We have begun planning our trip to Croatia for later this year. We had already signed up for a bicycle tour of the Dalmatian Coast, so a big part of this trip is already preplanned, but we intend to embellish the basic tour package a bit. Basically, this eight-day tour begins near Split and then moves south by boat to Dubrovnik. Most, if not all days of this tour feature cycling, but each day’s ride loops back upon itself, so by boat is how we will get from one place to the next. To help us acclimate to the time zone change, we plan on arriving a couple of days early. We have already booked a room at the ballet school that doubles as the tour’s first hotel. Tentatively, in those first two days we plan on visiting the nearby medieval harbor town of Trogir and wander its cobbled streets. Trogir is a UNESCO world heritage site, one of seven scattered along our route south. Another itinerary item is Krka National Park. Its waterfalls look gorgeous.

Then we begin the bicycle tour. Yesterday, we got out on our bikes again for another training ride. Saturday in Forest Park is always a zoo, and this time was no different. Afterwards, we both felt better than after last week’s inaugural ride.

The Croatian cycling tour ends in the Adriatic jewel of Dubrovnik, and we plan on adding on some more time there also. Already a world-famous destination, Dubrovnik added to its fame when the HBO television series Game of Thrones casted it as the fictional city Kings Landing. Needless to say, a GoT themed cottage industry has sprouted there. We will eschew these tourist trap tours, because I already have a map of film locales and the town offers so much else.

That is as far as we have gotten with our travel plans to date. We are notionally considering extending our European travel even further, but so far, we have not gotten there yet. I expect that more YouTube U studying will be in order.