Day 1 - Sunday 9/7/14 – Dubrovnik Croatia and boarding the Sea Cloud

The Sea Cloud in full sail

We arrived in Rome at 7:45 and wandered around the terminals until we found our gate to Dubrovnik.  It was a much loser set-up than we are used to.  There were 4 gates in our area, and lines formed at will crossing each other and rather confusing.

The plane to Dubrovnik was delayed getting in which caused us some concern as we were meeting a group that landed only 5 minutes later than we were supposed to.  We finally got on buses to the plane and took off 45 minutes late.  It was only an hour and a half flight to Dubrovnik.  Our luggage made it with us which was a great relief.  One couple on the ship had their luggage lost somewhere around Amsterdam.  They are a nice couple, so that is a sad thing.  The airline is still looking for it, but the Sea Cloud staff has offered to do laundry for them every night, and they will go shopping in Hvar tomorrow.

There were only 6 people waiting on us on the van, and they had only been waiting for under 10 minutes.  We were driven to the Grand Hotel Argentina where we met up with all of the other folks on the trip.  After a half hour to clean up and relax, we all got on a super big bus to take a tour before we boarded the Sea Cloud.

The bus took us to a 300 year old olive mill in the village of Orasac.  The building was a beautiful old building, and an older member of the family showed us the workings of the mill.  The whole olives (70% black and 30% green) pits and all are put into a grinder powered by a pretty old white horse.  Yes, the horse put on a demo!!

Once the olives are a paste, they are put into large circular coconut frond bags and put into the olive press.  All of this is done in the old way and very impressive. 

After the demo, we went out back to tables and were served wine, a salad of home-grown tomatoes, arugula, and olives.  Also served were a plate of cured ham and bacon, goat cheese, and a neat pickled thing called a samphire which I will have to look up.  It was all delicious especially since we really hadn't had anything to eat all day.

Finally we took the bus down and boarded the Sea Cloud.  Our passports were taken so the staff can take care of immigration at all the other countries we enter.  Our room is really tiny with 2 twin beds, a desk, nightstand, beautiful bathroom with gold trim.  The reason our room is so small is because there is a rectangular section of the room finished just like the rest of the room.  We had to ask what it was.  We were finally told it was an escape hatch for the crew down below.  The interior supposedly has a ladder and an ax.  Not sure if we believe that.

After everyone got in their cabins, we had the mandatory safety/orientation meeting on the Lido Deck (bar, sitting area).  We got underway by engine at 5:30.  Everyone kind of did their own thing after that until dinner at 7:30.

It was a casual dress dinner in the formal dining room.  We started off with a mixed green salad with pine nuts, olives and buffalo mozzarella.  Lots of wine flowed freely throughout the meal.  Then we had poached black halibut with tagliatelle and tomato ragout.  Dessert was a raspberry parfait with crispy fluff pastry and raspberry coulis.  We were stuffed.