Croatia with the Smiths and Alberts

The Smith ladies arrive. Tae finally arrived with Maggie and Nora on Saturday Sept. 20. They missed their connection in Boston and had to stay overnight. They were able to go to the Boston Aquarium and thanks to Andy were able to get a reasonably priced hotel. They arrived safely without further ado after being rerouted through Madrid. After a good night's sleep they dove into seeing the sights. They rounded the wall and its ~1000 steps in record time. I look forward to seeing their hundreds of pictures of cats, birds, salamanders, snails etc. Maggie took 3 pictures of  as a jumper  leaped from the cliff  into the ocean. Unfortunately their camera batteries ran out of charge half-way around the wall.
Yesterday Tae and the girls hired a guide and drove to Split to see the sights especially Diocletian's Palace built in the fourth century. Split is a large old bustling shipbuilding city of 178,000 people in contrast to Dubrovnik with 50,000 whose main industry is tourism.

Mary Jo and Kevin, Mike and I also hired a driver and had a wonderful driver-guide take us to the wine producing Peljesac peninsula. Our first stop was the village of Ston. In the past the village built a great wall in the mountains to protect the city from invaders. Ston is known for its oyster and mussel farms. They evaporate ocean salt water and collect the salt. For the first time in many years, there was no salt harvest this year because of the unaccustomed extreme rainfall. The wet spring and summer has also decreased the tourist trade all over this area.
On Peljasac, we toured 3 wineries, all very different sizes and varying wine types. Marianna had suggested Vinarija Milos, a relatively small family owned vineyard producing 50,000 bottles a year. These were my favorites. The wine is aged partially in oak barrels and then in the bottle. Price of the wine was related to the length of the aging time, the quality of the grape and their ripeness.  
Michael Grgic, our second vintner, emigrated to California where he has a famous winery. Following that success he opened a smaller Croatian winery. I also recommend these Posip and Plavac mali (white and red) wines.
Our third stop at Matusko was very different and the tasting rooms were beautifully individually decorated as underground cellars that seemed to go on forever. One looked like King Arthur's round table with 4 inch thick circle table that would make a great Mah Jongg Awards Dinner venue.

next Mah Jongg banquet venue

lots of atmosphere

Here they produce over 500,000 bottles. Naturally at all stops we (our driver refrained) sampled all of their offerings and purchased a good sampling of many. Too bad none of the wineries make enough to export. Croatia 1 vs. US zip. We'll do our own wine tasting here with Marlene  and Michele if any is left.

Mary Jo and Tae and the girls just stopped in after their day trip to Lokrum,

Tae, Maggie and Nora on Lokrum Island

Maggie and Nora at the Fitness Park on Lockrum

Maggie and Nora will take over blogging at this point.

Hi it's me Maggie, so anyways today we went to Lokrum and we went to the fort. We went down to the dungeon and took a flash photo of it so we could see inside it. It had lawn chairs in it. This morning we ate pancakes, they tasted like scramble eggs. We also went to the dead sea it was weird how the current went in and washed back onto the shore like it was the biggest wave ever. Now I'll hand this over to Nora to type. :)

flash picture of the dungeon with unexpected amenities

Mary Jo and Maggie on Lockrum with Dubrovnik in the distance

Croatia is amazing! I loved what I did for the past few days and their is a ton of ice cream! This trip has been amazing :)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( but we missed are plane flight but we made up for it.)
Nora

Nora on the Pile side of the wall with Fort Lovrejenac in the distance
and the Dubravka restaurant on the right

Thank you to our visiting correspondents. Well done!