CROATIA TRIP - DAY 23 - TRAVEL

Today is travel day. Janja makes us a special breakfast, we take photographs, zip up our suitcases, and sadly leave our sweet Dubrovnik home.

We booked passage on the Jadrolinja ferry from Dubrovnik all the way up the Dalmatian Coast to Rijeka, a 21 hour trip.

The Jadrolinja is very nice, and entirely different from any of our other nautical experiences. We have a cabin to sleep in, but spend all our time on the deck as we cruise up the coast. We stop in Hvar, Korcula and Split, destinations of our Arburat trip, but this time we arrive as a big cruise liner. Almost everyone spends time on deck (and those who don't have cabins must stay on the deck), so there is plenty of time for people watching, chatting with strangers and taking photos.

I can't help thinking about the last time I took this trip on the Jadrolinja, in 1990, and we hit a tropical storm in the middle of the night, that rocked our boat despite its size, so that water was splashing all over the deck, people and furniture were thrown from one side to another, all the while the rain was drenching us all. On this trip I was a deck passenger, so I managed by finding bench that was built into the ship and holding on for dear life.

Then, as quickly as the storm came it passed. And by the time we arrived in Rijeka the sun was shining and the water was still.