Meeting Jayme Moye in Croatia in 2010,  was an extraordinary coincidence. 

 It was one of those experiences that makes you believe that everything does, indeed, happen for a reason.
  We were two women- both from Mentor and both travel writers - among a group of 10 on a wooden sailing ship setting sail  between Dubrovnik and Split  intending to explore a handful of islands on foot.

 She was the youngest of the bunch and more subdued than many of the others. I later learned that only the month before she had decided to end her 10-year marriage. That's probably why she chose time alone reading to the impromptu charades and other games that broke out on deck during sails between islands.

 The harvest season voyage was framed as one that would give us tastes of the countryside, from Croatian wines and traditional dishes to just harvested produce. We had a wonderful chef aboard who turned out creative food day after day. On that trip I photographed Jayme eating her first raw oyster, just harvested from the briny Adriatic. The face she made was memorable, but showed her embrace of the place.

 I recalled that oyster experience when preparing my story about Jayme  for Monday's News-Herald. During my research for that, I discovered a story she wrote about a trip to Africa when she drank the freshly drawn blood of a cow. That's something tribal people do to keep up strength and nutrition when food is scarce. Other Americans were repelled at the very thought, but not Jayme. She embraced it, in much the same way that she gulped down that oyster.

 I quickly discovered that Jayme was also the most fit among the Romanca's passengers. The ship would drop us off on one side of an island, then set sail to meet us on the island's other side after we'd hiked across it. These islands are largely dry and mountainous, so presented quite a challenge for me. But Jayme, with lungs tempered by high altitude living in Boulder, Colo. would run the trails and reach the other side hours before the rest of us. As I got to know Jayme better, my appreciation for her extraordinary spirit deepened, and the seeds for this story about her were planted.

I wondered: How does a girl from Mentor become one who pursues challenging adventures so foreign from her upbringing?

 Although I'm nearly twice her age, Jayme and I share the same passion to see and learn from the world. Maybe it's because besides Mentor roots, we both also share March as the month of our birthdays. Jayme and I have traveled to many of the same places, although she tends to choose trips to scout areas that might later serve to promote tourism while I travel generally better known tourism paths. I blame my Viking ancestry for my wanderlust, but I'm still not sure what motivates Jayme. Any guesses?

After Richmond Heights native Carol Sosa graduated from Euclid High School, she lived in several California cities, in Honolulu, and in Paris before moving permanently to Dubrovnik three years ago. Croatia is where her parents were born and she visited the country often during the 1980s but had to stop coming during the war in 1991. No matter where else she lived she dreamed of returning to Dubrovnik to live some day.
She married her beloved Ivo and they live just a few minutes’ walk from the walls of the Old City.
This beautiful city along the Adriatic coast also captured my heart when I visited the first time in 2006, so during my planning for this trip I visited the website www.tripadvisor.com where Carol answered many of the questions I posed. She’s not an official Dubrovnik guide but blogs at  www.dubrovniktravelady.blogspot.com.
We got to know each other online and within an hour after I’d arrived, she met me in the lobby of the Hotel Vis.
As an expat, she’s learned lots of things about Dubrovnik and gladly shares them with others. We  became acquainted over coffee on the hotel’s seaside patio  a delightful spot in the shade of an ancient olive tree.
Because she’s over 65 she travels for free on the city’s bus system, but I bought a ticket for 10 kuna at the hotel front desk. That’s a  little less than $2.
We rode for 20 minutes to the Pile Gate, one of the entrances through the city walls into Old Town. That’s pronounced Pee-Lay, I quickly learned when I bought the bus ticket at the front desk and the clerk there didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Everyone here speaks English,” she said. “I try to speak Croatian most of the time but I’m still known as ‘that American lady’ because my accent gives me away.”
Life in Dubrovnik is fairly typical of other European cities, she said. One shops every day and gets bread, freshly harvested produce and fish fresh from the sea. “We have socialized medicine here but since I didn’t pay into the system I’m not eligible. My husband has it and I pay less than $100 a month for good health care.
She said it is very difficult to secure a good apartment at a reasonable price because Dubrovnik is so popular with visitors. “We have a nice one-bedroom apartment with a small yard just a few blocks from the Old Town and we pay about $500 a month,” she said.  But the landlord could easily get $100 a night for it from tourists, she said.
I told her that lots of people of Croatian ancestry now living in Northeast Ohio would like to do just what she has — move back to Dubrovnik.
“I would tell them to come here for January, February and March and see how they do first,” she said.
Although this palmy city rarely gets snow, it’s winter then and more rainy.
 Meet Carol, an ex-pat in Dubrovnik by clicking here.