24 Jun 2014 Beograd to Dubrovnik

24 Jun 2014 Beograd to Dubrovnik
We were packed and down for breakfast by a little after 7 am.  Another fantastic breakfast.
Checkout time was 11 am.  The plan was to gallivant around after breakfast, returning to checkout at 11 am.  Then, walk or take a bus one stop to the bus plaza to catch a 11:26 am 72 bus to the airport.  Arrive apx 12:15 am in time for our 13:35 flight to Dubrovnik.
So, out after breakfast to walk to the Jewish Cemetery.  Instead of walking north to the town center, or northeast to some of the neighborhoods nearby, we walked southeast 5 or 6 blocks, then northeast.  This took us through some different close-in neighborhoods.  They turned out to be a little newer than what we had seen, including some very nice art deco 5- and 6-story apartment buildings.  Then to the northeast, eventually coming out at Sveti Sava, "the world's biggest Orthodox church, a fact made entirely obvious when looking at the city skyline from a distance or standing under its dome.  The church is built on the site where the Turks apparently burnt relics of St. Sava.  Work on the church interior continues today." (Lonely Planet)  This is the church we had seen at the end of Terazija Boulevard a ways away two days ago.
It is now 8:45 am.  We could use a coffee, a snack, and a bathroom.  We are now walking northwest through neighborhoods.  We find our coffee-bathroom place.
A few blocks further on was a nice market, which commanded our attention for about 15 minutes.  We walked past a charming breakfast and lunch place which, according to the pictures on the wall, served chicken, pastries, and pork.
Across the street was a jewel of a baklava bakery.  Beautiful, but we weren't yet hungry.
Continuing down some small streets, we passed cars parked so tightly to the curb that they are half on the sidewalk (legal, according to painted markings) and are practically touching the property walls.
We came out onto a major intersection.  From here the walk is on a sidewalk on a busy boulevard.  We spotted an exchange bureau and changed a $10 bill.  This gave just a little more than we need to pay the hotel in cash (they would have taken a mix of cash and credit cards), with less than $3 left over.
Another km or so on, there was a big cemetery on the right - Christian.  Vendors were selling flowers, bunches of greens to place on the graves, and all sorts of cemetery memorabilia.
Across the street was a beautifully landscaped park with a memorial to the liberation of Beograd from the Nazis in November 1944 (by the Soviets, with the assistance of the Tito partisans [we think]).  Yugoslavia and Marshall Tito took their modern form not long thereafter. Anyway, really powerful high Soviet for-the-proletariat sculpture and friezes.
Right next door (i.e., further from town) is the Jewish cemetery.  It is in very good shape compared to some of the cemeteries we have seen in Romania.  It is also more recent, and reflects that at one time, there appears to be a good bit of wealth in the Jewish community of Beograd. Some cenotaphs would not be out of place in Buenos Aires. The cemetery also contains a Holocaust memorial, reflecting the damage done to the community from 1941 - 1945.  We spend about 20 minutes here snapping photos. 
It is now just past 10.  A 3 tram will take us from right in front back to the train station and our hotel.  The tram comes by after 5 or 8 minutes.   We use two bus tickets, leaving us with exactly 2 bus tickets.
All is now unfolding according to plan.  After paying the hotel bill and reserving some bills and coins for our foreign money collection, we have 240 dinar left.  We walk out with our packs (which seem to be getting heavier every day), catch a bus one stop (riding black, as they say), and are at the 72 bus stop.  Carol stays with the packs while Mike goes into the market to use up the last bits of money.  150 dinar ($1.75) gets us 8 - 10 oz of raspberries, and the walnut vendor sells us exactly 90 dinar worth of walnuts (about 4 oz).  We now have 0 dinars. 
Soon we are on the bus for the long ride through the suburbs to the Nikolai Tesla Airport.  We realize that we have not ascertained whether we are in terminal 1 or 2, but our worries are lessened when we approach and realize that terminals 1 and 2 are just one building.
We arrive in plenty of time. Farewell to Serbia.
The flight was uneventful, taking a little more than one hour.  We land a little after 3 pm, retrieve our luggage, walk out, purchase tickets on the airport bus (60 kuna for Mike's round trip, 35 kuna for Carol's one way) with the credit card  (5.4 kuna to the dollar). Once again we have 0 kuna.
