Spain ~ Croatia ~ France ~ May 2023

This is the feature photo - captures the whole thing!

Tues, May 9, 2023

Dave and I had the opportunity to go to these Spain, Croatia and France.  We were able to work out the timing to see the kids Patriotic program dress rehearsal at the school Tues morning before driving to the Cedar Rapids airport. 

We connected through Dallas, Dallas to Madrid.  The flight to Madrid left Dallas at 9:45pm so we basically slept the whole flight....*THANKFULLY* - even though it was uncomfortable we managed to get 6ish hrs of sleep.  We landed in Spain about 2:30pm on May 10th.

Wed, May 10th, 2023

This is the countryside from the plane right before landing in Madrid.  It is dotted and I don't know what it is. Vineyards?

The Madrid airport is very cool - the ceiling is the feature!

A 25 minute Uber to our hotel - the NH Collection - nice fountain view 

We only had 8 hours to explore Madrid, so we tried to make the most of it.  We got espresso and split an egg dish at La Rollerie, which was a little restaurant a 5 minute walk away from the hotel. This is an entrance to the Plaza Mayor.

We strolled the whole perimeter of the Plaza Mayor

then we had to go a few minutes further and SEE the Royal Palace!  

I remember going to see this when I went to Spain when I was 16.  Those arches on the left are where I took a picture.

nearby cathedral

We went back to our hotel after the cathedral and charged our phones - then found a restaurant called El Economato and had Ham croquettes, Beef and meatballs. 

somewhere along the way we saw a place with flamenco dancing shows, we picked up 9pm tickets

It was amazing - fully live music, singing, dancing to the beat, and full of spanish flava.

We were exhausted by this day's end - 14K steps later.  I'm SO glad my foot is feeling better.

To finish off the night we ordered some churros with chocolate.

To bed for sure! We have a taxi scheduled to pick us up at 6:30 for a 8:55am flight to Croatia.  

Thursday, May 11th

This was "travel to Croatia day" - we started early and caught our taxi ride to the airport. 

8:55am flight to Croatia

Croatia greeted us with pouring rain

bus ride to Dubrovnik provided great views!

Checking in at the Sun Gardens Resort

hotel room view

"La Pasta" restaurant meal

checking out the hotel property - no beaches, but nice ocean views!

Sun Gardens Resort

pretty sure we knocked out for a nap between checking in and the dinner - jet lag hit us pretty hard

welcome dinner, provided by Springs Window Fashions

turn in - we ordered room service and watched a movie

Fri, May 12, 2023

I'm going to call this "D-day" or "Dubrovnik Day".  After a provided hotel breakfast, we got on a 9 am bus to the Old City of Dubrovnik and spent the whole day there.  We got back on a 9pm bus back to our hotel.  It is about a 20 minute bus ride.  The 12 hours in the Old City was 16,000 steps of exploring!  We started with a planned/provided tour that lasted 1.5 hours.  This was a tour guide taking us into the old city, up the steps and started walking on the walls.  She explained Dubrovnik is home to the third-oldest pharmacy in the world.  We got lots of historical data which I could not repeat, but the overall lesson was that Croatia gained its independence in the 1991-1995 war and there are 900 people living as residents within the old walls right now.  We learned about how the old city was damaged in the war and saw evidence all over of missel hits and shrapnel marks.  The war's memories are very fresh and most people's parents were in it and they feel very strongly against Serbia and Yugoslavia.  There was an earthquake in 1667 that caused a lot of damage. Dubrovnik became a member of UNESCO in 1979 and that helped its restoration.  

outside the old city

went up the first steps and ascending

At the time of the conflict between Dubrovnik and Venice, the Venetians planned to build a tower on the same spot where Lovrijenac now stands. If they succeeded, they would have Dubrovnik under control, but the people of Dubrovnik, having learned about their plan, overtook them in this. Chronicles of Dubrovnik reveal how the people of Dubrovnik built Lovrijenac in just three months, and when the Venetian ships arrived, full of building materials, they had no choice but to return to Venice unfinished.

still walking on the city walls, which have never been breached

a local resident, hanging clothes out to dry

After the tour guide was done about Noon, we were on our own the rest of the day.  We had some coffee, rested a bit, and decided what to do next.

After our coffee break, we decided to take the cable car up to the top of the mountain to get some good views.  

There was a fort on top of the mountain turned into a museum about the war from '91-'95.  This map shows how much of the old city was damaged in the war.

