Tús maith leath na hoibre

Dubrovnik is warm.
We arrived last night a couple of hours behind schedule after the original plane developed technical difficulties and had to be replaced at Dublin airport (I´ve spent far too much time there recently). Our room is in a house that´s about 15 mins walk from the old walled town which is great...well walking in any way as its all downhill (we are surprisingly un-hillfit after San Francisco - well not that surprising I guess for Marina folks). We wandered in this morning and set about circumnavigating the old city walls. The actual old town is a bit smaller than I expected - it took us about 1.5 hours to walk around the outside. From the walls all the way around you get a beautiful vista of terracotta tiled rooves and marble streets. Its pretty full of tourists as you would expect for this time of year and it is seriously hot.....when you head down a little sun filled alley with no breeze, its stifling.
Dotted around the place are these great wells that spout out cold spring water - a welcomed bonus today for sure.
So I know you were wondering about the title - Tús maith leath na hoibre - wells its my Irish saying of the moment- chosen for its ironical relevance to the start of our journey. It means "A good start is half the work". The irony comes from a little hiccup we had the morning (2am) of our departure when I went down the street to check out the ATM card we were planning on using as our main account for travelling. Its a new card for my account and what I quickly, but painfully learnt was that for some reason it does not allow the old PIN (which it is supposed to). So after the card was swallowed, and this fist shaking had ended I had to set the wheels in motion for another card to be issued back in Melbourne. An interesting footnote to this story is that it has a freaky paralell to the last time I went for an extended backpacking trip.... that time I stepped off the plane in Harare, Zim at around 10pm at night, strolled over to get some cash...only for that unfriendly ATM to swallow my card (same account) on the first go. So hopefully its a good omen, albeit an annoying one.
Sorry no photos for posting today, this PC doesnt have a slot for my card, I think Dee and I are off to find a place to chillout in the shade now...and you never know we may even knock back an Ozujsko.

cheers