July 2-3: Sacramento to Dubrovnik

We had to leave the house at 2am Wednesday morning so I went ahead and stayed up all night. Apparently so did Megan and Lindsey, since they all are flying on the same itinerary as us. Our flights from Sacramento to Denver and Denver to Newark went pretty smooth, but we had a very tight layover in Newark. By the time our plane parked at the gate we had about 30 minutes until our flight to Dubrovnik was scheduled to leave and we had to go to a gate two terminals away. Luckily there were other people from our first flight that had to make the second flight and another connection that was also late, so they held our plane and we were able to make it with minimal sprinting. We had a tailwind for the flight to Dubrovnik so even though we left Newark late we were still able to arrive on time around 8am Thursday morning.

First Look at Croatia

The passport control and customs lines moved pretty quickly and we were able to get through and meet our tour guide, Ivan, who then showed us to our tour bus, which we will have for the whole trip. Ivan will stay with us throughout the Croatia part of the trip. Once we loaded up into the bus they took us over to the hotel, which is located on the Lapad peninsula, just west of old town Dubrovnik.

When we arrived at hotel Neptune we checked in at the front desk, but it was before 10am and our rooms weren't ready yet, so we left our bags at the front desk and walked around the promenade that Ivan had pointed out on our ride to the hotel. It was a very pleasant walk that followed the coast for a good while before going into town where it became surrounded by lots of restaurants and eateries. Everyone was getting hot and hungry by the time we got to the end of the promenade so we went to a grocery store that was a block or two away to get some snacks and drinks.

Along the Promenade

After the grocery store the kids still wanted a real meal so we walked back to the promenade to one of the few restaurants that was serving lunch food, versus breakfast, called Mamma Mia. I ordered the cevapi, which are small minced sausages that are grilled and served with fries and ajvar, a sweet pepper and eggplant dip, LB ordered a kids spaghetti bolognese and Christal ordered a pizza Margherita for herself and Maddy. The cevapi had good flavor, but they were a little tough, which I thought was a little bit odd for ground meat, but the ajvar sauce that went with it was pretty good, and the fries were quite crispy and fluffy. LB's spaghetti bolognese was a little sweeter than what I'm used to, but it was still not bad, and I was too full to try the pizza, but Kelsey and Lindsey said that the pizza they got was good.

Cevapi w Fries & Ajvar

After finishing lunch we walked back on the promenade and stopped at a gelato stand. Surprisingly, only Megan and I ordered something. She got cappuccino gelato and I got strawberry sorbetto that I shared with Mads. When we got back to the hotel we all grabbed our swimsuits and changed so that we could cool off in the Adriatic. Our hotel was made up of several different "hotels" with different names that were all under the same resort name and directly down from our hotel were several of their pools and some rocky shoreline where the hotel had installed some small concrete platforms to help people get into the ocean. We all jumped into the Adriatic and swam around for a while, even Maddy came in and was having a ball. The temperature was probably high 70's, so it was perfectly refreshing after all the walking in the hot sun. After swimming in the sea we all transitioned to the pools, which were filled with salt water, and hung out there for a little bit before we got a text from Charlene that said their rooms were ready. Christal and I packed up the kids and we went up to get our room keys a little earlier than expected and then settled into our room.

Someone's Ready to Swim!

Once we were in our room we showered, did some laundry, brushed our teeth and then took naps until about 5:40. We made our way up to the lobby drowsily and met up with everyone in our group as well as Ivan, who walked us over to the restaurant for dinner. On the walk to the restaurant Ivan pointed out some trees that had lots of pods growing on them and said they were carob trees, which both Christal and I found really cool.

Unripe Carob Pods

We ate at a restaurant called Pivnica Dubrava, and Auntie Shirley had already arranged a fixed menu for us and we had each selected what we wanted. We all started with a vegetable soup and a beef soup, both of which were served with some homemade bread. The vegetable soup was pureed and had a thicker consistency and was quite flavorful. The beef soup was delicious and had small, bite sized chunks of tender braised beef with some thin noodles in a very clear broth that was almost like a consommé. Both soups were a solid start to the meal.

Beef Soup

For our main course we had a choice between a mixed grill, that they called a "Dubrava" grill, and vegetarian risotto. The "Dubrava" grill came with burger, cevapcici, sausage and a pork chop. Auntie Shirley had also arranged for there to be an option that was without pork which included grilled chicken and a small steak that had a parsley-garlic butter on it instead of the pork chop and sausage. Both options were served with fries and both were really delicious and way too big for me to finish, and poor LB was still so tired that he basically slept through the whole meal and we had to take his mixed grill to go. The ajvar that came with our mixed grills was really good and a lot better than the ajvar that came with my lunch.

Dubrava Grill

The vegetarian risotto was pretty good and seemed to be more well cooked with a better texture than the vegetable risotto that Brian had ordered at lunch. The main course was served with some salad that we dressed with some house olive oil and vinegar.

Vegetable Risotto

For dessert we had fruit salad and apple strudel. The fruit salad was a bit basic with grapes, apple, orange and apricot. The apple strudel was really good and the apple filling was made with grated apples and orange zest, which created a unique texture that I'm not used to in a strudel, and served over a generous amount of crème anglaise.

Apple Strudel

Once we finished dinner we said good night to Ivan and walked back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel it was about a half an hour until sunset so those of us that weren't ready for bed (Yeh-Yeh, me, Brian, Julie, Lindsey Kelsey, Megan, Paul, Andrea and Lana) went down to the shoreline to take some sunset pictures.

After that we headed back to our rooms and went to bed for the night.

Night Night