If you've read this blog before, you know that this was not my first time in Dubrovnik. When I visited Croatia for spring break last year, my fellow teachers and I had made a day trip from Split down to the beautiful old city, and although it had been a pretty good day and we'd gotten up on the wall (and had gotten a little hydrated for our efforts), the weather had thrown a definite monkey wrench in our plans. So when Jo and I started talking about what to see in Croatia and I advocated very strongly for Dubrovnik, because while Split had been very cool I felt that Dubrovnik was just a little bit more pedestrian friendly, a little more convenient in the general path we were taking, and most importantly, I really wanted a second shot there.
So I was very excited, it's fair to say, when our ship came in to the port. The stranger waiting for us was none other than Gordana's son, the lady who was renting us our room via airbnb. I think this may have been my most successful use of airbnb to date (barring my parents' visit and stay in an apartment in Budapest, but I don't count that since they were paying!). Gordana's son picked us up and brought us to our room, which was air-conditioned with an amazing balcony, some liquor, instant coffee, a comfortable bed, a shower with amazing (like, a little bit overwhelming) water pressure, and also, THE BALCONY. Look at this view. To see this view is to understand just how much we felt like we'd hit jackpot.
The only downside of this place: climbing up and down this damn hill every time we wanted to get into old city. Still, totally worth it.
Strikin' a pose.
And those are just SOME of the many, many pictures I took... on the first night.
I remember roughly what we did in Dubrovnik, although a lot of it is definitely a chilled-out haze. This was a really lovely stopping point for us between go-go-go sections of our trip. I'm pretty sure that on the first night we went down into the old walled city and had a nice dinner at Dubrovna, a fancy restaurant, but I think the next day we spent mostly hanging out on our balcony, soaking up some sun, taking in the views, and finding the supermarket/having a balcony picnic.
Blue skies.
Doom. Also, Lokrum Island in the distance, more on that later!
Although we had several delicious pizzas and good seafood, this was perhaps one of my favorite meals in Croatia. Jo and I raided the supermarket and came back with a lunch of bread, crackers, goat-cheese stuffed red peppers, cheese, dried fruit, dried meat, regular fruit, tomatoes, and dark beer. A good lunch was had by all.
A shot taken of the Minčeta tower, the highest point of the walls of Dubrovnik. I didn't even notice this at the time of taking the picture but if you look in the background you can see a huge bolt of lightning off in the distance.
Okay so if memory serves the next day we did actually get down to exploring, starting with a kayaking tour of the walls of the city, the nearby island of Lokrum, and a cave/swimming spot a few miles down the beach from Dubrovnik.
Legally obligated to be strangled to death by our life jackets.
Kayaking around the walls of the city.
Heading out towards the island, we were at least not the absolute slowest pair of kayakers.
Approaching the island. As we kayaked along the city the tour guide stopped us all periodically to tell us about the very interesting history of Dubrovnik as the capital of a republic and as a city that functioned basically as a city-state of its own. It benefited enormously from its strong walls, good position between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, and a tax imposed on all outsiders entering the city. But I don't remember too many of the details of those talks so I'd recommend looking it up for yourself if you're interested. I do remember the history he told us, however, of the island of Lokrum, which used to house a Benedictine monastery. The guide told us that when the monks were forced to leave the island they took all of their candles and lit them, then carried them upside down around the island saying that it would be cursed for whoever owned it for as many years as there were drops of wax in the sand. The island went on to be owned by the Hapsburgs (execution, insanity, inbreeding, general misfortune during the 19th/20th century) and as our tour guide said, now the Croatian government owns it and hasn't been doing to well either, so maybe the monks were onto something.
The island these days can be visited, there's a botanical garden, restaurant, and I think maybe even a hotel? And supposedly no bad luck will come to you, as long as you don't try to own it.
Kayaking into one of the caves in Lokrum.
Kayaking out of said cave. You can see just a small portion of all the damn birds that live on this island.
After stopping for a little swim in a nearby coastal cave [picture not featured] we headed back to our starting point, one of the little ports along the coast of Dubrovnik.
I noticed this sign as we were leaving, in a small cement patio near the water, which if true would make this structure older than my own country.
