We decided to explore a little from Dubrovnik last week, so we hopped on the city bus and rode about 10 miles down the shoreline to the little town of Cavtat. Cavtat is a little town built on a beautiful peninsula that juts into the Adriatic. Cafes and gift shops line the harbor where we did see three big, expensive-looking yachts tied up with gangplanks down. Obviously, these yacht owners know where to vacation well. There's an old church to peek into while walking around the peninsula and a sweet breeze off the Adriatic to enjoy while walking the couple miles around the peninsula. We stopped at a little café for lunch where I enjoyed octopus salad. This was like a ceviche with vinegary marinated octopus, capers, tomatoes and red onion. Very Mediterranean and yummy. Cory, of course, ate a cheeseburger but he did think the beef was excellent. ;-) After our lunch and walk, we decided to change things up and took the ferry boat back to Dubrovnic.

Relaxing in our apartment that night, around 10:30 pm, we heard several loud booms that at first I thought were gunshots or a car backfiring . Both of us got up and went out to the balcony to see what's up. What a surprise! We saw the most amazing fireworks show that was so close it seemed to be right over our heads. We enjoyed the show and both wondered what prompted that. It wasn't a holiday, although the fireworks show was as good as any I've seen on the 4th of July. I looked it up on the web, of course, and learned that there are international fireworks competitions and a Croatian company, Mirnovec Pirotehnika, is well represented in these competitions. I had no idea fireworks shows were so popular in this part of the world, but they are very impressive.

Enjoy the pics!