A Gem with Red Carpets
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
67
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Dubrovnik,
Croatia
Monday, October 30, 2006
Cruise liners lay anchor nearby. Dubrovnik's harbor is big enough for 17th century style galleons that the Croatian president sails around on (as we saw one afternoon), but not 20 storey behmoths of the ocean. It seems that most of the guests of the old town came in from a cruise ship for the day.
We met one such couple while we were eating ice cream cones a church step. They are Texans on an 18 day cruise. They flew into Venice and are sailing back to the US of A. The managers of the cruise boat they were on convinced them to wear a blue stickers of the number "3." It takes only a few hours to see old Dubrovnik in its entirety, so perhaps doing it from a cruise isn't a bad way to see it. It does not have the depth of a city that reqires a multi day visit to see the highlights.
The walls are the city's specialty. They are enormous. Stylistically they are high medieval. A person can either pay 50 Kuna (about ten bucks) to climb up on them. Instead we climbed part way up the hill above town it to get a fantastic view from the highway. It's halfway up the coastal mountains and it gives an infinitely better view of the city than anything that can be seen from the walls. I went up there with Bro and an Aussie named Dave. There is a water resevoir with benches on top, just below the road and it is more serene down there without cars whizzing by.
As for the city from close-up, it has reoriented itself to cruise liner traffic in every way except for expanding the harbour to fit one of those boats. At least that's what it feels like to someone on a backpacker budget. The restaurants and shops in the old town are priced only a wee bit less than something similar in Western Europe. Not surprising really, considering that is has been on the map for a while. It was old Yugoslavia's tourist capital and despite dreadful shelling by the Serbian army during the war, it has been rebuilt and it looks good enough to be in Western Europe.
We ate lunch by the harbour. The Croatian President walked by in a parade of retainers. Our waiter said that today is the annual day of the Croatian Navy (so it isn't a daily thing). The President got on a motorised galleon and cruised around Dubrovnik, escorted by a Destroyer. I have those two boats and a cruise ship, all in the same photo (I hope to get it online for you).
We knew it was coming but the bill was a bit hefty. The phrase "tourist trap" came up in conversation more than once. I was reminded of Egypt when we were mobbed at the bus station by people trying to hawk accomodation. But as tailored vacation spots (tourist traps) go though, Dubrovnik is sure nice.
It is clean, the streets are polished limestone and nothing at all looks shabby. Evidence of the war is virtually gone. At the entrance through some city gates there are large plaques that show where shells and grenades went off. It doesn't even look all that different from a normal medieval city elsewhere that never experienced modern war since the damaged stones have been replaced and repaired. Some soot blackened churches in safe old France look worse for wear than those here.
Although, of the places where war broke out in old Yugoslavia, this city is an exception. If I wasn't trying to spot bullet pock marks, I wouldn't have seen any (mine is a discerning eye). All this is of course thanks to lots of international aid and tourist patronage.
Inside one museum are photos of "Defenders of Dubrovnik." It is a simple exhibition with the faces of local men who joined the defence brigades and fought back against the Serbian and Montenegrans who attacked the city. They all looked so young. I haven't thought that often before when seeing photos of dead soliders. But I'm already in my mid-twenties. Lots of 18, 19, 20, 21 year old are soldiers. That seems young now, it didn't before. All of these guys would be in their thirties had they made it through the war. But they died the same age as most of the people on the backpacker circut.
Some of the early twenties crowd that stays in Dubrovnik now stayed at my accomodation. We chilled there a couple of days. Our boarding house is in Lapad, a fourty minute walk from the old town, in something of a suburban district. There is a decent eatery where we had pizza about five times in three days. It's near a beach.
We had fun there one night with some gents from Texas, enjoying local Croatian brew until the wee hours of the morning while someone in the distance smashed the ashtrays that beachfront restaurants had negligently left out. But during the day it was less pleasant because someone came around charging four dollars to sit on a beach chair. The beach itself is pebbles and enough pointy things stuck up that we had to spend a while to clear places to sit. No one wants to get tetanus on vacation.
And then we did absolutely nothing. It was twenty five degrees C and sunny. On those sorts of days, it's all to easy to get lost in a book while sipping on a glass of Vranac.
