The Bikes

VBT provides both road and hybrid bikes for the use of its tour participants. Beth and I opted for road machines since that is what we ride at home. The VBT bikes are private label machines made in Poland. They are low-end and heavy. For folks who don't know any different, that may be fine, but for those of us who own decent bikes, these are beasts. Not only are they very heavy, the Campy Xenon drive trains are frustrating. It was a struggle for me to shift into the bigger gears. The leaders tried to fix it but ended up telling me to flick the lever just so to get the gear I wanted. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. It usually balked when I needed the shift the most, like on a screaming down hill.

Beth's shifted with a very loud grating noise. She cursed it regularly.

If VBT wants my opinion, I would tell them to upgrade these or at least not discourage clients from bringing their own bikes. This is clearly one way VBT cuts costs in its effort to be on the lower end of the price scale. It will be a consideration when choosing our next bike tour.

The Old City

These are all images from the Old City. I had to include one of a Dalmatian . Dog, that is. Yes, they originated in this Dalmatian region but no, you don't see them every where. In fact during the trip, our group only spotted 2.

The Old City was quite charming, with shops and cafes interspersed between old museums, chapels and a monastery. In the center of the city a green market was in full operation, with vendors offering not only fresh produce but homemade olive oil, crafts and lavender products. The picture of Beth and me taken at a cafe table is just off to the side of the market. Among other delicacies, that particular restaurant is known for its fresh oysters, which come from the family's own beds.

Their is constant repair work in process. The buildings and streets are made largely of the local limestone, which comes mostly from Broc (rhymes with "crotch"), a nearby island which was the site of our first 3 days of cycling. The locals proudly tell you that Brac stone was used to build the White House.

We walked along the top of the city walls, which provided great views of the city and the sea.

Our Trip Begins in Dubrovnik

Beth and I went on our first organized bike tour with VBT from May 12-23, 2008. We choose Croatia a) because it fit our schedule b) the daily high temps average low 70s in May and c) it was a little more exotic than the southern France and Italy trips that proliferate. We choose VBT based on recommendations from friends and cost. VBT tends to be among the lower cost tour companies. In a later post, I will elaborate on where I perceive they cut costs but suffice it to say that we enjoyed this trip immensely.

The Dalmatian Coast is beautiful. Find Italy on an atlas, move your finger east from Rome across the Adriatic and you will land roughly in the southern part of this region. The picture at the top shows a portion of the Old City section of Dubrovnik, which sits at the southern end of the country. We opted for a 3 day pre-trip extension and spent the time as tourists in this idyllic small city. Our hotel, Hotel Zagreb, was located in the Lapad section, a small summer community with a cove and "beach". In Croatia, any place you can enter the ocean is called a beach as the coastline tends to feature steep drops and craggy shores.

We were about 15 minutes away from the Old City by public bus. This is the gem of Dubrovnik: a walled, fortified area in which no cars are allowed. While the Old City was pounded by Serbian rockets and bombs during the 1991 war, it has been nearly completely restored and is a designated UNESCO heritage site. The new bright red/orange tiled roofs are the most noticeable evidence of the reconstruction. Several of the buildings within the walls, including an old monastery, actually have plaques marking rocket damage.

We learned a great deal about Serb-Croat relations from our tour guide in the Old City, Mario, and from our two Croatian bike trip leaders, Josko and Marko. It was an amazing learning experience to travel in and hear about an area so recently impacted by a vicious civil war. If you read even a cursory history of Yugoslavia you will quickly learn that the 1991 war was only one of many traumatic events to shape this region and its people. Given space limitations, I won't elaborate excessively but suffice it to say that Croatia is recovering well.