik, planning to take a day trip or two (one, knowing us) into the larger city since it's only 18km away. Marc had carefully plotted the route into the city, to a public parking lot, since Dubrovnik is extremely congested.

Instead, we've mainly stayed around Cavtat. Our hotel is charming (again with the peach walls, though...), and our room is on the 3rd floor, overlooking the harbor and restaurants and small shops. There's a gelato shop right across the street, which is important for our nightly gelato needs. The room comes with breakfast, which is the best we've had on this trip. For me, though, the best part of breakfast is the sweet woman who serves us. There is a buffet with meats and cheese, croissants, stuff like that, and you can also order omelettes from the kitchen. This woman has waited on us every day, and she remembers what we want. Marc gets a double espresso and an omelette, and I get toast and a cappucino. When you ask her a question she says yes in a very particular way, like "of course" (but not in a snotty way), and she has a little smile on her face. So we started each day with a slow breakfast, sitting on a terrace under an awning. Very sweet.

The room is nice, and the hotel is charming, but way overpriced for what it is. We don't really understand why the rate is so high, but it's right in the middle of everything and it is a sweet place. The first night, we just had twin beds pushed together, which meant that we both slept in one twin bed. Or didn't sleep, really. So the next day the housekeeper put this thing between the mattresses so we have something like one bed, with a very hard and raised ridge in the middle. Not great, but better.

We have a tiny little balcony, which gets full afternoon sun, and it's a nice place to sit and watch all the tourists. And there are a lot of tourists, in huge clumps. During the week, one tour bus after another came to town and little parades of people with green circle stickers marched around behind tour guides who held up big signs. Not our cup of tea, that's for sure. For the first time on this trip, we've heard other Americans around. There are a lot of Germans, some French, and lots of people with Slavic-sounding languages.

Panorama from our balcony

Mostly we have been taking walks around the harbor, cafe-hopping, hanging around, and relaxing. Yesterday we took a boat to Dubrovnik, and I'll do a separate post about it. The weather was overcast and it was cool, and it turned out to be the best day to make that trip. Today, though, was warm and sunny, and we hiked around the harbor to a spot with big wide rocks to lie on and easy access to the water. We lay on the rocks, swam in the Adriatic, and had a wonderful time. I loved that.

Me, very happy and relaxed

We've mostly been eating seafood, but today we had pizza and a greek salad. Since the seafood comes with its face on, I have had a harder time than Marc, who sucks the heads with relish and happiness.

Marc, waiting for his shrimp dinner. I snuck this beautiful photo of him
under the pretense of taking a picture of the restaurant.
And......the shrimps!

Marc has also kept his eyes peeled for roadside food - wild herbs, strange fruits, and figs. This morning, before we went swimming, we went on a fig walk and found one really great dried fig. We haven't found many to eat, but the trees do have loads of them, not yet ripe or just out of reach. The figs on the tops of the trees tend to be the ripe ones, for whatever reason - either because they get more sun, or the ripe ones lower down have already been picked. But Marc can smell them as we walk around. I haven't been able to pick out the fig smell from the pine smell. On our post-dinner walk tonight, Marc found thyme and rosemary, but we haven't found oregano yet. He'll keep looking, I have no doubt.

Here's one of our walks:

Oh - another thing that really cracks me up. There is a belltower nearby, and it rings. But not in any discernible order. Tonight it rang 6 times at 6pm, and once at 6:30, and once at 7pm. OK, that sounds like it makes sense! But last night at 7:30 it rang 83 times. I counted. Isn't that weird?

And, sunsets. Beautiful beautiful sunsets.