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What do Thalassocracy and Blue Mind have in common?

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  The view from our deck in Orebic and the mountain rising behind us. The clear Adriatic waters from our balcony. Leaving the sounds of the city behind, we found the deafening sound of the almost-silent waves crashing against the shore was music to our ears. It’s Sunday morning. In the distance, there are church bells ringing. Sunday Morning Coming Down is playing in my head. The mental state is magical. The sun is starting to burn down. In the near distance, the ferries work their magic. Moving cars, and people, across the waters of the Adriatic. This is a mood we’d like to stay in. Orebić has welcomed us! The word of the day is Thalassocracy ! It’s hard to imagine that almost 5,000 years ago, the Minoan civilization mastered these waters (c. 27 th – 15 th century BCE.) The same water we're looking at right now. They created a maritime trading empire that stretched through the Mediterranean that included not only the Aegean Sea, but also these beautiful, peaceful ...
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Dubrovnik - The Wall

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A nine-hour time change, three days, and we’ve finally arrived in Dubrovnik. Like the trips before, our goal of staying in the present means finding the present. We took a one-day layover in Madrid and slept for the six hours we had missed on the flight over. We can say we are now in the moment and ready to start our journey.  Chatting with someone yesterday, he said, “you’re on vacay, enjoy.” I said, “we’re in transit.” His reply, “In transit = vacay; In transit in Spain = double vacay.” An empanada, a Tinto de Verano, olives, cheeses, yes, double vacay. Just maybe it’s all in how you look at it. The word of the day is War. This Balkans have probably seen more wars than almost any place on earth. The invaders came from the East, the Ottomans, the Byzantines, and others before them. From the west, the Germans and Romans. From the north, the Visigoths and the Huns. And yet, she persisted. As recently as 1995, during the Homeland War, Croatia’s war of independence from Yugoslavia, ...
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The Journey Continues... Dubrovnik

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  It's 2026 and tax season is over and it's time for a little adventure on the road. We're heading out to Dubrovnik. We'll then make our way up the Dalmatian Coast to visit some islands, the City of Zadar and on to the northernmost part of Croatia. After a little time in Slovenia we'll make our way to Budapest, where we'll spend the last month of our journey. We invite you to come along with us on the journey. Look for the first post around April 25th. For those of you new to the blog, we invite you to look into the archives for some fun stories of adventures past. 
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Porto -

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Porto – The word of the day is Port! The name Porto is derived from the Latin word Portus meaning a sea port which also provided us with the Italian word Porto. Often we would see it as Oporto which is the English version of Porto.   Why does every journey have a last stop? Why is there ever a stop? This is where this one ends. We have decided we could keep on traveling, except… and, there could be no finer city to end this journey than in Porto, Portugal. A beautiful city on the Atlantic with both coastal waters and a river running through it. It’s always the river running through it that reveals a city’s history. Missoula Montana, Wharton Texas and Austin Texas. Pick it. The Douro River’s history has its own story to tell and what a story it is. Almost forever, there have been people that have known how to convert the sugars in grapes into wine. It’s well covered in the biblical stories. There is no other region in the Iberian Peninsula more well known for wines than the...
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