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Dubrovnik, Croatia

If you have been following my blog all the way through you may recall I had to jiggle our itinerary due to the Ferry timetable and instead of 1 night in Dubrovnik we ended up staying 3, and loosing one in Sorrento and one in Bari. The extra two nights we booked up in old town which turned out a very good thing in the end as we thoroughly enjoyed our time both exploring Dubrovnik and staying at the apartments in the old part of town. So today we packed up and transferred down the hill to the port area where we originally booked our one night stay.

The hotel has a great view of the port and is comfortable. The day itself was really warm, and one got a sweat on without much exertion at all. After checking in we were craving coffee – hadn’t had one yet and also a bit peckish so we had coffee and a soup in the hotel cafe. I had a lentil and Vernon had a beef goulash soup – both were excellent and cheap – only about $5 nz each! Coffee also half the price of old town and about 1.20 nz each.

Feeling more human we strolled along the harbour and were amazed at the quantity of fish swimming around – see uploaded video. Down a little deeper we saw even bigger ones probably up to 25cm each! It is quite surprising to see so many fish close to the surface and living areas in a good sized town/city. It was similar up in old town – obviously an indication of good water quality.

The cruise boats you see pictured were there only for the day, and by the next morning two more replaced them. The volume of cruise ship tourism in Southern and Eastern Europe in staggering.

The shops in the town were few and in older style suburban small shopping mall style. It was a bit ferral so we did not linger long. I did find an organic shop which had natural hair colour cheaper than NZ (seen same brand in NZ, made in Netherlands) so purchased some and later in the evening with assistant habibi did my hair! He is becoming very domesticated and useful.

We took a bus back up to old town for a last meal at the Bosnian as it was such good value before returning for a reasonable nights rest. So not much new or exciting done today, but a day to slow down the pace and prepare for the next wave of discovery.

Some thoughts on Dubrovnik are as follows. It certainly was prettier and more interesting than my research presented to us, and overall a good value holiday for the Kiwi dollar. If one had a sail boat and was into sailing holidays it would be a fantastic place to meander from island to island up the coast.

It was nice that there were no tacky souvenier shops at the sites, and no immigrants hassling you to buy rubbish. The restaurants did have very aggressive touters outside that were off putting, and we joked and said we had to do a run and doge down lanes on route to the Taj Mahal as it was ridiculous. The Taj was probably the only place not to have one – they clearly have very good word of mouth recommendations.

One person when we were looking at the menu just would not leave us alone. We said, “just looking at the menu thanks”, to which he asked “what are you looking for”? That may not be an unreasonable response but when he had already been prattling on with sales pitch and in my language “just looking” means simply that AND “buzz off and leave me alone”. Vernon couldn’t stand it as it really intrudes his personal space and sensibilities. Having said that at least we can laugh about it!

Looking forward to what our next stop of ‘Split’ has to offer.

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