Our First Cruise - Saturday 15/05/2010 Dubrovnik

Our excitement in seeing Dubrovnik was built up by everyone we mentioned our cruise to telling us what a highlight it was going to be. It wasn’t, we were barely awake when the ship’s tannoy cut across our thoughts, the captain announced that due to 60mph wind we were unable to dock in Dubrovnik and with those winds he was unable to launch his shuttle boats so we were steaming on and had another day at sea. Our timing for Dubrovnik was the shortest on the cruise docking at 8.00am and leaving at 2.30pm, it obviously meant that there was not much leeway in our schedule for the ship to see if things improved.
We are by now seasoned travellers and accustomed to making the best of things so we sulked, long and hard.
We continued our self-inflicted Detox programme with light meals and no alcohol and although the entertainment staff put on extra events there was nothing which attracted us.
Every conversation reinforced the feeling that we had missed out on something special; people were either like us expecting great things due to what they had been told or veterans of Dubrovnik who waxed lyrical about it. We are resolved to catch up with the city that the wind had cheated us of.
In the afternoon we were driven below decks by quite a hard shower and the decks were awash with water all afternoon.
The ship showed the Cup Final in the bar but we went to the cinema instead, watching “Did you hear about the Morgans?” with Hugh Grant playing Hugh Grant, that’s what he does but now there is no reference in the script to explain his obvious English origin. If anyone wants to see Hugh Grant at his best they should stick to the classics, I recommend “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill”. This film however, was a reasonable way to spend ninety minutes out of a day with very little going on. The Cup Final finished 1-0 to Chelsea, winners of the Premiership, over Portsmouth, relegated from the Premiership but for much of that game there was very little going on also.
Julia and I decided that enough was enough and officially ended our sulk at dinner, which we enjoyed, and followed up with the Chapman Brothers in the Marquee who performed songs from the sixties and seventies in the Soul and Motown style.