Lokrum

On Sunday, August 21st, we went to the 9:00 mass at the Cathedral.  I seem to remember that there were two people leading hymns, a capella.  Not a large crowd.  They have an English-language mass at 11 a.m., but we decided that we didn’t have time to do that instead, since we had to be out of our apartment.  We had a nice breakfast outside on a square behind the Cathedral, then went back, packed our bags and walked out the Pile Gate to the taxi rank.  We took a taxi (100 kuna, about fifteen dollars), out to the tour hotel, the Valamar Argosy, checked in, left our bags and bought four bus tickets at the gift shop.  The #6 bus route from the Pile Gate ends at a stop across from the Valamar President next door.  We rode back into town, went down the main street, the Stradun, to the other end of the Old Town and, in the old harbor, picked up the ferry to Lokrum Island.

Lokrum is a very pleasant place, a fifteen-minute boat ride from the Old Town, with peacocks, olive trees, a ruined monastery, a botanical garden, an iffy historical connection to Richard the Lionhearted, walking paths and rock “beaches,” where the inhabitants of Dubrovnik can, like the Archduke Maximilian, before he made the mistake of moving from Lokrum to Chapultepec, disport themselves.

We spent a pleasant afternoon there, then returned (again, by ferry and bus) to the Argosy, where we met our Overseas Adventure Travel Tour Leader, Ivana, and the other members of the group: besides us, three men and nine women.  We had a drink together, walked around the hotel complex and, later, had dinner together in the hotel restaurant.