The Adventures of Philip

Before I talk about our adventure to Lokrum, I want to touch on what we did yesterday.

After our lunch (our group goes together everyday after class), Ivana took us to the Maritime Museum in Dubrovnik.

We learned about the importance of shipping in the history of the city, and a history of the ships Dubrovnik has housed over it's history.

I really enjoyed the old maps throughout the museum, specifically the variety of languages used on various maps/documents.

The museum was overall very interesting, but it was the cathedral we visited afterwards that blew my mind.

The cathedral is built on the cite of an old church, which was built on the foundation of an even older church (both were discovered during an archeological dig).

Within the cathedral we visited the treasury, which contained beautiful reliquaries (containers for relics).

The relics are generally bones of, or items owned by saints.

The treasury contained bones of Dubrovnik's patron saint (Saint Blaise), a piece of THE crucifix (which has stood up to scientific testing), and many other relics.

The reliquaries were adorned with gold and silver, all designed beautifully, and usually carry symbolic meaning.

Today we traveled to the Lokrum (an island off the coast of Dubrovnik).

The island is the home to a botanical garden, peacocks, beaches (with cliffs - I jumped), an old fortress, an old monastery, and the occasional sea urchin.

Brave!

HUGE!

Hiking these cliffs in my Birkenstocks was truly something...

Old fortress.

View from atop the Lokrum.

A boy reading on top of the fortress... I was envious of his spot!

Cyprus path leading to the beach. I wish we would have taken this easy route to climb the mountain... but alas... haha.

The yachts here are spectacular!

Momma and her babies.

I wanted a feather, but I figured peacock plucking is discouraged!

I jumped from the highest point! It was about twice the height of the trestle in Madrid.

Just as I jumped!

I found American Ketchup... bliss.

I haven't posted in a few days! Oops!

It has been VERY busy these past few days... that is the understatement of the year.

Between class, meals, homework, adventuring, and sleeping... speaking of sleep (ZzzZzzz).

It's been determined that I was a Croat in my past life!

Michael (my professor), and his cousin Ivana (our friend/tour guide) were talking about something language related in Croatian (I speak no Croatian), and I rudely interrupted to ask a question about language education in Croatian schools, WHICH was so relevant to what they were talking about that both Michael, and Ivana looked completely puzzled.

They both thought for a second that they must have been talking English, because there is no logical reason that I understood what they were saying at all, especially enough to question them about the exact subject they were speaking about.

Also, today in class I pronounced "Ustasa" more like "Ustache" (a Croatian word relevant to our studies) in a way I thought was completely ridiculous, but in fact it was the plural version of the word I was pronouncing. I had never seen or heard the word before.

Today we were planning on going to Lokrum island, right of the coast of Dubrovnik, but strange wind patterns have created very large waves on the Adriatic, so we have rescheduled the island trip to Thursday.

Michael told us the beach we've been going to should be safe, so Emily, Kelsey, Ethan and I went to go for a swim. The waves were sometimes taller than me, so the girls chickened out. I took my floaty in, and Ethan and I rode the waves! SO fun, well... until Ethan go ANOTHER urchin in his foot, but luckily not nearly as badly as his first experience with those prickly bastards!

Below I'll just give a brief explanation of various photos I've taken throughout the past few days!

Much smaller waves than the ones we experienced today!

Port from the city walls.

Jewish headstone recycled into the wall of the city. Apparently Dubrovnik was very tolerant of the Jews throughout history, but we haven't discussed that much. I'll update everyone when I learn more about it!

Dubrovnik from the wall.

Emily!

If you look to the right (the raised area Emily has her hand on), you'll see what once served as a freshwater aqueduct for the city!

This fortress is part of the wall complex. The forts evolved over time to become more protective against the weapons of the day. The round shape of the forts gave them structural strength against potential cannon fire.