The 20 km ride to Dubrovnik is beautiful, on a road hugging the Adriatic coast.  Palm trees, lush semi-tropical plants, spectacular views. We can get off either at the old city or the bus terminal, 3 km north.  We get off at the bus station, take out some money from the ATM, put on our bags and walk a few blocks to our pension, Rooms Edna.  It is located several structures in on a small passageway about 20 m in from the portside main road.  We are met by mom (Edna) and daughter, fed some tea, and make ourselves at home in our first-floor room.  For 43.2 euros per night (as much as we paid in Beograd), we get a king-size bed in a room just slightly larger than the bed.  The TV is doesn't work, and the bathroom is a shared room just next door.  Still, we are staying in a good budget location.
We are starting to come to terms with Dubrovnik, which a Swedish couple later told us was expensive even by Swedish standards.  Of course, everything is relative, and someone else said that Dubrovnik was cheap when compared to Nice or Monaco.  However, it is twice as expensive as Romania or Bosnia.
We have arrived hungry. There is a nice restaurant a few hundred meters toward the old city, Gabrielle.  We hop in for a lunch, and are impressed with the local patronage.  Then it is off we go, walking toward town.  We buy 8 bus cards, at 12 kuna ($2.50) each.  They would cost 15 kuna each on the bus.  Later we see a stall selling daily cards, at 30 kuna each, and buy two of them for the next day.  The result is that we will have 6 bus cards left over for when we come back to Dubrovnik at the end of our respective trips.
The walk to the old city follows a cliff along the Adriatic. The road passes by the old Jewish cemetery, which is tightly locked (we never figure out who has the key).  Eventually, we are at the old city.  This is tourist central.  There is a short bridge into the old walled city.  There is a public restroom just outside the walled city, but the price of admission is 5 kuna (95 cents!), easily the most expensive we have seen, and maybe even more expensive than public loos outside Covent Garden in London.  Carol finds a private place surrounded by bushes under the bridge, with hundreds of unsuspecting tourists walking above her.
The old walled city is really SMALL.  Marble underfoot and all around. The map shows 14 streets (really alley staircases climbing several stories to the ramparts) crossing the Stradun (main level walkway).  After about 5 minutes we realize that we have passed all of them, having gone 300 m (1000 ft) from one end of the city to the other.  We have also passed shops shops shops and restaurants restaurants restaurants, each with a multilingual tout or two in front. Most historic sites have entrance fees.
The map shows the synagogue, so we count the streets (really 4 ft wide passageways) as we walk back, and walk in a few meters, and there it is.  The building originally dates from 1580-1583.  It is now a museum.  Admission is 35 kn, or $6US.  Nowadays, there are not enough Jews in Dubrovnik to have a minyan, and the building is used as a synagogue only when a group comes in from Zagreb or from somewhere else for a special purpose.  There is a group with an English-speaking guide, who has traveled with them as they visit Jewish sites in several countries. With their permission, Mike stumbles through a kaddish for his mother, whose yahrzeit is coming up in 2 days. The chance of finding a minyan elsewhere in the following days is too small to pass up the opportunity.
The museum is nothing much special, and the synagogue is rather small (100 people would overwhelm it, it would seem), but it is really old and pretty in a pastel way.  Later we learn that there is an ongoing dispute over whether this building, or a synagogue in Sarajevo (which is now also a museum), is older.  They were both built about the same time. 
We wander around, absorbing the ambience.  A highly recommended restaurant inside the old city just doesn't appeal to us, so we go on.  Night falls, and we take a bus back toward the pension.  We stop at the restaurant where we had lunch, and get a dinner of sardines, mussels, fried zucchini and a beer.  The gentleman at the next table got an octopus salad, so we order that also.  The total comes to close to $50, but we are in Dubrovnik, and this is cheap compared to the same food inside the old city. This was a feast of truly local seafood prepared in a regional manner.
We are back at the pension early. No TV to watch, so to sleep.  Rooms Edna has managed to rent at least one other room, so we will have to share the bathroom, after all.