This is where we left from. As you can see it was a gorgeous day for swimming and that wall on the left side served as a kind of jumping rock for many, many teenagers.
This was an ambitious day for us as we not only kayaked around the city but we also went up and walked around the whole (well, most of) the city on the medieval city walls. Jo did, anyway, I only walked around half of the city for reasons I will explain below.
Views of our walk from the first half of the wall, having a lovely (if somewhat hot) stroll along the wall, taking in the island and the fortress from a different vantage point, enjoying the people watching.
And then. As we were walking we chanced upon a shop (still on the wall) selling freshly-squeezed juice. Though we at first made to walk right past this shop, we both paused seeing the juices coming out (they looked amazing and we were so hot, so thirsty). We ordered two and excitedly sat down, at which point we both realized we no nowhere near enough Croatian currency to pay for the juices. And we were on the wall where there was not an ATM in sight. What to do?! Our juices arrived and we continued to panic quietly, huddled together at our table while we tried to devise plan. First we decided only one of us could leave. I knew we were close to the halfway point of the wall where you're allowed to climb down into the city, get some food if you want, then climb back up and complete the second half. So off she went to try and find an ATM. She came back soon enough, because she could not in fact find one nearby. Then I realized that I had a $20 bill, which would cover our juices (fucking Dubrovnik prices!). But we were pretty embarassed at this point, so we left the money and ran when the waiters weren't around. As we scurried up the stairs to the next clearing in the wall we thought we'd gotten away with it. Only as we neared the stairs of the halfway point did I realize that I'd left my ticket on the table, which meant that if anyone was checking tickets I wouldn't be able to get onto the second half of the wall. Jo was a true champion and went back to the juice place to check for the ticket but alas, it was gone. So I climbed down and made my way back towards the starting point, grabbing some money and stewing in my failure on a shady doorstep near the entrance of the wall while I waited for Jo to come down.
Here's a shot I took while we drank our juices. Those umbrellas were actually a fairly large cafe, set in the stone cliffs outside the walls of the city, that looked amazing.
Here I am reveling in the failure and panic of our juice acquisition.
We spent some more time eating and exploring in Dubrovnik, although I think those are the most noteworthy adventures. These last two photos are from a late-afternoon coffee we had on the main street (Stradun) while we enjoyed some tourist watching. It was then that the little marching band of the second picture strolled by, drumming and marching, as one does when part of an olde-timey marching band. A nice end to the trip.
The next day we were up and out early, headed to the bus station. I fully confess that I was a total grouch about it after being spoiled by sleeping in (relatively speaking) for a couple days. And Jo and I both fell down on our transportation game a bit during our time in Dubrovnik by not going to the bus station and buying our tickets ahead of time, forcing us to leave for the bus station at the crack of dawn in hopes that tickets to Kotor, Montenegro, our next destination, would not be sold out. In my defense, if we missed that bus we would have been very much screwed re: hotel/transportation costs. So it was a tense 35/40 minutes that we waited, the sun barely risen, at a dinky little bus stop near our airbnb apartment for the bus to come and take us to the real depot. Thankfully, things worked out in our favor. We made it to the station, and although the first bus was sold out (okay this part did not work in our favor) the second bus, ostensibly leaving at noon, still had seats available. We sat down at the bus station and enjoyed a coffee while we waited... and waited... and waited.... 11 AM and the bus we wouldn't take came and left, and still we waited. Noon rolled around and we got ourselves to the spot where we thought our bus would arrive. Time rolled on and I believe it was almost 1:30 before our bus, unmarked and parked in the wrong spot, finally pulled up and start loading people on. The only indications we had that it was in fact our bus was that we were by that point desperately searching every bus that arrived and this one's noticeable lack of signage indicating its destination seemed like a good a clue as any it was ours, and although the ticket taker/bus driver was EXTREMELY unhelpful re: whether this was our bus, on comparing our tickets to other passengers boarding we found they were going in the same general direction as we were.
Good enough.
It wasn't until we'd left and been riding for about 20 minutes that we finally got an actual confirmation, when the ticket checker looked at our printed our ticket receipts and nodded almost imperceptibly, that we were in fact going to Montenegro.
