“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around for a while, you could miss it.”
— Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Sites covered in this post:
• Dubrovnik
Go-Date: Day 108, Friday, May 10
Lesson Learned: Europeans like mayonnaise on their French fries.
Regrets: I wish I knew how to flush a toilet. Evidently, according to our Air BNB host in Dubrovnik, we don’t know how to flush a Croatian toilet. They even sent us a video on how to do it. How do we Americans get along. We must scoop out shit and dump it on the lawn. We are such heathens. I’m so humiliated. It must be beyond the realm of possibility that the freaking toilet is broken! Tell me, if it requires a Youtube video with instructions to flush, do you think there may be a problem, or is it just me?
Walk the Walls
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea (like you didn’t know that already). It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations in the Mediterranean Sea. Its total population is 42,615 and I think they all work in cafés and curio shops in Dubrovnik old town. In 1979, the old city of Dubrovnik joined the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites.
Well, on the day we arrived it was raining. I mean raining a lot. In fact, we were driving south on the coastal hiway from Split to Dubrovnik and ran into a rock slide road closure. There was no warning, we just came up onto a barricade. Nobody was there to inform or guide us so we took an alternative route which turned out to be blocked as well.
The thing about the roads in Croatia is they go from wonderful 2 or 3 lane highways down to West Virginia country driveways in a matter of kilometers. When we were stopped by a second barricade, to reverse our direction, it was like trying to turn around a dump truck in your bedroom closet (and this was no walk-in closet).
Back-tracking about 25 km we finally got on the right route that was still open. You have to go through Bosnia to reach Dubrovnik, so we had to go through passport control twice within 9 km and then on to Dubrovnik on a windy, wet, slippery road. When we finally reached Dubrovnik it was like trying to find a parking space in the Cowboys’ parking lot 20 minutes before kickoff. You wind around, look, stop and go through narrow, unfamiliar streets and find yourself on a one lane alley with cars triple parked. It is totally insane. We kept looking and looking and we finally resolved that issue. More to follow.
They (people that Donald Trump knows) claim that the prosperity of Dubrovnik was historically based on maritime trade, but that’s not true, its prosperity is completely dependent on tourists dying to see the Game of Thrones shooting locations. Now, it may be true that as the capital of the maritime Republic of Ragusa, Dubrovnik achieved a high level of development, particularly during the 15th and 16th centuries, but that is dwarfed (no pun intended) by the impact on tourism that has resulted from HBO’s TV series Game of Thrones (GOT). Oh, and it had a couple scenes shot there for the movie Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi as well.
In 1991, after the break-up of Yugoslavia, Dubrovnik was besieged by Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers for seven months and suffered significant damage from shelling. After repair and restoration works in the 1990s and early 2000s, Dubrovnik re-emerged as one of the top tourist destinations in the Mediterranean. I must admit, the city itself is stunning. I consider myself an expert on this evaluation as this is day 108 on the road and we have visited Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Sparti, Nafplio, Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Thebes, Luxor, Pula, Split, Zadar, Zagreb, and Trogir. This is a cool site and the largest and spectacular medieval site I’ve witnessed.
Its also overflowing with cruise ship visitors.
Ragusa (Dubrovnik) was founded in the 7th century, named after a “rocky island” called Lausa, by refugees from Epidaurum, a Greek city situated some 15 km to the south, when that city was destroyed in the Slavic incursions. That makes sense. Calling this place rocky is about like calling Egypt sandy. It is what it is.
Dubrovnik (Ragusa) tottered along for centuries as a middling outpost that nobody found incredibly important, until it proved to be a strategic location on the Adriatic trade route and rapidly grew in power and importance. After the Crusades, Dubrovnik came under the sovereignty of Venice (1205–1358), which would give its institutions to the Dalmatian city. Well, we all know how important institutions are.
The Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) played a delicate balancing game with the more powerful states in the area to avoid being completely thumped, but was only able to maintain that balance while it trade center remained critical to the region. The Republic gradually declined due to a combination of a Mediterranean shipping crisis and the catastrophic earthquake of 1667, which killed over 5,000 citizens, leveled most of the public buildings and, consequently was a real downer regarding the well-being of the Republic. In 1699, the Republic was forced to sell two mainland patches of its territory to the Ottomans in order to avoid being caught in the clash with advancing Venetian forces. Today this strip of land belongs to Bosnia and Herzegovina (we have been there and have the passport stamps to prove it) and is that country’s only direct access to the Adriatic (thus the two checkpoints on our way south from Split). A highlight of Dubrovnik’s diplomacy was the involvement in the American Revolution. Now, I for one don’t recall reading about Dubrovnik in my history books during high school, but read on.
