The Miracle of the Luggage


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Europe » Croatia » Dalmatia » Dubrovnik
September 1st 2016
Published: June 12th 2017
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We say a ceremonial goodbye to our clothes as we close our suitcases. They didn't manage to come with us when we had one hour connections on two previous flights, and today the connection's only 45 minutes. I hope they enjoy their time in Athens; we'll miss them. Two Australian couples at breakfast spend the entire meal complaining about how bad Athens airport is. If I wasn't sure before about our clothes staying there, I am now. We haven't heard anyone say a nice word about Athens in all the time that we've been in Greece. Greek people in particular don't seem to like their capital very much; I get the impression they wish it was someone else's capital.

I inform the receptionist at checkout that she hasn't charged us for any of the four breakfasts I've had while we've been here. She tells me not to worry about it, and the bill remains unaltered. They seem to have a very strange approach to charging for things here in Mykonos. They extort it from you for worthless services, such as driving you further away from where you need to be than when you started, but then don't charge you at all for things that they're entitled to, such as lying on sun lounges and eating breakfast. I suppose this is all OK as long as you come out roughly even in the end. The receptionist tells me that our hotel is one of the few in Mykonos that stays open all year round. Apparently the only people who come here in winter are Greek businessmen, and they usually only stay for one or two nights. She says it occasionally snows here, which seems scarcely believable.

The airport's very cute cat is waiting for us outside the terminal door, so we let it in and it takes up residence on my lap. I think that all airports should have a resident cat. They could help anxious fliers to relax. I was hoping that airport cats might be less fickle than their non-avion cousins, but apparently not. It rapidly loses interest in me when the person sitting next to me offers it some food.

We hear an announcement that a flight to Tel Aviv is leaving, so we look out for Uri and Baby Doll. I must remember not to call him Uri if I see him. On the very outside chance that he's read our blog, this could be very detrimental to my health. A bit later we hear a now very urgent announcement for the two remaining passengers to board the Tel Aviv flight. Issy says she's sure that this must be Uri and Baby Doll, and if the flight hasn't taken off yet it can only be because Uri owns the airline.

It's hard not to overhear a very angry lady yelling loudly at two women behind the counter at the information window. It seems that the airline lost her luggage nearly a week ago and she still hasn't got it back. She says that she now has no clothes to wear and no money to buy any more. The subjects of her ire don't seem to be particularly sympathetic to her plight. Issy says that she'd be fairly angry too if this happened to us. I worry that it will happen to us, maybe even today. There are lots of places that our luggage could go to from Athens, and only one of them is where we're going.

Our flight is late leaving, and I've now abandoned all hope of our luggage making our connection to Dubrovnik. I'm not sure we'll make it. It seems that there are a lot of other people on our flight concerned about the same thing. We land in Athens. As Murphy's Law would have it, the gate we need to get to is at the opposite end of the terminal, it's now ten minutes until our flight is supposed to take off, and we still need to go through passport control and security. We sprint. The security people take a particular interest in Issy, and it seems that she'll need to be screened again, this time more carefully. Murphy's Law's having a day out today; our flight's supposed to have left by now. We dive through the plane door as it's being closed. I think that's more than enough excitement for one day.

We land in Dubrovnik and wait for our luggage, with no expectation that it will turn up. It emerges onto the carousel, and I get more than a few strange looks as I do a small jig in the middle of the terminal in appreciation of this miracle.

The owner of our apartment is waiting at the terminal to pick us up. He tells us his name twice, but after repeating it back to him incorrectly both times he tells us that we can just call him Johnny. The drive into Dubrovnik follows the spectacular steep, rugged and rocky coast, and is a far cry from the desolate industrial wastelands that most roads to airports seem to go through. We ask Johnny if he's had many Australians stay in his apartments, and he responds that he gets people from all over the world. He tells us that he picked up a Japanese couple from the airport recently who'd booked an apartment for two nights. They'd apparently flown to Dubrovnik directly from Japan. When he asked them where they were going next they told him that they were going straight back to Japan. They must have been really wanted to visit Dubrovnik. Our modern apartment sits high on the hill and has a balcony with excellent views over the old town.

One of the main reasons we were looking forward to coming to Dubrovnik is that my two cousins from the UK, Sally and Barbie, are coming here to spend a few days with us. They arrived this morning, and we've arranged to meet up at a cafe down near the old town. We allow plenty of time to get down the long steep hill, or at least we thought we had, but we can't work out how to get out of the apartment complex. We came in through the front gate in Johnny's car, but it looks like you need a remote control to get this to open. We stumble across another gate in the very back corner, but our key doesn't seem to fit any of the locks. After much desperate jiggling we manage to force it open, but we're now not at all sure how we're going to get back in again later. I suppose we could climb over the fence, but I'm sure we'll then get arrested if anyone sees us. I hope the Dubrovnik jail's nice. We're very pleased to see my cousins. My Auntie Beth, who I was very fond of, passed away in the UK a few months ago, and we haven't seen them since then.

Sign boards near the old town's main gate main show pictures and descriptions of the damage it suffered during the Balkans War in the 1990s, and it's clear that many of the old buildings were either destroyed or badly damaged. The main street, or Stradun, is paved with shiny cobbles and lined with spectacular old buildings, many of which have presumably been reconstructed since the war. There's a changing of the guard in progress and the participants are all decked out in colourful traditional costumes.

We choose a restaurant that was highly recommended by the owner of Sally and Barbie's apartment. We decide that he must be a part owner; the food's ordinary and the service is terrible. We ask three times for a bottle of tap water and wait for half an hour to get it. Three of our four main courses come out, but it seems that our beloved waiter forgot to tell the kitchen about Issy. Her meal finally emerges long after the rest of us have finished. We struggle to attract the waiter's attention to get the bill, before giving up and starting to walk out. He suddenly becomes very interested; I think he's expecting a tip. He's going to be disappointed; he should be tipping us.

We trudge wearily back up the 351 steps to the apartment. We try our room key in all the gates in the fence, but without luck. We then try using it as a swipe to open the front gate, but no success there either. I'm dispatched to search for other gates, but this too proves fruitless. The road's very busy with both cars and pedestrians, so I'm not sure we're going to sleep too well lying on the footpath. Issy then notices a small pedestrian gate carefully camouflaged within the main front gate, well at least I think it's carefully camouflaged. Issy appears not to share my view; she says it's really obvious, and points out the steps leading to it. I think I might have preferred sleeping on the footpath to having to live this down.

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