HERE AND THERE

We'll be visiting two cities in Croatia over two days, Dubrovnik and Split. But one at a time. Our local guide Maria told us that Croatia is a small but beautiful country. Small it may be, but it's much bigger than Montenegro, our last port. Croatia has a population of 3.6 million people (six times more than Montenegro) and more than 1200 islands. Another destination for nautical tourism? Absolu-toot-ly. We disembarked in Dubrovnik and could see the old walled city. Any Game

From the boot of Italy we've sailed east across the Adriatic Sea, ignored Albania and docked in the Bay of Kotor, Montenegro. I've never been to the Balkans before. Much of my knowledge of this part of the world comes from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, when the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia broke up into six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and North Macedonia. We've sailed into some beautiful places on our various cruises, but the

And we're back in Italy! On the heel of the Italian boot! This is where the Adriatic Sea meets the Ionian Sea. Brindisi is in the region of Puglia (or Apulia). Couldn't resist this glorious map below. c.1941 Puglia, Apulia, Italia, Italy Pictorial Map by Prof. G. De Agostini, Artist Nicouline, Vsevolod Petrovic Puglia has a distinct culture within Italy. People were living here more than 100,000 years ago; in the Bronze Age, this was the first 'industrial' area on the contine

After our grey day in Valletta, our day in Kefalonia has been bright blue! Yamas! We are so excited to be back on a Greek island, and a new one (to us) at that. When we visited the Greek islands in September 2023, we were in the Aegean Sea east of the Greek mainland. Now we are in the Ionian Sea, on the west coast of Greece, closer to Italy than Turkiye. Kefalonia is one of the seven (or nine, no one seems sure) Ionian islands. Corfu is one of them. Gerald Durrell's books abo