Medjorgorje-Dubrovnic-Zagreb-Venice-Milan-Lake Como

We spent 2 nights in Medjugorje in the rain! The weather was terrible.  It was so nice when we left Split but as we went south the weather deteriorated .  Medjorgorje is not much of a town. If you blinked going through it you might miss it. The bus dropped us off in the rain and we proceeded to find our hotel only to find out it was over 6 miles away in the city of Citluk.  It was pretty late in the afternoon when we arrived so we had a taxi take us to our hotel. As it turns out it was a very nice hotel, better than we could have gotten in Medjegorije. We went into Medjogoria the next morning for Mass at the English Mass at 10:00 a,m....it was packed.  It seems they have a Mass every hour in a different language.  They had about 13 priest on the altar for Mass.  It seems they are escorting English speaking parishes on Pilgrimages to Medjegorije.. I read that there has been 30 million  pilgrims that have visited so far.. It poured all day and we attempted to walk up to Apparition Hill where the Mary appeared in 1981.  We did not go more that 3 blocks and we were so drenched  we had to go back to our hotel. I did pray for all my special intentions and I definitely did feel a peace about them.

We left Medjegorije in the rain on a  6:00 a.m. bus to Dubrovnik.. We did travel through Mostar on the way to Dubrovnik.  It was terribly bombed in the War from 1991-95. It was quite interesting to see.
Dubrovnik has the most extraordinary walled city which juts out into the clearest, cleanest blue-green waters of the Adriatic. We had the best time here.  We had a beautiful ocean front room on the Adriatic. We walked the whole wall which was over a mile. We ran into our 2 backpacking friends Megan and Christy who had a good looking young man on their arm  from the Ukraine on their way to find a place for lunch.
We ran into the "fabulous five" girls from the US backpacking together.  Dick just had to have his picture taken with them.. Croatia was just a wonderful place to visit!
We flew from Dubrovnik back to Zagreb to get our over night train to Venice and then to travel on to Milan and then on to Lake Como.  What an adventure that was.....wow!  The over night train was something else. The sleeping compartment was as old as Agathe Christy on the Orient Express. It was a rough night.  We did not know it at the time but there must have been security alert ( it was about the time they had that terror alert in London and Dubai)  They kept stopping the train and checking under the train.  We had so many security guards coming on board and checking our passports. At one point at 5:30 a.m. we had Italian Police come on board with dogs checking each compartment.. At one point one of the Security Guards told Dick, "please step into your compartment" and Dick says " it seems I heard that in a German war movie once" The guard gave him this little sly smile. There was not a lot of sleep that night.  It took us 6 trains to get from Zagreb to Lake Como.

Northern Italy is really beautiful! Lake Como is gorgeous! It is surrounded by the Alps and the Dolomites moutains.  It is shaped like an inverted Y with lots of villages around the lake some very famous. There are all sorts of Villas, one you may have seen in Casino Royale and in part of Star Wars, it is called Villa Del Balbianello in the town of Lenno ( see picture attached). We spent one day taking the boat to see all the sights on the lake including town of Bellagio which is called the Pearl of the Lake because of where it is situated.. It takes about 2 hours to get from the town of Como to the end of the lake. They have regular scheduled pickup times at each stop.
We are staying in a very old hotel, the Suisse Metropole built in 1892 and have a lake front room. It is a perfect location!  We went to Mass this morning in the Duomo Catherdral about a block from our hotel which was built from 1397-1756.  It is interesting going to church and not understanding the language.  At breakfast after church, Dick was commenting that he noticed that he was hearing the Priest say" Torre" several times during the sermon.  And then he said, 'you know Mary I think he was talking about Joe Torre the manager of the Dodgers! The priest was explaining that it was not Joe Torre's fault that the Dodgers had such a bad year. He pointed out that it was their lack of pitching and hitting that caused their downfall!  At that point everyone said "Amen". See what I have to put up with!
Hey, I hear the Giant are in the world series.  I can think of a few people that are happy about that! Go Giants!
Tomorrow should be a very interesting day. We are taking the train to Milan for the day to take a tour and then taking the train to Bergamo where our flight leaves for Paris the next day verrrrrry early!  We then get a cab to the main train station in Paris to go to Lourdes!  Two days there and we are off to Spain.  Can you believe we are half way through our trip already!
Happy Halloween to everyone!  By the way they don't celebrate that holiday here!  I have  noticed one thing about Europe..........THEY LOVE AMERICAN MUSIC!