Japan to Australia via Eastern Europe and stuff - Part 27 - Day 23 – Dubrovnik / Mljet Island...

Another day – more wall to wall coverage of that VT shooting… I can now do an impersonation of that shooter guy (“…your soul tourrched”)… CNN is repetitive. If it was the only thing you ever watched – you probably would only think that there are only 3 stories happening in the world on any one day. At least Sky has 6 stories…

We saw some ads for Montenegro who have been to the “Malaysia Truly Asia” school of advertising. It pretty much reaffirmed that Dubrovnik is just like Montenegro… so we probably didn’t miss out on all that much.

At breakfast – we sit near this guy that looks like Ronnie Corbett – only smaller (probably less than 4 feet). As Dubrovnik is such a small place – we spotted Ronnie yesterday on the bus. Instead of doing the psychic mindgames with the waitresses – I just steal a coffee jug today.

We notice that the WMD course at the hotel has a few American presenters… They all wear nametags with where they work for – just so the terrorists know who to target. (I should register for tax purposes!)

We walk down to the bus stop near the hotel where there is this big bus orgy happening – with five buses parked there with no drivers. We noticed that there was this Learners Driving Academy up the road – there is something scary than a Croat driver – a Croat learner driver…

Instead of going to our fav supermarket (Konzum) – we go to “Tommy Hipermarket” instead at Lupid Bay (it’s hiper baby). Although they probably could have renamed it the “Tommy crappierthanknozum-market).

Just down the road at the Ferry Terminal – we buy some tickets to Mljet on the ferry-cat – which were a bit on the pricey side (150KN return).

I hadn’t been feeling a 100% for the past few days – and the reason why we were going to Mljet was to (push) bike ride… So I wasn’t superkeen to do a bike ride. However I started to perk up a bit after the 1 and a half hour boat ride to Mljet.

Mljet is another place that LP creams it jeans about – calling it the most “seductive” island – although we didn’t really feel very horny being there.

The boat drops you off at a little town called Polace – where Ant and I jointly decided to go and hire a bike as it would take too long to get around the island by foot. One guy was offering 40KN bikes to people – but they looked a little rustic when he started to hand them out to people – so we went to the 50KN woman who’s bikes looked a little better maintained (although they were way too small for both Ant and I). A funny thing about this was that in Australia – normally you’d have to show your drivers licence and credit card details if you were going to hire a bike from Mr Spokes or something – but here – it was like you hand over the money and you get the bike (no ID or credit cards or anything).

We set off on our bike ride from Polace and you hit a giant hill straight after the town. I totally choke and do a big whinge at the top of the hill (I think my sickness wasn’t really helping).

About a 1km and a half or so up the road – you ride past this big boom gate with two girls who were charging 90KN admission to get into the national park. Today was getting pretty expensive (140KN bikes and national park entrance plus 150KN ferry tickets – it was almost as expensive as going to Montenegro (without the tour)). Ant an I have a little grizzle about the prices here.

A reason why the National Park entrance fee is so expensive – is that it includes a boat ride to a Benedictine Monastery … Although the problem with that is the boat leaves at about 12ish – and the ferry from Dubrovnik arrives here about the same time – so most people miss out on it. Guys – it is time to synchronise your timetables better with the ferry from Dubrovnik!

Anyhows – we ride on for a bit further until we get to a giant salt water lake which is really pretty. We find a more “secluded” part of the island and have lunch by the lake (what I mean by lunch is some luke warm pepsi max and mashed up banana sandwiches – only the best). It felt pretty good (just like yesterday) to get out of cities and do a bit of nature or something. Meanwhile – Kodak Moment happy Ant runs out of memory on his camera – so we do a bit of a quick delete of crappy photos off the camera.

Ant seems convinced that we can cycle around the edge of the lake the whole way – so we continue along until we get to a small village – where we discover that we can’t go any further.

