Monday 9/23 New Day

There was some thunder last night, kind of strange sounding, I suppose because we are surrounded by mountains. We had a little bit of rain but not much; this morning is partly cloudy but quite windy. Maybe it will keep the big tourist boats away. We are going to get prettied up and then go into to town for some breakfast and see what else the day brings.

Had breakfast at the luggage ladies cafe...not as good this time as previously. We hashed over a bunch of options..the gondola up to the top of the mountain, a boat tour of three of the islands and just doing

some more exploring of Dubrovnik. We opted to explore Dubrovnik..did some walking took some pics. Nothing too exciting or unique, except for the old walled city. We did go through a museum. It had lots of old maps and portraits of famous people from Dubrovnik, not one of whom I have ever heard of previously. They had all these old maps from the 15oo's and earlier just sandwiched between a piece of acrylic and a cardboard backing. But, as Shirley said, maybe they were reproductions. There was no climate control in the museum.

From the museum we ate lunch at some place on the waterfront. Nice place but I wasn't all that hungry. Walked around some more and then exited the VERY CROWDED old city and took a taxi up the hill to the little grocery store by the flat and got some essentials for our eat in supper tonight. Cheese, foie gras, tonic, bread and ham made the short list.

After all the controversy regarding the number of steps from the street up to the flat from previous days I counted them this afternoon..133 about 130 too many.

Matilda, who owns this place is a bit of an interloper. Every time we are gone she comes in here for some reason. Today she took out the garbage, unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned up the kitchen a bit. Last night at 12:45am Mr. Matilda rang our door bell and told us to make sure to shut our windows because it might rain. A little too overbearing, not in a bad way but in a bothersome way.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will take the three island boat tour. It leaves at 10:30 and returns at 5:30 should be fun if it is not too windy. It is getting very rainy at the moment, the clouds are

moving in and they are dark. So far, we have had some decent wind gusts but only a few very light showers. The ladies are napping and I have the whole place to myself and it's nice and quiet. I am beginning to wonder if five weeks may have been a bit too long.

My suitcase can not be repaired, at least in my opinion. I am afraid if I do get it back together agin it will come apart, in the airport probably. Tuesday looks like luggage buying day. There is a luggage shop in the old city, so will stop tomorrow and try to find something reasonable. We leave on Wednesday for Kotor, Montenegro.

Got the phones fixed. 8 floors, 2 miles and 5746 steps.