I have been reading this blog, they provide a lot of useful information for Dubrovnik. Here are the things I found particularly useful:
-cell phone
-cable car
-navigation
-packing list
-water: it's safe to drink tap water croatia especially in Dubrovnik where they have one of world's cleanest natural water source, don't drink bottle water if you can avoid it, save your money and save the planet.
And the last and most importantly, gelato!!!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Where we're at...
It's been a while since we posted anything and things are now coming down to the wire.
I wanted to get an idea of where people are at so that we can be a bit organized.... after some discussion we have as groups of people:
From Vancouver:
-Michael
I wanted to get an idea of where people are at so that we can be a bit organized.... after some discussion we have as groups of people:
From Vancouver:
- Alice & Michael (yay)
- Deb & Andre
- Cynthia
- John
- Conny
- Stephanie
- Kathy & Andy
- Laura
- Mom (Colleen)
- Donald
- Dad (other Donald)
- Greg & Jen
- Paul & Ming-Ju
- Mom (Annie)
- Joanne Lin
- Sam Collins
-Michael
Friday, July 22, 2011
Wedding Registry
Originally, we didn't want to have a wedding registry, due to the fact people would be spending a lot of money to attend our wedding already. However, some family and friends who can't make it to the wedding have strongly expressed that they would love to somehow be involved in this, for example, giving us a gift. That's why we finally created a wedding registry. Since we really don't need anymore things at home, we made a honeymoon fund registry. We both really enjoy traveling, this would be the second best gift you can give us (best gift being your company at the wedding). Please do not feel any obligation to give us gift, we are just happy to have your blessing.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Cheap Accommodation Options
We have been so busy recently that we haven't had a chance to update our blog. As Michael promised (he promised, but I am writing the post, you know who the slacker is :P ), we would provide our guests more accommodation information based on people's requirements. Based on the response I gathered from people, it seems like the only critical concern is to price. So to find cheap accommodations, here are the possible options:
1. Share Accommodations: Some guests are interested in sharing accommodations with other guests, if the group is big enough (6 to 9) it is possible to share a nice place for under 30 Euro per night per person. For example, here. Or a smaller group (3 to 6) it is also possible to do under 30 Euro as well, here. As far as I am aware, only our families have sorted out their accommodations so far. For the following groups, I am wondering if anyone of you would like to share accommodations with other group ( I indicated the number of people in each group, so you can consider if it's possible to share with another group):
Group 1: Andre, Deb, Cyn, John
Group 2: Steph, Sam
Group 3: Greg, Jen
Group 4: Conny
Anyway, contact us if you have any interest in sharing, we will help you contact other groups.
2. Search for accommodtions outside old town:
-walking distance to oldtown: for exmple this one. It's only 30 Euro per head per night.
-Lapad: accommodations in this area is a lot cheaper, for example, here. It is about 10 to 20 mins bus ride to old town. There is some transportation information for Lapad.
3. There are some special offers going on at this website. But not all of these are the best saving options, again, it really depends on what are important requirements for you (fanciness of the place, location, and number of stairs??)
I did all the search on Dubrovnik Apartment Source, because their search engine is so far the most useful one. You can easily select your location, and price requirements for your search. As Michael mentioned in the previous post, there are a lot of same postings but on different websites. I found Dubrovnik Apartment Source covers a wide range of variaty plus their search engine is easy to use that's why I recommend it.
Please contact us if you have any questions, we will try our best to help. Looking forward to seeing you all in September!
1. Share Accommodations: Some guests are interested in sharing accommodations with other guests, if the group is big enough (6 to 9) it is possible to share a nice place for under 30 Euro per night per person. For example, here. Or a smaller group (3 to 6) it is also possible to do under 30 Euro as well, here. As far as I am aware, only our families have sorted out their accommodations so far. For the following groups, I am wondering if anyone of you would like to share accommodations with other group ( I indicated the number of people in each group, so you can consider if it's possible to share with another group):
Group 1: Andre, Deb, Cyn, John
Group 2: Steph, Sam
Group 3: Greg, Jen
Group 4: Conny
Anyway, contact us if you have any interest in sharing, we will help you contact other groups.