I looked like Professor Nerd today. As I was wearing jeans – I needed to put my white socks over the ends of my jeans to stop the jeans catching on the bike spokes. I looked a bit like a “VT target”. Ant took a few pictures for keepsakes.

We trek back around the island to yet another village (which looked a bit more civilised than the other one). Although in some sections of the bike path – it puts the Canberra Lake Burley Griffin track to shames – in other places – you sort of worry about landmines and potholes and such.

During the bike ride – we had to keep a good eye on the time. We had a 3:20pm-sharp departure back at Polace – and if we missed the boat – we would have to stay at the island, wouldn’t get back to Dubrovnik to late the next day, would miss our flight… So missing the boat would be a travel insurance nightmare.

On the way around the island – we see the “infamous” Benedictine Monastery that we had missed the boat to. Although it was like a little castle in the middle of the lake – if we had gone there – we would have been stuck on the mini-island for whole afternoon.

After about 20 mins of further cycling – we reach the end of the road – where you get a scenic view of that first village we saw despite the jebus cross being there.

Our ride back was pretty uneventful. I was sort of dreading going back up that hill – although it wasn’t as steep as before. Despite me making it up the hill successfully – I almost get killed by a suicidal mini-van Croatian driver on the way day. Ant can’t stop taking Professor Nerd photos (no wonder we are always having to burn CDs off the camera all the time – Ant – it is quality not quantity!).

Note to myself – next time I go on a physical activity with my money belt – take it off – because my money belt smelt very BO-y fresh.

Upon return to the bike hire place – we find that all of the bikes are not chained up and unattended… We just drop ours off . Nothing was open at Polace – it was a bit like a ghost town – with everything shut between 11am and 3pm (when all of the tourists are here?!).

Despite us both getting a bit freaked out about missing the boat – we had about 40 mins to kill before the ferry left Polace. I think we both had a good time despite things being a bit pricy. I don’t think I would rate the place as high as LP – but it is pretty… but it would have been better if they had more boat rides to the Monastery.

Ant falls asleep again on the boat trip home (and I take some revenge photos). Ant wakes up almost at the end of the 1 and a half hour boat ride saying – “have we left Mljet yet?” – I reply “about an hour ago”.

When we arrive back at Dubrovnik – we headed to Konzum (don’t want to mess with Tommy no more) to pick up some supplies. At the nearby bus station (where my bus station nemesis was there – waiting for more victims) we find out that there is a 30KN bus ride to the airport (rather than the 30 euro transfer) – so we will do that tomorrow when going to the airport.

We chill out back at the hotel where I get a bit of German MTV fix. They seem to be very much into dating shows at the moment – one of them is called “Date My Mom” where one young suitor dates three mom’s and then gets to decide which daughter he would like to date (despite not seeing them)… as you do. Also – I caught up with a bit of “Flavor of Love” (sorry about all this American spelling – but that is the name of the show) – where Flava Flav got rid of not one, but two women in the one night. He got rid of Smiley who was “still in love with her ex husband” and Hottie – an alleged golddigger who Flava saw on the other TV show “Blind Date” where she was attracted to some guy with a cash flow. I hope that Flava, Smiley and Hottie weren’t their real names.

For dinner – we decide to go back and get some pizza from that restaurant that we had gone to a couple of nights ago. The freaky waiter guy was still there – but there were a fair few more customers than the previous night so he was a little preoccupied. There was this table full of elderly Brits who were drunk and carrying on like Kath n Kim splitting a bill at a Chinese restaurant (you had two dim sims and I had three spring rolls!).

After dinner – we wander around the shopping mall – which we dub as a ghost mall. Everything was shut for the “off season” and would be reopening in May. Talking about Ghost Malls – but we had read in the paper that the world’s biggest shopping mall in China (we wrote about watching it on CNN during our trip to China) was going bankrupt – surprise surprise…!

We turned CNN back on – and it was all about shootings. But to give CNN some credit – it was a different shooting than the one at VT.