Today we had a final morning to explore the Dubrovnik area before heading north to meet up with Rowan. Unlike our previous two days, the weather was clear and sunny — a perfect day to visit Lokrum Island just off the coast. Once the personal property of Archduke Maximilian of Austria-Hungary, the island is now set aside as a tree preserve. As a result, the hiking trails on the island are marked every hundred meters or so by a blue hydrant standing ready just in case of fire.

Besides clear views of the city itself and southeast along the coastline, the island boasts a military installation at its highest point, plus the ruins of a former monastery. Its inhabitants include a range of bird life, the largest of which are a flock of peafowl that must be a relic of the onetime royal occupation.

The rocky coastline includes a number of unusual rock formations, and towards the southern tip is an enclosed lagoon entirely separate from the ocean, yet connected to it via some sort of subterranean plumbing system. Normally it is perfectly calm, but today the waves were active enough that the surface of the pool also rose and fell in time with the swells of the open sea.

After seeing all that Lokrum had to offer, we made our way back to Dubrovnik for a quick lunch before catching the airport bus. We had a few more moments to explore the maze of alleyways in the city and a few more of its hidden secrets, like the tiny door in the wall that opens onto a cliffside bar.

For reasons not worth relating here, the last part of our day involved a somewhat convoluted sequence of travel: bus to airport, hopper flight from Dubrovnik to Zagreb, rental car at the airport, then a 300km drive to Zadar. The highway passed through some beautiful mountainous terrain, and featured a series of long tunnels, one more than 5km. All the travel was worth it in the end, as we reached the apartment where we will stay tonight, and were greeted there by Rowan, who is on break this week from their study abroad program. Reunited at last!