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.