2. Search for accommodtions outside old town:
-walking distance to oldtown: for exmple this one. It's only 30 Euro per head per night.
-Lapad: accommodations in this area is a lot cheaper, for example, here. It is about 10 to 20 mins bus ride to old town. There is some transportation information for Lapad.
3. There are some special offers going on at this website. But not all of these are the best saving options, again, it really depends on what are important requirements for you (fanciness of the place, location, and number of stairs??)
I did all the search on Dubrovnik Apartment Source, because their search engine is so far the most useful one. You can easily select your location, and price requirements for your search. As Michael mentioned in the previous post, there are a lot of same postings but on different websites. I found Dubrovnik Apartment Source covers a wide range of variaty plus their search engine is easy to use that's why I recommend it.
Please contact us if you have any questions, we will try our best to help. Looking forward to seeing you all in September!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Flying to Dubrovnik
Alice's brother has been doing a bit of looking for flights into Dubrovnik in the last week or so and he's starting to find it difficult to get flights.
For those of you still sitting and looking at flights, I'd strongly encourage starting to look more actively at getting tickets. The problem isn't so much if it's possible to get a trip all the way, it's a question of whether you want to have huge layovers or pay vastly more money.
For those of you still sitting and looking at flights, I'd strongly encourage starting to look more actively at getting tickets. The problem isn't so much if it's possible to get a trip all the way, it's a question of whether you want to have huge layovers or pay vastly more money.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Accomodation Overview
I promised to post something today to give people an idea of accommodation options. I had initially planned a single posting on this. Hopefully no one is upset that this ends up being much longer and multiple posts. Sorry in advance for being overly verbose :)
Our initial hope was that it would be reasonable to book larger group locations. However, due to the fact that it seems improbable that we'd be able to get everyone to arrive and depart on the exact times we'd prefer, we had to revisit our initial thinking. Complicating this is the fact that our own requirements are somewhat unique due to this being our wedding.
With all of that said, I'll start things off by covering a few basic items to be aware of and by describing our own requirements. So, here goes...
Things to be aware of:
Our accommodation requirements are as follows:
As of now, our current plan is to stay here. It's just north of the city walls and offers quick access to the places we need to get to. It's a nice cozy bachelor apartment:
For other people, a whole variety of options are available depending on what their specific requirements are. Over the next few days, I'll post some details on the various areas in the city and I'll try to present some avenues for research for folks to get their accommodations sorted out. Please provide me some feedback with your requirements - I'll try and work that into the postings so that we can make sure that everyone gets taken care of!
Our initial hope was that it would be reasonable to book larger group locations. However, due to the fact that it seems improbable that we'd be able to get everyone to arrive and depart on the exact times we'd prefer, we had to revisit our initial thinking. Complicating this is the fact that our own requirements are somewhat unique due to this being our wedding.
With all of that said, I'll start things off by covering a few basic items to be aware of and by describing our own requirements. So, here goes...
Things to be aware of:
- Croatia has a pretty steep VAT (22%) that gets added to pretty much everything. Some sites will advertise units with VAT added, some without, some will do both. Read the fine print
- Stairs are fairly common (eg: one apartment we looked into has 298 (!!) steps up) - if you don't like stairs, make sure you double check this
- Cars are not allowed to drive into the old city. As a result, transportation within is all on foot
- Prices range anywhere from about 25€ to 300€ a night
- Accommodations cover a whole range of options - this includes hostels, resorts, fancy hotels, villas, and apartments (and probably some other options I'm forgetting about)
- Butteryfly Services - recommended by our wedding planner, rentals are done through them, slightly more expensive
- Dubrovnik Apartment Source - another good looking option that has a slightly better electronic setup for booking than Butterfly does
- Dubrovnik Apartments - slightly cheaper option
Our accommodation requirements are as follows:
- relatively close to Sponza Palace to keep travel to the ceremony fairly simple as Alice will be in a wedding dress and heels
- not a huge number of steps to avoid having to go up and down in a dress and heels
- a relatively 'nice' unit - this is after all our wedding :)
- simple to arrange (take deposit via credit card, taxes already included, deal with a management company)
- an upper bound on cost of around 100 euro per night
As of now, our current plan is to stay here. It's just north of the city walls and offers quick access to the places we need to get to. It's a nice cozy bachelor apartment:
For other people, a whole variety of options are available depending on what their specific requirements are. Over the next few days, I'll post some details on the various areas in the city and I'll try to present some avenues for research for folks to get their accommodations sorted out. Please provide me some feedback with your requirements - I'll try and work that into the postings so that we can make sure that everyone gets taken care of!
