Dubrovnick and Bari

May 9, 2008 – Dubrovnik, Croatia

As always we landed at our port early in the morning. Normally, Bob would be up to ensure that all the lines were made fast in the correct fashion, but I think they’ve put sleeping drugs in the vents on the ship. Nothing else can explain this lethargy which has overtaken us and leaves us crawling out of bed at 8:00 or later. It’s not like we’re exactly exhausting ourselves, unless it’s moving the hand from plate to mouth. Whatever it is, we’ve missed a lot of port arrivals. Today we awaken to find Dubrovnik harbor outside awaiting us. Our second stop in Croatia, and one which I think Daddy visited when his father was the consul of Yugoslavia.for Leipzig. (I will have to look when I get home, but I think we have a photo album of them visiting Split and Dubrovnik - also called Ragusa then).

Today we had to anchor south of the port rather than pulling up to a pier. But on a regular basis, ship tenders are being provided to take us to and from the small harbor. Here is one place in which I did absolutely no pre-trip ‘homework’ and I felt it. I was walking through a town which I know was filled with history and I was simply ambling along in the lovely warm sunshine enjoying the crowds, the stores and the restaurants. We knew there was a wall we should climb and walk around, but we were not inspired to do that …. It was just a day for being typical American schmoozers – we could have been in Rhodes, Corfu or any other ancient, fortified town.

Having taken the requisite pictures, seen the highlights and eaten a seafood meal at Ragusa II  founded in 1929 (propitious), we headed through the city walls to the harbor, and caught a tender back to the ship. Before dinner we enjoyed a cocktail in the Cabaret theater while listening to one of the lectures being provided by an on-board professor from Harvard. He gave a small preview about our next port of call – Bari, Italy – and covered three important topics:

1. (1) St. Nicolas, the patron saint of the sea, whose body and relics were stolen from the Turks, is theoretically housed in Bari. In olden times this provided a large source of revenue to the town as knights on their way to the crusades would stop to see the relics. He was supposedly a feisty five-foot saint who saved three young women of Bari from prostitution by paying for their dowry.In time he became the St. Nicolas celebrated by the Dutch in early December; and ultimately became St. Nick/Santa Claus whom we all adore in America, and where Coca-Cola gave him his lovely Coke Red coat, black belt and hefty beard
2. .(2) The WW II disaster of 1944 when a series of American ships docked in the harbor of Bari (one filled with illegal mustard gas) were attacked and exploded in the harbor causing one of the more secret and hideous aspects of the war which was covered up until 1959.
3. (3)The general history of the Apulia/Puglia region from early Greeks, through the Venetians, to the present.

After watching another gorgeous sunset with three dolphins playing off the aft wake we once more tried the Discovery dining room where we were seated with a mother and daughter from Ireland (Mom, Jeanette, is a cattle farmer’s wife who left Dad at home because he doesn’t like travel, and daughter Margaret, a marketing manager for a large European grocery chain), and two couples from Michigan (avid golfers). It was a perfectly pleasant evening of ‘tier one’ conversations and nominally wonderful food. (I had three orders of the egg roll, a salad and a plate of cheese; Bob enjoyed Caesar salad, NY Strip steak and NY cheese cake w/ strawberries). Cappuccinos, and off to bed.

May 10th – Bari, Italy

Once more we awake to find a very busy harbor outside our windows: Bob is up early in his robe, watching the approach from our balcony. Ships, cranes, trucks loaded with cargo, hustle and bustle and little charm. Ferries from Greece and Albania are unloading beside our docked ship. There seem to be two kinds of harbors in the world, those where one finds beauty, quaint shops and cafes along the quay and those where you know immediately that it is a working port. Bari is distinctly the latter. Since nothing in the literature provided under our door, or the lecture provided last evening made us feel a need to rush out, we had room service, lazed about, and finally took a shuttle bus provided by the ship to take us to the heart of Bari.

For the first time neither of us carried a camera. For a moment I feared I might miss some very beautiful photograph, but it turned out that this was one town where I would have had to look deeply to find a picture worth taking. What should I say: charming it wasn’t. Bari is a busy harbor town with a somewhat quaint older town which has been turned over to pedestrians, tourists and motor scooters. Bob and I headed to this old part of town where in a gaudy main square framed by sugary filigrees of lights which at night must have looked amazingly tacky we saw the statue of St. Nicolas who had just had a three-day celebration in his name. He was kept behind barricades where people prayed, left roses and admired him still. We then meandered through back streets with our trusty map. Radar-Nose-Ring kept us from being hopelessly lost in streets that twisted and turned, ended suddenly in a piazza, and where street names changed every few blocks.

It was a series of working neighborhoods with people getting their groceries for the evening, doing their laundry, which was strung across the walkways high above our heads, and boys playing ‘football’ in the small squares. We worked our way slowly back to our shuttle bus and returned to our ship wondering why we had even made the effort. But as Bob said, if we hadn’t gone, we’d be sure we’d missed some gem. My question is: what could those very expensive ship-provided tours have told us that we didn’t see? There wasn’t a tour for less than $150.00 and that is a wee bit expensive, to put it mildly. We probably missed a ‘fine/authentic’ Italian meal.

One of the amusing parts of returning to the ship after going ashore is the return procedure: first one is offered a cleansing anti-bacterial towelette (to cut down on disease); next some iced water or iced fruit punch to cool you down as you wait on line; next you put your  id card into a card reader where the security person can actually see your picture pop up on the screen to ensure that there’s a match between the picture they see and the you standing before him (and not someone who’s stolen your card); next you are welcomed with the saccharine phrase “welcome home, home sweet home”, as you put your purse, parcels or camera through a scanner to ensure that you left your bombs and stiletto knives on shore; and finally you are back on board. Not quite like the experience of the boys 80 years ago.

Having missed out on finding any small, cute restaurant on shore we went up to our favorite outdoor Aft restaurant – Windows Café - for a quick sandwich, and beer, before retiring to our cabin to relax. I finished a book while Bob took a nap. And that’s Bari. Tomorrow is a day at sea as we sail around the heel and toe of Italy aiming for Sorrento.