This trip is the result of brainstorming with Gwenna and Don Brush, dear friends with whom we traveled to Africa a couple of years ago, and has evolved over the past year thanks to Gwenna's invaluable research and contacts. On September 10 we will meet Gwenna and Don in Zagreb, the northern capital of Croatia and spend several days with a guide who will show us the city and some of the spectacular environs. Then we will fly to Dubrovnik, just about the only place we are going that I had previously heard of. As most know, Dubrovnik is an historic and beautiful city that was part of the former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was dissolved and re-assembled as five different countries, including Croatia, in the early 1990's.
The second week we will board a "gulet," a traditional teak sailboat, and sail along the Croatian coast of the Adriatic which is home to more than a thousand islands. Our son Mark and his wife Martha are flying in and joining us for the week on the boat, for serendipidous reasons which I will tell you about later. The gulet, the Andeo, has a wonderful reputation and I know we will be treated royally by the captain and his two mates.
At the end of the cruise, The Brushes and the younger McQuaids will continue on their way and Tom and I will spend another week driving to Montenegro, another coastal country just south of Croatia which was also part of the former Yugoslavia.
We are packed and counting the hours until we leave tomorrow afternoon.