After the cable car, we got back down about 3pm.  We decided it was about time for a meal, so we sat in a restaurant called Poklisar and sampled a charcuterie tray and split a margarita pizza while we rested our feet.

We remembered that we had planned to visit the third oldest pharmacy in the world.  We walked through a museum full of old things, old books, old spices, supposedly a slice of the cross that Jesus was crucified on (literally the size of a fingernail clipping), and took pictures.  This was around 5pm.  

it is almost impossible to see -- the special piece is the little black speck inside the clear part inside the whitish cross near the top. 

oooold pharmacy stuff.....

We decided that we should experience some local atmosphere. We got off the main strip and went deeper into the old down and experience a bit of local life. We ran into some kids playing ball in the "streets" (there are no cars in the old city), walked through very narrow passageways, and hit a few dead ends because we had no idea where we were going.  

See that little doorway? One of the local streets had a little doorway that led right to our discovery of a little place to grab a refreshing drink with a gorgeous view of the sea!

yeah! what neat find

Then we felt ready to tackle more walking....since during our morning tour we only walked half the way around the city, we had to complete the full circle.  We found the way up to where we left off, and meandered the last half mile (but it felt like much longer) around the city.  We stopped a lot to take pictures and take breathers, because it was up and down steps constantly.

The top of this hill in the distance is where the cable car took us earlier in the day and also where that war museum was

views to the south as we walked around the walls

one big tree in the whole city

up and up...we got that eery tingly feeling looking over the edge

can't quite grasp the depth here, but it is as high as we could get up in the walls

This last pic was taken at 7:24pm.  

We decided to leave the old city and see what was on the outside of the walls - not much except for a few restaurants. We killed some time waiting for the 9pm bus.

Dave worked a bit and I blogged after we settled back into our hotel.  Martha helped us listen to the kid's band performance, but it was close to 2am for us so we asked her to record snippets of the rest of the program and went to bed.

Tomorrow's forecast is 100% rain so our Elaphite island tour was canceled, so the whole day is open.  I'm not sure what we're going to do?  

Saturday, May 13

Today was "sleep in" day.  We woke up at 1:00pm.  Yeah...still jet lagged.  We would have pulled off getting up earlier and make our meet up time for the tour, but since it was canceled because of the rain, we turned off all alarms.  A housekeeping person knocked around 9:30am but we told them we didn't want room service.  She said "nil?" in surprise, and left.  I did arouse around 9:45 and poked Dave wondering if we should go snag breakfast before 10am, but neither of us were hungry and we both felt stuck in the bed, so I put on my eye mask and kept sleeping.  I don't think either of us planned to sleep in that late, it just felt right. :)  I liken the feeling of needing to sleep when you're jet lagged to being pregnant, tired, and needing a nap "right now".   The drowsy feeling demands your body to stop and lie down.  

Anyway...we were ready to go out and walk around and explore the resort by 3ish.  We found a coffee machine on our way out, enjoyed some espressos, and took a walk to find a little bite to eat.  We have dinner plans with some other people so we knew we didn't want to eat a lot.  We settled at a place called Butcher's Grill and shared a couple dishes.  They were very yummy.

It rained on the 5 minute walk back.  We got more coffee, and settled in our room for awhile.

Walking around the Sun Gardens resort, this is one of their pools.  No, we did not swim.  

We didn't go to this beach, this was an overlook view from where we were walking.  There aren't really beaches here.

Our coffee source - we turned on this machine and had some steamed milk and espresso in minutes.  

We saw this cute bench with a recognizable shape that pops up everywhere around here - it was all over Dubrovnik and the old pharmacy and our hotel windows have this shape in all of them.  We had to grab this photo op.  Dave found a random stick in the bushes and I used it to prop up my phone on the half wall by the walkway to take this picture.

There it is...see the fancy stick holding up my phone?  

Beef salad with arugula, parmesan and balsamic, and beef with some kind of cream cheese, tomato and red onion dipping.  It was all delicious.  

just hangin' in the hotel room! We did a little work...catching up on things.  It is raining pretty hard right now and we are waiting to go dinner later.

We met up with some Springs Window Fashions regional managers and other owners from our midwest area for dinner.  Veranda is the name of the restaurant, and we had frog legs wrapped in bacon, egg roll things, butter/bread, beef, fig sauce, veal risotto and chocolate cake.  

I'm not remembering exactly what we did for the rest of the evening - probably not much.  It rained on the walk back. I think we called home and talked to our kids.  We helped Eli figure out which books to get from our house to read and take quizzes on for school.

