VACATIONS FROM HOME: SAILING AWAY

Friday, June 28, 2019

SAILING AWAY

CAROUSING IN CROATIA

This July your favorite traveling duo is off to Croatia. I’ll warn you it’s a costly trip but we have quite a bit of freebees and mooching going on to make it happen.

DUBROVNIK

Here’s our itinerary. We fly to the walled city of Dubrovnik and stay there for a few days. We then board a luxury cruise ship that will sail us through the Dalmatian Islands for a week. Disembarking in Split we rent a car to travel a few days to see Plitvice Lakes National Park. Then it’s back to Split for a day and then it’s on to Trpanj to stay with a friend whom I worked with at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984.

PLITVICE LAKES

Here’s the freebee.

Our airfare is free, because we signed up for an American Airlines credit card that gave us enough miles to fly to Dubrovnik. American Airlines just started flying into Dubrovnik this June. It’s quite a savings anytime you can get free airfare to Europe in the middle of summer.

Here’s the mooch.

Through Facebook I’ve kept in touch with my friend over all these years and for years he’s been sending me pictures and imploring that I should come visit he and his wife during the summer. So, how could we refuse him?

We haven’t seen each other since I traveled back to Yugoslavia in 1987 after the Frank Sinatra Italian Tour ended and I took three days out to fly into Sarajevo. Lot’s of living and sadness for us both since then, and this will be our time to reconnect.

Here’s the ouch.

The sailing is expensive, but that’s been a bucket list item for me, to sail through the Dalmatian Islands in the Adriatic Sea. It’s through a company called “Unforgettable Croatia”. They operate a small fleet of cruise ships with varying degrees of luxury. We could have gotten down and dirty with a trip, but that would have involved a lot of drunken naked younger folks, so we settled on a wrinkle in time…ahem.

Here’s the wow.

Our ship is the MV Infinity that has just a 38-passenger capacity and we will sail to islands like Mljet, Korcula (where Marco Polo was born), Vis and Hvar. There are many amenities included in our approximately $4,000 sailing adventure like meals with beer and wine included, tours to an oyster farm and a wine tasting, free WIFI, and all port fees are paid. It’s worth it!