Christmas Eve

This morning we did a steep descent hike up to the mountain and fort which look down over Dubrovnik. At the end of each of the 14 switchbacks on the track was a plaque for the Stations of the Cross, which was a very convenient way of knowing how far we had left to go!

Unfortunately a bit of cloud cover came in over the horizon out to sea during our climb, but the views were great anyway.

Christmas Eve is a big deal, and there was a cacophony of sound reaching us as we hoked. We could hear music coming from a concert in the old town, canons being intermittently fired, with one round having 20 shots fired, intermingled with church bells. We could also see loads of people in the main square.

On our descent we headed into the main square, but since we were in our walking gear and all the locals looked dressed as though they were attending the fanciest wedding they'd ever been invited to, we felt very out of place and as Craig put it "like we turned up at a party we hadn't been invited to". The square was packed, so we grabbed some food from the bakery and headed towards home.

We have cracked open the butterfly jigsaw and the edge is almost impossible. As we were doing that we had a knock at the door and Robert, the son of Ari the owner dropped by with a plate of various homemade cakes his mother had made. Robbie, who is only 19 and just started uni 3 months ago, was up for a chat and stayed for ages. I think I forgot to mention that Ari had dropped in the night before with two bottles of wine for us too.

To get to the start of the track up to the lookout we had to walk along the edge of a road which is the main highway going south through Dubrovnik. We moved to the other side of the guard rail favouring falling down the hill over being run over by a car. Unfortunately this caused Craig to snag his jeans on the guardrail and rip a 30cm hole down the side seam. So he spent several hours tonight starting sewing them back together, necessary because he only has two pairs of jeans with him.Okumaya devam et