Dubrovnik, Croatia Day 3

Dubrovnik, Croatia Day 3

Harry potter was the main event of the day. We were dead set to give it a try, Croatian style. First, I had to go for the morning run to the walled city. This is where the tickets were. From what happened yesterday my plan was to reserve or buy them at 9 am from the front dest of the theater. It was a sweaty, hot, and humid run. When I got there, I was dripping and disgusting. The lady did not take money, but wrote my name down for three tickets and told me to show up an hour early for the show. No problem. The city was chocked full of tourists and tour buses letting off more every second. I guess everyone had the same idea to get there early to beat the heat. It was a lost cause. The heat was already there and the large amount of people was daunting. I got out of there quickly, and ran back to the house.

When I got back, Katherine and Andrew had moved to another room below our previous location. There were new people arriving that had reserved our first place. Since we liked it so much, we wanted to stay another few nights, but just had to move to another room. The family here is extremely nice and the lady of the house is a high school librarian at a seamanship school. She said that the school is about 400 boys and about 4 girls. Ouch!

We got our stuff situated and headed off to the beach again. It was just a 15 minute walk. It has been great to just lay around and relax at times and the beach is such a great place to do so. We might do the same tomorrow if the heat is still there. Watching the strange activities of the beach goers is entertainment enough. We had to then leave to make a Skype appointment with Rich Gaden at 1pm. When they dialed him up, the connection was great and the owner here of the place said hi and thought it was impressive. It was 7 am for him on the East Coast of the USA. After that, it was a brief nap before we headed off to the theater all the way back in the walled old town.

Might I say, anytime you walk on the routes we take, you are overloaded with mopeds. These loud devices are normally driven as fast as possible and passing others is part of some game. Lots of times, the drivers are the best to observe. Some get dressed up. Others might by wearing a bikini. Sometimes there are two men hugging and seem awkward. There might be a kid that looks 12 or a granny that is about to croak. There are nice ones, like the Vespas or beater ones that pipe out blue smoke and only burn oil. Among them are the cabs. These are the most expensive vehicles around. Most are Mercedes and detailed to perfection. It looks like a great way to launder money since the drivers are sitting a lot and don't really try to pick up riders unless you ask. We haven't taken one yet and would rather walk remembering what had happened to us in Greece. The bus is still cheaper for 3 people, but walking is the cheapest and you are not crammed in with a bunch of smelly folks.

On the way to the theater, we got some pizza and golden fizzy beverage. The restaurants have only outside seating and the heat was strong. One pizza that we got was a seafood pizza. They smothered this thing in mussels, crab, and calamari. This was the perfect meal to then walk the 2.5 miles to the city.

When we got there, there were kids all over the place. Some were even wearing Harry Potter shirts and we were by far the oldest people there. We went to the front of the line to grab our reserved tickets. When asked, the lady acted as if we were once again from another planet and said that they were sold out. I expleained our situation, and she went to the back room to get the master map of the seating chart. And of course, we were on it. The lady in the morning had taken care of us. We now had a half hour to kill before they would let us in, so we took another brief walk around the city. We grabbed an ice cream and some post cards. By this time, the dinner folks were out in full force and with the sun setting, there were some cool light effects for people to take pictures.

Now for the theatrical event of the night. We got back with plenty of time to spare and headed up the stairs to the theater. The door was barricaded with one of those seatbelt like straps for people in lines. In what seemed like a flash, a hoard of kids showed up and wandered around the waiting room. They were super excited to see the show and were chatting loudly. Never being in a theater in a foreign country, we had no idea what to expect. I knew that the theater would be small, but since the movie is in 3D, the technology must be there, right? By now, the kids were getting restless and there were no parents in sight, and we started to worry. Our group and one other tried to form a line to enter, but the kids in their masses pushed up to the front of the line and tried to cut in front of us. Mind you, we all had reserved seats, but our minds were remembering the Kotor bus ride. We had reserved tickets on there too. So, I gave a shout out, "take it easy!" as I pushed my arms out and pushed back the stampede of kids. This was the beginning of what the movie would be like.

When we entered the theater, we saw that the room was first class with great seats and quality speakers all around. We were handed our 3D glasses and we sat down. The temp in there was just like everywhere else we have been accustomed to, not quite cool enough. Ok, things can only get better as the show goes on as the kids pour into the room. The room only had seating for about 80 or so and it seems that every kid that came in had a plastic popcorn bag and a Coke in hand. Right at 7pm the movie fired up. The lights went out and the kids began to scream. Literally scream. There were no previews and the crackling of popcorn bags and munching made the quiet mumbling of British English hard to discern. With a bunch of middle school and younger kids in the audience it is as much a social event as a movie viewing. Kids were texting and chatting just like any little unsupervised kid would do. Then, the man behind us to the right yelled out to them to be quiet or something in Croatian. They got quiet for a second and Andrew said out loud, "translation, shut up and watch the movie!" in English. The man replied, "exactly!". The movie went on as kids found some flashlight to play with and the chatting, seat moving, and a little popcorn throwing pursued. The man next to us did not yell out to them again and the movie staff never came in to calm these wonderful souls down. Then came my part. When Voldemort was about to kill Harry Potter the kids were a mess. I stopped watching, leaned towards to the front and sat up a bit yelling, "Could you please be quiet?" with that, one girl said yes and the silence of the movie only let my voice be heard in the entire theater. But, I also heard what was like someone up front laughing, so I said something else immediately after, "Shut your mouth!" I said and with that the kids were quiet and this lasted for the rest of the movie. When others would come up to the front with them, they shushed them and were quiet. These were well off kids by the way, they were dressed in designer clothes and the amount of i phones and electronics that they had was amazing. We take it that they were locals since this is the one working theater in Dubrovnik. Maybe it was just me and I just don't know what happens in a movie theater since I do not normally go. I told myself a while back that I will not see a movie in the theater because of these reasons. If you get a movie on the Internet or on DVD the home theatrical experience, with the killer TV's that we have, provide you with a much better experience. This was more fuel for that decision. I am glad that we saw HP in the theater though. We see only 2 movies in the theater, James Bond and HP. Oh well. It was a cultural experience and the thrill of getting tickets was something special.

There was the long walk back to the apartment, but it didn't matter since we had a lot of HP talk to tend to. Also, the night scene was starting, so the ladies of the night were impressive too. We got back and were tired, so it was an early night's end. Good day. Beach. Food. Movie. Sleep.

Tomorrow, more beach, then it's off to Split, Croatia the next day. 4 hrs on the bus. We will walk the long route to the station and try our luck at getting a ticket. Nothing in hand just yet.