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!

Does anyone remember Montenegro from your geography class?

We slept well last night, and it felt like we were about over the jet lag caused from flying across seven time zones. So what should we do today--how about explore another country? The private guide picked us up at 8 a.m., and after a bakery stop for breakfast, we were at the border crossing of the country of Montenegro at 9:40. We were staying at the very southern edge of Croatia, so visiting another country was quite easy. Our driver took us on some narrow winding roads to take us through a less-used border crossing that was faster. He explained that it can sometimes take hours in line to cross the border into Montenegro at the main crossing site. But this day we were lucky to be in a short line. We all got our passports stamped and we were visiting our first non-European Union country of the trip.

If Montenegro doesn't sound familiar from your last geography class, it might be that you took that course prior to 2006 when it became a country. Some of us took our last class long before 2006! Our first stop, however, had a history much older than that. We traveled along the Bay of Kotor and made a stop to go to "Our Lady of the Rocks." It took a boat ride to get to a man-made island in the middle of the bay.

On July 22, 1452, some sailors saw an image of the Madonna and Child on a rock in this bay. Taking that as a good omen, they placed rocks at this site whenever they returned from each successful voyage. In addition to these individual rocks, old boats filled with rocks were sunk in this same area. From 1452 until 1650 there were 200 boat-loads of rocks sunk here. All those rocks eventually formed an island big enough to build a church.

We approached this little touristy island in our boat, where the driver promised to pick us up later.

The bay is ringed with mountains, so it was a beautiful place to have our first outing in Montenegro.

"Our Lady of the Rocks" church was built to honor the Madonna and Child that was the inspiration for this island. The church is lovely, and also includes a museum.

We caught Brian peeking through the arch on this very picturesque island.

We were certainly been blessed to experience this little piece of history. Even though we were on a man-made island, we'll count this beautiful region as another time that we got to wander God's wonders.

Our boat captain returned as promised and whisked us past a second private island in the bay.

Montenegro is a new country with an old history and beautiful landscapes.

Our driver then took us to the Old City of Kotor. Still protected by a moat, we entered by walking through the Sea Gate.

We got a picture of all eight of us before we entered the old city. It's hard to keep track of that many people, so this was proof that we all were together when we started exploring Kotor.

Inside, the city is a labyrinth of little walkways encircled by stone buildings. One stop inside was St. Nicholas Cathedral.

Another stop was the Cat Museum. Our driver had explained that it's one of only two cat museums in the world. One of its many mascots was sleeping just outside.

Cats are welcome in these old cities. They keep down the rodent population, and give tourists something else to photograph.

This old city was built at the foot of the mountains, and part of our group decided to tackle the up-hill hike towards the church on the hill. It was close to 100 degrees this afternoon, which proves that this group is a little crazy to start such a strenuous hike.

But when we found out that they charged 15 Euro each to make this scorching hike, we decided to head back downhill. They should be paying us to make such a tough hike!

We split up to explore the old city. The shoppers went one way, the snackers another direction, and the explorers another.

We were glad to have Cole on our "explorer team."

Again, we have a picture to prove that we eventually found all the kids before we left.

Our driver's next stop was a beach town along the sea. But as we passed the brand new cable car on our drive, someone yelled, "Stop!" We found out that this family enjoys a good cable car, and this looked like a great one. Our driver made a u-turn, and in minutes we were on our way up Mt. Lovecef.

We took pictures of both sides of the cable car as we made the 12-minute ride to the top.

It was a steep ride, and we could see the Bay of Kotor and the Old City far below from this aerial view.

We were literally higher than the clouds as we went to the top of the Mount Lovecef.

After sweating in 100-degree heat earlier today, it was noticeably cooler at the top of the mountain. To celebrate the cooler temperature we took pictures of us swinging above the clouds.

One of the main reasons to take this long cable car ride was to get to the alpine coaster at the top. 

They showed us pictures of it at the bottom, and we couldn't wait to try it once we arrived to the top.

The track was literally hanging on to the side of the mountain . . .

and at times it felt like we were flying off the top before the track bent around the corner just in time.

We had seven cars of happy Engelmans riding the alpine coaster on top of Mount Lovecef.

It was so much fun that we had to ride it twice!

The alpine coaster is new, as is everything else at the top of the mountain. We checked out the new juice bar and the doorway to the clouds on top.

Our unplanned cable car stop meant that we didn't go to the beach in Montenegro. But we have lots of beach time planned this trip. So our next stop was loading our van onto the ferry that crosses the bay of Kotor. We're adding this as another mode of transportation to our long list, and we're only on the second day of this trip.

We've already traveled on planes, cars, jet skis, motor boat, alpine coaster, and two cable cars. Now we add a ferry ride with delightful views of the fjords of Kotor Bay in the new-to-us country of Montenegro. We've wandered God's wonders once again. It was a great second day in Europe exploring a country that wasn't even on the map the last time we took a geography class!