Sunday, May 14, 2023

Today was also an open day for us.  We got breakfast, got ready for the day, and met in the hotel lobby to grab an Uber to the old city again, and we found a bunch of SWF people doing the same thing. They had ordered 2 big vans with plenty of seating so we hopped in with them.  We ended up getting a light lunch with the same group at a sushi place.  

The rest of the day we spent walking around the old city again from about 1pm-6:20 - we visited an old cathedral, souvenir shopped, walked up and down little streets and went in and out of countless little stores.  A lot of it looked like the same stuff over and over again.

cats rule the town....they're just everywhere

the most decorated rubber duckies 

we filled our water bottle from this fountain again

last picture with the old city walls

We caught an uber ride back to the hotel - about a 15 minute drive. He was a chatty one - talked about how he was involved in the war in 91-95, what he thought about Biden (dislike) and Trump (very much in favor).  The Croatians all blame Biden for the war in Ukraine.

Anyway, we got to our hotel just in time to change for the farewell dinner.  It was supposed to have been held at the Fort Lovrijenac but the venue canceled on our group because of the weather (very windy, rainy).

Monday, May 15, 2023

Not much to report here but travel...we got up at 3:30am (ugh) and met our scheduled transportation to the airport.  Much of the sitting time was dark/drowzy/sleepy.  We snagged a muffin in Dubrovnik before flying to Zagreb. 

Zagreb airport

Arrival in Zagreb was smooth - we found a place to get omelets and toast with cream cheese and tomatoes then found our next gate for the flight from Zagreb to Paris.  It was so delicious. Flight to Paris was 

Don't see that everyday - boarding a flight to Paris.

Uber ride from airport to hotel - is that the Arc de Triomphe in the background? Yup it is...

A hunk of  burrata on pesto pasta - our first meal at La Terasse at the end of the block from our hotel, Rayz Eiffel.

Dave got a warm beef stew - great for this rainy day

eclairs to share

we had to go there first!  It was a 10 minute walk from our hotel

after dark it lights up until midnight

then it sparkles the first 5 minutes of every hour after dark - that was a treat!

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Today was "go up in the Eiffel tower day".  I had thought about going to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa Da Dinvi painting, but it was closed Tuesdays.  We chose a combination ticket to walk up the steps to the second level and then take the cable car to the top.  The walk up maybe burned off a few pancakes we had for breakfast.

the beginning of the steps going "two floors" which is about half the height of the whole tower

interconnections of the tower - lots of iron and bolts

in the cable car going up

Notre Dame cathedral in the distance - this is still under reconstruction/recovery since the fire of 2019

that long skinny building is the Louvre

Arc de Triomphe

We were feeling a little tired but still had about 3 hours to spare - we wanted to see the Arc de Triomphe up close, so we grabbed a bike ride from a guy with a bike-pedaled seat and he took us close - within a 10 minute walk.  

he was working so hard....we almost felt bad for asking for a ride.  well, yes, we paid for it, but still.

The Arc de Triomphe honors those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I. The Arc de Triomphe was designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806; its iconographic programme pits heroically nude French youths against bearded Germanic warriors in chain mail. 

a tunnel to get there - it cross under a crazy roundabout

We decided to stop at a cafe and get chocolate croissants and coffee.  Always easy to find things like this - they seem to be around every corner.  It was a nice break to sit.  We requested and Uber to get a ride back to our hotel to freshen up for meeting Ted Lush at 5:30.  We got back to our hotel around 5.

this is our hotel - Rayz Eiffel - our room was 67 - the top two windows on the right.

Ted met us and drove us to The Seine River and we boarded a dinner boat cruise.  Ted Lush is my dad's second cousin. (Rowena's father's (Ben Lincoln) sister's (Adeline Lush) grandson.  

Ted was very conversational, spoke excellent english, and we covered lots of topics, and basically solved the world's problems.

Notre Dame - very neat to see up close.

He had time to drive us around Paris.  The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris is a Roman Catholic church dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point of the city. 
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart was designed by Paul Abadie. The construction lasted from 1875 to 1914, the building was officially completed in 1923. 

The drive to the cathedral was approx 30 minutes. Ted showed us the american embassy building, where the french president lived, and all kind of other things I do not think I'll remember.  He was a delight to visit!  He lives in Orleons, a city 1.5 hrs south of Paris, so he had a longer drive back home after he dropped us off.