Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dubrovnik is a city where you don't really have to try to take good photographs. Almost every shot seems to produce National Geographic caliber results (not an endorsement of National Geographic). We stayed a 20 minute walk away from the old city, with a lovely woman named Mladenka who offered us a glorious array of pretzels and cookies when we arrived. She was also brewing many fine rakijas on her porch which we declined to sample, preferring to keep our wits about us at least for the afternoon.

Inside the city, we ate pizza and drank beer at outside tables lined up along the shining white stone streets. We took a stroll around the magnificent city walls in the evening (after the throngs of people and the sun both relented considerably) which turned out to be the best time for seeing the city's amazing colors - white stone and red tiled roofs. At one point, a huge, old wooden pirate ship came sailing out across the sea. At dusk, Dubrovnik's proud legions of stray cats began to appear, ducking in and out of shadows and crevices, leaping from walls.

Dubrovnik was mysteriously shelled during the war here, which no one understands given the city's general strategic irrelevance. Perhaps it was part of the effort that warring countries sometimes make to demoralize people by wrecking each other's cultural institutions. If you look at the roofs, you can see how local craftspeople have restored them with newer red tiles .

We left Dubrovnik on a bus that hugged the coastline for a while before heading inland across the hills for Bosnia. . .