This is going to be a multiple part post, partly because there’s a lot to say and partly because I don’t have enough time or patience to do all the photo stuff in one sitting.
First, I’ll tell you about the trip there. Since we didn’t take a plane it took about a day and a half to get there. As I said before, we “drove” there. I have drove in quotes because part of the trip was on a ferry crossing from Italy to Croatia, so we obviously didn’t drive over the water. Since the trip required us to get to certain places at certain times, I was a bit wary about the whole driving thing and getting where we needed to be on time. Since we’ve been in Europe, traffic jams, bad route directions and potty breaks (as well as stopping because the girl threw up from motion sickness) have been a bit of problem as far as slowing us down and making the trips take longer. Since this was a work trip as well as a trip into a new country (Croatia) it made me a little nervous.
As we left Germany (which was pretty quickly) and headed through Austria, at first the snow was even more prevalent (as seen in this photo with the snow on the logs), but as we crossed into Italy and the mountains turned into hills, we left the snow behind and headed toward warmer weather and ancient castles.
We needed to get to the Ancona harbor and check-in with the boat by 7 p.m. and we weren’t sure how long it would take us to get there. Luckily, it wasn’t hard to find the harbor or the car ferry signs (although it was a bit hard to figure out which exact place we were to go to) and we got there with about 45 minutes to spare.
Of course, the whole process was odd. After we checked in, they said we needed to go to passport control but when we got there, it was closed, so we thought there was some other place to go and started looking around. As it turned out, the place was closed, but opened two hours before the ship sailed which was also the latest you could check in.
Anyway, we figured it out and got back into our car to drive it on the ferry. It was amazing to see how large the ship was and all of the trucks that were loaded onto the ship (backwards!) while we waited our turn.
Getting onto the ship, we found our cabin which, because of our lateness in signing up, was supposed to be one of the most expensive. It turned out to be three bunks with about a foot and a half between them and a little bathroom with a teeny shower. We really wondered what the cheaper ones were like.
Wondering around the ship before it sailed (at 9 p.m.) we found out that nothing opened until it sailed. The biggest thing on the ship, other than the restaurants, was the duty free shops (thus the waiting until it sailed part).
So, we set about getting the girl ready for bed, but by the time she was all tucked in, the intercome was going on about the safety rules and we were leaving the harbor. The girl, of course, had to watch, so that set her sleep time back another half hour or so. As it was, it was probably about 10:30 by the time she settled down for the night.
As you can imagine, a thin mattress and pillow in a chilly rocking cabin didn’t make for a great night’s sleep. But I’m sure we all managed a few hours before my alarm went off at 5:45 a.m.
Here’s a picture out of our cabin window in the morning. Since there were a lot of islands right off the coast of Spilt (Croatia), where we docked, we were going pretty slow before we got there.
The had told us that breakfast was free with the room and it started at 6 a.m. Around that time someone came and knocked on the door (I guess they don’t want anyone sleeping in a holding them up).
A. didn’t want to get up so I started dressing her while she lay — thinking that at least I could have her dressed enough to carry to the car. Well, she woke pretty quickly then and we were in the restaurant having our meager “buffet” breakfast of bread, hard boiled eggs, European lunch meat and cheese. It was at least enough to keep us going for a while.
As it turned out, there had been quite a few trucks parked behind our car and it took a while for us to even see our car out of the door to the car deck. To the left is a photo of us getting into our car to get it off the boat. On the right, below, is a photo of the outside of the boat with some cars waiting to get on.
But we finally got our car off the ship and wound our way out of Split toward Dubrovnik.
Tomorrow: Pt. 2 The drive and the city of Dubrovnik.