Ravenna

Despite reading a somewhat dodgy forecast earlier, we boarded our excursion bus under mostly blue skies; destination the village of Ravenna and its famous mosaics.

“The austere façade of many of Ravenna’s early Christian buildings hide the golden richness of exquisite mosaics. Three in particular—the Galla Placidia Mausoleum, the Arian Baptistery and the Church of San Vitale—house jaw-dropping artwork from the three greatest periods in the history of Ravenna: the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogoth reign, and the Byzantine Exarchate.

Galla Placidia Mausoleum

I had to keep reminding myself that these are mosaics not paintings, they were absolutely stunning!

I had had some misgivings about this aspect of cruising…. following a tour guide around with the obligatory waving yellow flag… but our tour guide was excellent and certainly enriched our visit to Ravenna.

As the tour continued though, we started to experience the negatives… the couple who wandered off and left the group without any thought to notify the poor tour guide and then the same lady who clearly had mobility issues and was eventually ‘adopted’ by a couple who basically supported her along and were always at least two blocks behind us. This trip clearly stated it involved a couple of hours of walking which this lady obviously wasn’t up to and it was very frustrating for the rest of the group constantly waiting on corners and I felt very sorry for the tour guide who made the best of it.

I guess it’s not the first nor will it be the last time she’s had to deal with it.

One of the really nice features of Ravenna were the very nice street signs, also done in mosaics. There were several shops selling mosaics ( I bought a fish 😉) and apparently people come and stay for a week doing mosaic classes.

Anyway, that was our first guided tour experience in the bag and we were back onboard early enough to have some downtime before meeting our new friends for dinner in the Compass Rose restaurant.

Smooth sailing overnight and into the morning delivered us to beautiful Dubrovnik at lunch time the on Thursday. Once again the weather defied the forecast and as this was one of the cities I was most keen to visit, I was super excited to see our open air transport for this day…

First stop was just over the The Franjo Tudman Bridge from where we had a wonderful view of our ship. The original bridge design was developed in 1989; however, construction was stopped at the onset of the Croatian War of Independence and it was only completed in 2002.

The view you see above does not encompass the more familiar ( to Game of Thrones fans anyway) old town, so we set off in our tuk tuks for the next photo stop which did not disappoint!

Old Town Dubrovnik

The views from up at Napoleon’s old fortress were amazing and the history very interesting. From here we could see the little village that had been occupied by the Serbians during the war and had a real feel for how close they got to Dubrovnik, it was from here that they shelled the city.

Mortar damage to Napoleons old fortress

 

From here it was an interesting drive down the narrow winding access road alternatively dodging immaculate black Mercedes vans, scooters, motorcycles and taxis on our way to the old town where we were met by our lovely local guide, Marija.

She turned out to have a great sense of humour and her knowledge of and pride in her beautiful city was obvious as she walked us around it’s narrow streets pointing out interesting features as we went.

Cersei’s walk of shame 😉

 

We could have done the Game of Thrones tour this morning but had decided to the more comprehensive tour, we did however see several familiar scenes and caught up with some more GOT facts later from others who took the tour.

We loved this city, could see ourselves coming back for a longer stay in the future but still managed to cram as much as possible into the time we had today. The ship wasn’t due to leave until midnight so we had time for afternoon drinks at the popular (‘secret’) Buza bar that my many hours of research had uncovered!

Buza bar

 

It was everything it was cracked up to be!

Chairs and tables hanging off the cliff with a spectacular view and similar prices 🤣

Drinks with Bob and Barb 😊

 

Russell and I also walked the walls that encompass the city, I think only just over 2 kms but lots of photo stops.

Having by now worked up an appetite we found a lively little backstreet packed with restaurants and had a pleasant dinner before returning to the ship.

Tomorrow it’s Kotor, Montenegro.

 


 

 

 

 

 

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