Good-bye to Croatia and Welcome to Italy!

We were scheduled to fly out of Croatia around noon, but we couldn't leave Dubrovnik without taking the iconic "City Wall Walk."

The eight of us were up early to get dropped off at the gate of the Old Town. We bought tickets for the right to walk on top of the walls that encircle the historic city. We started with the steep stairs that lead to the top of those tall walls.

The reviews said to do this activity either early in the morning or late in the evening to avoid the crowds from the cruise ships and the day visitors. We were glad to be here early when the streets below us were pretty bare. The round thing in the bottom right corner is the ancient fountain where we have been filling our water bottles.

From the top of the wall we got the best views of the blue waters of the Adriatic Sea and the forts on the surrounding sea cliffs. 

Many of these ancient sites were made even more famous by becoming the setting for scenes in the popular series, "Game of Thrones."

It's a 2 kilometer walk around the outside of the walls, and the trail goes up and down steps and through arches.

The watch towers were a great place to stop and watch the city now far below us.

We were so blessed to experience these views!

We'll always remember this calm water and these serene views, as we enjoyed our last day in Croatia.

As we walked further, the number of tourists increased as well as the temperature. Venders have strategically placed shops along the wall, estimating where walkers would need something to cool them off. We bought cups of lemon ice cream to give us strength to continue.

The resident cats were guarding the wall. The clothes line in the background reminded us that real people still live inside these ancient walls. From the top we also saw schools and basketball courts and vegetable gardens in backyards.

We had blue skies that made for lovely pictures with more of those red tile roofs. We couldn't help ourselves from taking too many pictures, and we had some great photographers exploring this wall with us.

We took this last picture of the Croatian flag flying high over Dubrovnik. Then we headed for the airport for our short flight to our next destination . . .

Italy! We landed in Naples, and took our first train ride of this adventure. Just like much of our experience in Italy, it was chaotic with eight people running to get onto a crowded train. We stood in the train doorway, and hung on as we were serenaded by two guys playing lively music. Some of the passengers were singing and dancing in the aisles, and we were hanging on for dear life. After the calm of Croatia, we were being welcomed to the chaos of Italy.

We got off the train in the beautiful sea-side city of Sorento. The sun was low in the sky, lighting up the old buildings in downtown Sorento.

We were hungry, so we stopped at a street-side cafe to eat dinner. It turned out to be a great choice. After we ordered, everyone scattered to check out the Italian shops around us. Brian stayed to hold the table, and our table was full of every kind and color of pasta when we returned from shopping. Welcome to Italy!

After enjoying all that pasta, we walked toward the nearest bus stop. We didn't totally understand the bus system in Italy. But we hoped we had purchased the right ticket and we hope we were standing at the right stop for the right bus to take us to the right town where we were spending the night. Have we mentioned the chaos of Italy? That includes the cycles that thread their way through traffic at crazy speeds. Right in front of us, two of those cycles miscalculated and ended up skidding sideways across the road.

There was lots of yelling as they were blaming each other. But one of the drivers had to be taken to the hospital via ambulance. Welcome to Italy!

Our bus finally showed up, and it was almost full. But the eight of us piled on. Mark and Denisa headed to the back with the kids, while Brian and Alexia stood in the middle, trying to wrangle our eight carry-on suitcases that were trying to roll down the aisles.

Mark took a picture of his telephone screen, as we rode the winding roads along the Amalfi coast. It was the craziest bus ride of our lives. The roads were so narrow, and the bus was so long that we went around blind curves honking the horn since we were taking up both lanes. At one time our bus came to a stop. We had met another bus coming from the opposite direction on one of those hairpin curves. Neither one of those buses could continue! Our driver got out, directing traffic and forcing the cars behind the other bus to back up. Finally the other bus could back around the curve to a straight enough spot in the road so we could pass. It added another ten minutes to our ride, but seemed to be a very normal part of the drive to the other passengers. Welcome to Italy!

The sun was setting on the beautiful Amalfi coast, and the local passengers were just ignoring the glorious sunset out their window. Denisa leaned across the aisle to take the coast lit up as the clouds turned pink. We have witnessed another of God's wonders in a very special place.

It was dark by the time we arrived in our little village, and then we had to walk to find our apartment. Italians don't take their soccer lightly, and our host was too busy watching a soccer game to check us in. So he sent his non-English-speaking father to unlock the doors and we were on our own to figure things out. Welcome to Italy!