Simmering in Dubrovnik – some half-baked travel tips cooked in a story

If you have only one day in Dubrovnik, Croatia and you need to lose weight, plan to walk the top perimeter of the medieval city wall. Seat of the renaissance Republic of Ragusa, Dubrovnik is shaped like a huge, tilted shallow pan, south-facing to capture the maximum intensity of the sun. In summer the wall is the narrow rim of a simmering cauldron.

Our only navigation aid was Tom's Port Guide to Dubrovnik, one of a series of superb amateur guidebooks that helped us throughout our holiday. If you are looking specifically for useful advice and verifiable facts, I advise you to stop reading this immediately and go there. We entered the old town through the western, Pile gate (Vrata od Pila), one of a handful of ingresses to the city. Busking minstrels dressed for a renaissance faire put people in a medieval mood at the entrance to the old town. Happily, some other kind tourists subsidized the performance. It's a bit like public TV that way.

At the entrance to the Pile Gate. Saint Blaise is watching over us.

It was recommended we take the walk in the morning, before it became too hot. Apparently, 9 o'clock am is already afternoon in August. I was soaking wet midway through the first set of stairs. We circumnavigated the old city for almost two hours in the heat. The city circumference is unofficially 1.2 miles, but when you unzip the twisting stairs and wrinkles like a harmonica, I figure it's about 26.2, so we made time worthy of a Kenyan.

Three Sweaty Men and a Princess

Ruby Princess at the port of Kuşadası, Turkey.

When our older two boys began to take interest in the world at large, my wife and I devised a plan for special travel experience with each of our sons individually. Stacey takes the boy on a special mother and son trip when he reaches age ten, and I follow with an adventure of our own when he is fourteen. The personalized itinerary is tailored to each son's specific interests at the time. We've been blessed so far to have the financial means to travel internationally, but the most important takeaway isn't the destination. It is a week or so for my wife or I to spend quality time with a son and build a lifetime of memories. Hopefully the boys learn something without suspecting we're trying to educate them.

My oldest boy Thomas spent a week on Kangaroo Island, South Australia with his mother several years ago. He has long been interested in Ancient Rome and Greece, at least as much as a fourteen-year-old can be, and for his father-son trip last August (2013) we settled on a Princess cruise of the eastern Mediterranean with bookend visits to Venice and Rome. My father became aware of our plans that spring, and Thomas was OK with a stowaway. Dad has always wanted to travel in retirement, and he was happy to oblige my prerequisite to center the trip around Thomas' interests in antiquity and need to do our own thing, so we made a natural team. Dad's only request was to dip his toes in the Adriatic.

Then we three settled back while Stacey made all the arrangements for us, knowing that if it was left to me we wouldn't get beyond my driveway. An organized wife is another blessing that I don't take for granted. We'd be travelling between points of interest in style and comfort. But it was apparent we'd see a lot of ruins, we'd do a lot of walking, and it would be very hot.

Over the next several weeks I'll sketch my perceptions of three generations of American men sweating across the Adriatic, Ionian and Aegean seas by boat between Italy, Croatia, Turkey and the Greek Islands.

One of my favorite pictures from the trip. Thomas (l), me and Joseph Orobona (r). We're on the east (back) side of the Parthenon, at the Acropolis in Athens.