I have a theory that once you’ve visited a new city for three days you must either leave immediately or stay on for a full week at the least.  My rationale is as follows:

Day 1: Get oriented to physical layout and time-zone bearings (can be combined with Day 2 if short on time)

Day 2: Visit the must-see sights, so you can say you did them (e.g., Eiffel Tower in Paris, London Bridge in .. uh.. London, Military Tattoo in Edinburgh, Haleakala volcano at sunrise in Maui, walk the wall of historic Dubrovnik)

Day 3:  Scratch the surface of some off-the-beaten path activities

These three days allow you to float about, tread the water, and perhaps stick your face a bit under water to see what lies beneath the surface.  After three days, though, you must either leave town or dive in deeply.   I’ve had the great good fortune of diving in a few times in my life by renting apartments in residential Paris and Florence, buying and cooking fresh food from the local markets, making friends with the neighbors and feeling like part of the community.  This one must do to really get to know a region.  If time and resources do not allow, best to tie up the visit with a scratch-below-the-surface kind of day.

Here’s a photo of our little Dubrovnik apartment

Friday was our last day in Dubrovnik, technically day 3, therefore, and as it was scratch-below-the-surface day we started by skipping (OK, walking quickly) to town by a different route WITHOUT needing map in hand.  We chose a breakfast restaurant outside the historic city walls, and the eggs on Mike’s plate looked so bright yellow they were about to pop off the plate.

First stop was the Franciscan monastery museum, old pharmacy and church.  From the city wall walk the previous day we had a good perspective of the Franciscan monastery from above, and could observe with envy the quiet cloister through its open courtyard.  For just a few kuna we were let inside, and sat together enjoying the cool quiet while a few religious quickly walked about us.  Curiously, the Franciscans have maintained a pharmacy within their monastery walls; in addition to the modern operating pharmacy, they display the original one, with all kinds of antique medicine bottles and other medical equipment.  When I inquired at the gift shop if they had any pictures of the antique pharmacy, I was asked if I were a pharmacist.  Although I replied “No, I’m a nurse,” a sweet woman surreptitiously handed me a photo postcard under the table and said “take it.” Click here a link to a photo I found.

From there we moved down the “Strada” to the Dominican monastery, not as busy as its Franciscan brother, most likely due to its distance from the main gate.  Hard to imagine this small walled town could house so many religious but I must admit I would mind being cloistered in such a gorgeous place.  As we wandered throughout town we noticed that the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra would be performing at the Rector’s Palace that evening and decided it would be the perfect end to our Dubrovnik adventure.  Below are photos of the amazing octopus carpaccio I had for a pre-concert dinner, as well as a snapshot of the orchestra arrangements from our first-row seats.  The concert sold out its approximately 100 seat venue and we noticed some were sitting on the marble steps of the building in order to see.  The oboe soloist Thomas Hutchinson from New Zealand couldn’t have been more than 21 years old, and he was extraordinary. No recording can take the place of live music for touching the soul.

On Saturday morning we will be picked up at 8am by a rental car representative and begin our trek up the coast.   Going to be an early morning!

[My apologies for the rather brief and abrupt posting.  My current Internet connection is very sporadic, and I’m especially having trouble uploading pictures. More to come when I get better connectivity.]