After another awesome time in Italy, we were off to a country that neither Marissa or I had ever been, Croatia. We had heard great things about it from other travelers and looked at photos online that took your breath away. We were excited about the amazing blue waters and well preserved walled city that protected the city for hundreds of years. It was intriguing going to a country that we had never been, full of surprises. Our Airbnb host Toni upon arrival at the Dubrovnik airport picked us up. The guy was really nice and had a pretty wicked eastern European accent (you know the type that is just harsh sounding like it takes a ton of effort with each word) however he was really nice and pretty fun to talk to on the way to our new pad for the next 3 nights. When we arrived at our place, we scoped it out. It was small but nice and was several floors up stairs (which we were used to now). Marissa probably called the place ‘cute’. The best part was a window which opened to the sea and overlooked the main ‘old town’ Dubrovnik high up on a hill.
We could see several large boats from the window, and lights from old town. We wanted to explore but we were exhausted after the day of travel so we crashed. The next morning we opened the window and the view was even more stunning in the daylight. One of the best views I’ve seen from our window. It took us a while to get our butts out of bed in the morning but it was nice taking our time to do our bible study, make up a little breakfast with the minimal stuff the hosts had provided and catch up on the current events on the internet (and Facebook as sad as that is).
After we got moving, we walked down the hill to what they call Old Town. It looked awesome from our window in our Airbnb and got even more spectacular as we came closer to the walled entrance. This is one of the best preserved walled cities in the world. The prosperity of the city of Dubrovnik was historically based on sea trading. Known as the Republic of Ragusa for over 500 years, it managed to maintain an independent city/state until the 19th century when a little man you might have heard of, Napoleon, conquered it. The city achieved a high level of development throughout the years, particularly during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Immediately upon entering Old Town, we saw a stand that advertised a walking tour that started in 10 mins. Perfect intro to the city, we thought, so we joined. It was about 90 mins long and in English. The walk was great and solidified what we had read about on the plane ride to Croatia and we got to hear about real life events from someone who lived through Croatia’s very recent war for independence. Our guide was younger than we were yet had lived through war. It was interesting to learn all about the war in the 90’s that broke apart former Yugoslavia into individual countries. Really 6 individual countries (Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia) were forced to become Yugoslavia after World War II yet were very different with unique cultures and traditions. Croatians are now very proud to be independent, and rightfully so. I feel like we do a really poor job of teaching kids about world history in school in America, because I knew very little about this.
While on our tour, we were amazed at all of the tourists in Dubrovnik. The place was really overcrowded with them. Sometimes I would think of them as cows grazing in a field following a tour guide without thinking for themselves. Along with that, they pushed up the prices in Dubrovnik by buying everything they could get their hands on. I excluded Marissa and I from this category because we were really savvy travelers and wouldn’t pay excessive sums of money for dumb trinkets. The prices really surprised me, because a city in Croatia (once a cheap Eastern European country) was now on par with California prices. This was not a joke and we had to try hard to spend our money wisely. Croatia is much more discovered that we ever thought. Maybe not by Americans, as there weren’t many of us Yankees, but there were plenty of the Germans, Brits, Aussies and more. Thousands come by cruise ship mid-day. To our delight many of them were gone by dinnertime which made hitting up the town after dark much more pleasant.
After our tour, we were hungry so we grabbed some lunch from a local supermarket and found a great spot in the marina to eat it. After lunch, we washed it down with a beer (why not – we aren’t working!) and decided it was time to continue our quest for knowledge in the old town. Why not walk ON the walls that surround and enclose the old town area? I’ll tell you why not- because the weather looked threatening in the distance and because it was sunny, hot and humid at the moment. To hell with that – we had some liquid courage so why not just go for it right? Next thing you know we paid what we thought was an outrageous sum (somewhere around $17 each) and were hiking up and down the stairs and on top of the world overlooking the whole city. The sight was amazing – one of the best views I’ve ever seen; the city with its old orange roofs, the ocean with crystal clear blue water. It turned out to be well worth the money and one of the more unique experiences.
As we walked around the 1.5 mile wall we probably snapped a few hundred pictures (probably overkill, but it was different from every angle). Really we just enjoyed it. It even started raining ¾ the way around. Actually the rain felt like God saying, cool down Josh. It’s been a long hot day of walking so here’s some mist. Much appreciated for sure! After finishing the wall, we headed back to our place to shower and enjoy the AC before watching an awesome sunset out our window. Then we headed down to a seafood dinner in the city and called it a night.
After kicking around d
oing a kayak tour on the next day, we decided to just hit the beach and relax. We would have loved to kayak but it would eat up a lot of our budget for the day and we really wanted to swim in the incredibly blue water. So we did just that and hung out at a ‘pebble beach’ for the day. The beaches near Dubrovnik are either pebble or rock. Very interesting. No sand beaches and really made me appreciate the Lake Michigan beaches. The pebble beaches are tough to walk/lay on and the rocky beaches are just the same. In Croatia many ‘beaches’ are these types. You do forget about that when you enter the water though, because the hue is so blue that it is just memorizes you. That night we enjoyed an awesome meal at one of the best restaurants in Dubrovnik. We had made reservations for it because we tried to eat there the night before and it was over an hour wait (when we got there it was 8:30 pm). It was called Taj Mahal, which was Bosnian cuisine. Really awesome stuff. Bosnia borders Croatia and really I didn’t know much about it aside from the strife over the past 20 years there. It was one of the best meals that we had, although a little bit pricey for our budget. The next morning we got up at the brutal hour of 6am! To think that we used to get up at this time (or earlier most mornings) back in the working world? Not cool and really tough now but we needed to board a local bus to catch a longer distance bus onto our next destination so we said farewell to Dubrovnik. We sucked it up and on we went!
Leave a Reply