Dubrovnik - Bosnia - Tučepi

We said a fond farewell to Dubrovnik today - it is a place that I do hope to come back to one day - with more time to explore and swim and relax.

The girls on the window-sill of our apartment...

The view toward the old city in the morning.

After we picked up our hire car we took off up the coast of Croatia, through some gorgeous scenery, with barren, imposing mountains on one side and the crystal blue Aegean sea on the other.

Shane did a great job remembering to drive on the 'right' side of the road...

We had to cross through Bosnia (as Croatia mainland is split for a brief section by Bosnia) – it was no trouble though as we had been given a special ‘green pass’ to get us through the border without any hassle.

The border crossing to Bosnia

We ended up at our next stop early in the afternoon. We are staying in a town called Tučepi, which is part of the ‘Dalmatian Riveria’. It too, is a beautiful part of the world and our ‘home’ for the next 3 days is right on the water with views across to the Croatian islands of Hvar and Brac (which we will be staying on for a week after our time in Tučepi.

The view from our apartment - pretty hard to take really

The ‘beach’ at Tučepi is VERY crowded. I am not sure that many more people could have squeezed onto the pebble beach (not a speck of sand to be seen).  However the water is clear and warm and once you work up the courage to cross the deadly pebbles, it is fabulously refreshing!

 After Dubrovnik and the beach there (which was probably 50% pebbles and 50% sand) we thought we could handle the pebble-dance that you need to do to get into and out of the water ( the prime spots right near the water are always taken first – so you don’t have to walk so far over the pebbles to reach your towel). But Tučepi beach has done us in after only an afternoon and we have all now bought a pair of beach shoes to deal with the pebbles – apart from Eloise who insists that the shoes are not pretty enough (even the pink ones) so refuses to get any…..we will see what she says this time tomorrow.

We even went out and bought an inflatable li-lo bed thingy….so we truly look like the rest of the European tourists here (apart from our sun-shirts!). They have paddle-boat-type thingys with a slippery slide attached that you can rent and paddle out into the sea and then go down the slide into the water…we will give this a ‘road-test’ tomorrow.

The li-lo sailors

The 'sailors' heading out to sea

We had dinner tonight as the sun was setting behind the island of Brac, at one of the cute little restaurants that lie right on the beach. There is a little road that runs right along the beach and is filled with resturants, bars and shops….and we also discovered that gelatos here are even cheaper than Dubrovnik – only 6Kuna (about $1)….it is truly paradise!!!!