Engagement Photos
We're still alive! Really! :)
Realizing that it's been quite a while since our last posting, we figured it's time for an update. More should be forthcoming over the next few days. In the meantime, I figured that I would post some details from our recent engagement photos.
In short, Alice was highly interested in getting some engagement photos done. Personally, not being the sort of person who feels himself to be terribly photogenic, and not being inclined to enjoy having photos taken of myself, a was a little bit unclear as to what the big deal was. In her attempts to convince me that this was a good thing, we'd looked at numerous examples of engagement, pre-engagement, pre-wedding, and other sorts of photos, but I just wasn't feeling it, until one day Alice discovered the idea of 'life style photos' (I realize, this sounds a bit on the pretentious side). The initial option we looked at was unfortunately a bit overpriced and underwhelming ($200 before we even get photos?!). So, what to do?
Here, the story takes a bit of an amusing turn. For those of you who are regular Facebook users, Facebook uses contextual advertising similar to what Google provides. Presumably, some of the ads that are selected for you are dependent on the various data in your Facebook user profile. What this means is that when your relationship status according to Facebook goes from 'in a relationship' to 'engaged', Facebook starts schleping all kinds of wedding related ads. Alice noticed a particular ad for wedding photographers coming up repeatedly, so she decided to check it out. From there, we met Josie and Ian (aka Pure Souls Photography). Fast forward a few weeks later and we found ourselves shooting photos in the snow and mild 'precipitation' on Mount Seymour.
Initially, given the conditions, we were very worried about the outcome. Happy to say, after seeing the end result, we're quite happy with the end product. Here's a few samples for your perusal.
For anyone interested in seeing a few more of the photos, you can go here
Realizing that it's been quite a while since our last posting, we figured it's time for an update. More should be forthcoming over the next few days. In the meantime, I figured that I would post some details from our recent engagement photos.
In short, Alice was highly interested in getting some engagement photos done. Personally, not being the sort of person who feels himself to be terribly photogenic, and not being inclined to enjoy having photos taken of myself, a was a little bit unclear as to what the big deal was. In her attempts to convince me that this was a good thing, we'd looked at numerous examples of engagement, pre-engagement, pre-wedding, and other sorts of photos, but I just wasn't feeling it, until one day Alice discovered the idea of 'life style photos' (I realize, this sounds a bit on the pretentious side). The initial option we looked at was unfortunately a bit overpriced and underwhelming ($200 before we even get photos?!). So, what to do?
Here, the story takes a bit of an amusing turn. For those of you who are regular Facebook users, Facebook uses contextual advertising similar to what Google provides. Presumably, some of the ads that are selected for you are dependent on the various data in your Facebook user profile. What this means is that when your relationship status according to Facebook goes from 'in a relationship' to 'engaged', Facebook starts schleping all kinds of wedding related ads. Alice noticed a particular ad for wedding photographers coming up repeatedly, so she decided to check it out. From there, we met Josie and Ian (aka Pure Souls Photography). Fast forward a few weeks later and we found ourselves shooting photos in the snow and mild 'precipitation' on Mount Seymour.
Initially, given the conditions, we were very worried about the outcome. Happy to say, after seeing the end result, we're quite happy with the end product. Here's a few samples for your perusal.
For anyone interested in seeing a few more of the photos, you can go here
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