Our second day in Croatia was spent in Dubrovnik, somewhere we have been wanting to visit for many years. Today we were berthed some three miles away from the old town and we had three transport options: local bus, taxi or Shanks’s pony and we chose the former. Like sheep we followed everyone else off the boat and wandered around like headless chickens in search of tickets, moving from one place to another looking for the elusive prize. That challenge overcome the next was to work out just exactly when to get off the bus fortunately everyone else on the bus was in the same situation.
The beautiful walled old city of Dubrovnik looks fantastic and so complete mainly because it has been rebuilt since the war in the nineties. The walls were designed to keep out a very different armed attacker and couldn’t have hoped to have withstood the pounding they took particularly from the hills overlooking the city. Today you can get a cable car up to these hills which give good views over the walled city. It’s not a great position for photographers through as the observation deck is placed such that the cables pass right in front obscuring a perfect photo of the town below. If only the architect had put the deck on the opposite side!
Like Split yesterday, inside the walls Dubrovnik old town is made up of lots of little streets but these are on different levels with steep steps taking you from one place to the next. We not only met our step target today but also are flights of stairs climbed too! We paid to walk around the town walls which undulated around the orange roofed shops and houses below offering some great views.
Today’s group of tourists to feel my ire was the Germans that flooded in from their cruise ship who seem to have zero etiquette. Maybe it’s just me but if someone wait at the bottom of a narrow passage of stairs to allow me to come down I’ll thank them. The Germans neither wait nor thanks. Maybe I am just to meek and should just barge through like they do?
Not wanting to finish on a moan, although it surely wouldn’t be a post of mine without one, I’ll say that we really enjoyed Dubrovnik and it certainly lived up to our expectations.