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After (or while) eating all of your turkey today, you should take a moment and think about how lucky we are; give thanks as it were. How lucky we are to have food and the internet and broadband so that we can watch stuff like this video of a man and his dog. Thank you internet!       Probably not the most graceful dismount for a week of Croatia, but hey, I was writing this while still being sick. Be thankful that's as good as it was.

Continued from November 21, 2006 ...Dubrovnik welcomed us to Dubrovnik quite a long time before we actually got into Dubrovnik, with signs announcing the city and all the attractions for what seemed like an hour prior to our arrival. But we knew for sure that we had arrived when we crossed a bridge that spanned the Rijeka Dubrovačka, this peculiar fresh water river that runs underground and suddenly punches out from the earth a little ways to the east to empty in to the Adriatic.       From there on, it was a slow descent past the ancient manors of town nobles long since dead and in to the Dubrovnik suburbs of Gruz and Lapad. For many, it is bound to be something of a let down because the bus station is very far from the old city that I had come to know in getting ready for the trip. Luckily, my friend Ivana was there waiting with a big smile as she laughed about the last time we had seen each other… on the eastern tower of Notre Dame in Paris. I asked if she had been waiting long and tried to express my frustration about the delay in the bus trip which was a little over an hour at that point. She simply shrugged and I realized it was something she had come to expect or at least not care so much about.       For others who weren't lucky enough to have a friend waiting, they were flocked upon by the ladies who were waiting at the station to rent rooms. The words, "in old city" were being said in three or four languages around me. One or two of them came up to me, but walked away discouraged when Ivana told them in Croatian that we were with her.       We hopped in to her little car that made me look like a seated camel and zipped off to the old city for a meal, some fantastic Croatian wine and the start of a lengthy stay in Dubrovnik.       This concludes the series. Hope you enjoyed it!

Continued from November 20, 2006 ...After endless stretches of the clear blue waters, I started to think, yes this is a nice sea, but wouldn't it be nice to see something else? As if to answer my question, we started to go a bit more inland, which took us from the glistening waters; to be shuttled along some of the most amazing farmlands I have even seen in my life just south of Ploče. There are these neat little rows of different crops growing next to each other at whatever angle someone felt would be good that day. It's a far cry from the large quilt-like patches of homogenous crops that we see growing across the US. It's a funny thing to think that this spot where the Neretva River forms a wetland delta used to be a massive source of malaria for the inhabitants, but is now one of the most fertile (and beautiful) areas in the whole country.       Pulling out of the Neretva delta, we ran parallel to the Peljesac Penninsula, eventually coming to the Bosnia Herzegovina border. As odd as it seems, there is this very small strip of the country that interjects into Croatia to grab a little bit of the coast, a bit to the north of Ston. Historically, I've been told by Croatian friends that this piece of land was given to the Ottoman Empire by the old city-state of Ragusa (which Dubrovnik was the capital of) in order to provide a buffer between them and the encroaching Venetians. How much truth there is to this, I've never been able to find out, although it sounds like the sensible kind of thing that the Ragusans would do. They were masters at maintaining independence for centuries despite being directly between the Ottomans and Venetians.       The border was nothing to worry about, since they checked our passports, were slightly bemused in seeing Americans, and let us on through to the 10-15 kilometers that the road runs through. We actually stopped in this little strip of land, and it was most certainly not in an official capacity. Apparently, the drivers used to pick up large piles of goods while in Bosnia Herzegovina because they got them at nearly 25% less than in Croatia due to the fact that there were no, or at the very least, were less taxes there. This explains why there were few markets in Neum, which was an otherwise barren area. We were delayed a good half hour by the drivers doing their shopping and going to multiple markets to get the best prices. It was annoying, but we had little choice. I'm sure that the temerity of the drivers was more than likely due to the fact that there were few of us on the bus at that point and they felt they could probably do as they pleased with little consequence. It turns out that in the years since my ride, the Croatian government has been cracking down on this by having police ride the buses at random. With a couple of cases of beer on board, the shopping was done and we passed back into Croatia, which was even less of an issue than passing in to BH...       Continued on November 22, 2006

Having ridden the American Greyhound line and various Amtrak connection buses that are one step away from soul-crushing in their perfunctory practicality, never would I have thought that a bus ride could be so beautiful, lulling, and inherently dangerous. These thoughts kept beating through my head as my traveling companion and I twisted down the Croatian version of California Highway 1, the E65 from Split to Dubrovnik.       Due to our ride from Zagreb to Split, we were a little cautious as to what bus line we picked. You see, after cruising along for about six of what was then an eight hour trip, the bus immediately pulled off to the side of the road somewhere within the vicinity of a major town called Knin. It heaved, sputtered, and died a rather sordid mechanical death right there in the middle of nowhere. In the flash of a second, a ball of flames erupted up the side of the bus, next to me. Naturally everyone ran off, they put out the fire, started tearing apart the bus and in a few hours, sent another one that was short a few seats which made for an uncomfortable ride for those who had been displaced by this exploding bus fiasco. Eventually though, we did arrive in Split and spent a few days there before venturing on to Dubrovnik.       Once done with Split and having departed the drab bus station, I'd have to say that the initial part of the ride is lovely. It twists and turns along the side of the Adriatic Sea, showing all the glimmering waters below. Occasionally, we'd stop in a smaller town along the way (like Omiš with its never-ending beach) to pick up more passengers or drop off some of the ones that were on board, but these were quick stops. Old stone homes were perched alongside new ones, as it is just about anywhere in Croatia. But, whatever their age, the homes, businesses, and old fortresses cling like nervous birds to the steep cliffs.       Bus drivers for these lines have a tendency to drive a bit maniacally and I'm sure it gets worse as the tourist season and coastal traffic moves into high gear. They will pass other cars on these narrow, steep roads. They will tailgate. They will curse beautiful strings of Slavic profanities in the general directions of slow drivers they feel who are not driving in a manner of which they approve. I highly recommend sitting on the side of the bus closest the mountainside if you're used to driving, or just don't feel as suicidal as the bus drivers. I say this because sitting on the side closest to the sea is much like flying. You feel as if you're hovering above the Adriatic and as romantic as that sounds, it can make you nauseous in very little time...       Continued on November 21, 2006

Okay, so there aren't too many ways to get up and down the coast of Croatia unless you have your boat there and for some reason I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't (unless of course you're that English chap I met last year who had a sailboat docked in Dubrovnik.) That being the case, there are basically only two ferry lines to get from Rijeka to Dubrovnik. The first one is Marco Polo (I'll be damned if I can find their actual website) and the other is Jadrolinija.       I've never taken Marco Polo. I've heard they're fast, pretty affordable and good overall. This is what I've heard from Croatian friends and I generally tend to listen to them as they take these things all the time. I will probably give these guys a try the next time I'm in the big HR.       That being that, I have taken Jadrolinija; twice. My first time was from Dubrovnik to Rijeka. This was an overnight ferry (22 hours!) and I had a cabin. The weather wasn't so hot outside, but it was comfortable. We generally stayed in our cabin which wasn't a four star hotel, but was perfectly serviceable. At first it seems far too noisy to sleep on the ferry, but as the engines drown on, you get used to the sound of the chugging diesels. It lulls you in to one hell of a deep sleep that made me happy I was getting off at the end of the line instead of Zadar where you get off in the middle of the night. It wasn't bad overall. I though, "Hey, I could do this again, no problem." So, I did it again.       That was this time, hopefully my last time taking the Liburnija. This was the exact same ship and route that I took a year ago, but it was the opposite direction from Rijeka to Dubrovnik. There was one other big difference and that was that it was screaming hot when we left Rijeka, probably about 37C (95F) and it had been a long bus ride from Pula to Rijeka. Once on the boat, all seemed fine. It was the same as it had been before. We were in slightly different rooms, but they were the same layout. We made sure to get food beforehand to avoid the overpriced and rather lackluster ferry servings.       Right, so we're all ready for the ferry right? Wrong! While the rooms are air conditioned during the day, they pull a nice trick on you and turn off the ventilation system at night because its so "cool" apparently. Yeah, that's a good one. Since when has it been cool in a completely enclosed space (the windows don't open, trust me) and when has turning off the air to passengers' rooms ever been a good idea? It sucked. It really sucked. At some point around 2AM, you wake up in a grizzly sweat and this is after making sure to sleep nearly naked with no blankets on. After tossing and turning, you might be able to wrestle yourself back into slumber, but your kilometerage will vary on that one.       Once morning rolls back around, the air comes back on. But, at this point, you'll probably be on the decks watching the islands go by. Don't worry if you miss them here and there though because you'll be going through them for about the next eight hours. And this is where its probably the hardest because a heavy monotony sets in with your trip on the ferry. Twenty two hours is a very long time. You realize this as you sit out in the sun, go down and take a nap, sit out in the sun some more, then nap a bit more. You're very thankful once you hit Dubronvik and you're thrilled to leave behind your ship prison.       It may seem from what I've written that the difference all comes down to the temperature outside, but that's not entirely true. It mainly comes down to how many times you've riden the ferry. Most of the Croatians who ride it seem to get very drunk on the ride because that's all there really is to do. I believe that there is one way in which the ferry is very acceptable and that's the five dollars or so that it costs to sleep on the deck. I think this has to be the cheapest way to legally cover a distance I've ever seen, but you can only really do it during the warm summer months. The other catch is that you really need to do it in pairs in order to watch your belongings. If you're not a deck-sleeping-backpacker though, I might recommend the Marco Polo route or possible even flying if you can afford it.