According to Wikipedia “Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik, Croatia), a major city with historical and cultural ties to Italy on the Adriatic Sea, was interested in the economic potential of the United States as informed by its diplomatic representative in Paris, Francesco Favi. The United States was anxious to establish trade agreements with foreign powers during this period of the revolution, as England was boxing its ears. America learned that Italian merchants wanted to trade with the Americans but worried about the risk of corsairs or privateers. Since 1771, animal hides were delivered from Baltimore, New York City and Philadelphia to Marseille in France by ships from Ragusa. Ragusa entered into a trade agreement with the United States, and the Americans agreed to allow their ships free passage in their ports.” Years later, Ragusa also developed a spaghetti sauce in a jar for trade with Americans to offset the once-booming, but now declining beaver pelt business. Who knew….Go Dubrovnik!
On 27 May 1806, the forces of the Empire of France (Napoleon) occupied the neutral Republic of Ragusa. Upon entering Ragusan territory without permission and approaching the capital, the French General Jacques Lauriston demanded that his troops be allowed to rest and be provided with food and drink in the city before continuing on to take possession of their holdings in the Bay of Kotor. However, would you trust someone with an army knocking on your door asking for room and board? Nupe, I didn’t think so. As soon as the French moved in, they proceeded to occupy it in the name of Napoleon. Well, this meant trouble. As soon as the French began drinking up all the Croatian wine (which is very good) Russian and Montenegrin troops entered Ragusan territory demanding their share of the wine and began fighting the French army. It was not a good season for the locals as all the armies began raiding and pillaging everything along the way and culminating in a siege of the occupied territory. Sieges basically suck for the common folk outside the castle walls as you lose your cattle, your daughters get kidnapped and raped, your sons get drafted, your wives become servants and you probably end up ventilated by a sword or two.
After seven years of French occupation, all the Ragusan people rose up and refused to serve any more wine (you French smell of elderberry). Of course, the French soon left as they felt that was rude hospitality, and of course, the French do understand how to do rude.
Well, this led to a couple of centuries of strife until in the mid 1990s when all the shit finally settled down and Dubrovnik became the Flag Ship capital of HBO and Game of Thrones (Kings’ Landing). The Lannisters still reign and will continue until we find out what happens at the conclusion of Season Eight.
Did I mention that this city is stunning? My advice is to come in, move in (like the French), spend a couple of days drinking their wine, and then get the hell out of Dodge. If you don’t, it’s Like Las Vegas and you are at Caesar’s Palace. They will take all your money and then cast you aside like Ned Stark’s head.
Alert 1. Everything is expensive. We had 4 cups of coffee at a café and it cost over $35. You can find reasonable prices, but you won’t find cheap.
Alert 2. Don’t bring a car. Parking is incredibly expensive and hard to find. We found a parking lot about 300 meters from our apartment and thought that was a real coup, until we found it was 50 kuna an hour. That makes it about (no it makes it exactly $7.60 an hour) or 1,200 kuna a day, which is $182.43 a day for parking.
We moved our car within an hour. The nearest public lot cost $54.73 per day. Expensive, but more affordable. It was still about half kilometer to walk to our apartment.
Alert 3. This place if full of tourists. I mean, New York City sidewalk busy with cruise and bus tourists. Get out early to see the town, or get out late. Between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM it is a zoo. You can see the city without massive crowds outside those hours. The prices are the same, but at least you can find a place to sit.
Alert 4. Game of Thrones is huge here. You cannot avoid it. Its almost like there is no history prior to GOT. I love GOT, but this place is obsessive about it.
Alert 5. This town is not Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant. If you can’t walk a lot, or climb stairs, or are comfortable on flagstone roadways don’t put this on your list to visit.
Dubrovnik old town has got to be one of the world’s finest and most perfectly preserved medieval cities in the world. For centuries, Dubrovnik rivaled Venice as a trading port, with its huge sturdy stone walls, built between the 11th and 17th centuries, affording protection to this city.
Today, the walls still enclose Dubrovnik’s historic center and it is possible to walk along them to enjoy the best views of the ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’ and the surrounding lush islands. Dubrovnik’s ornate Baroque churches, monasteries and palaces; its Renaissance fountains and facades, are all intertwined with gleaming wide marble-paved squares, steep cobbled streets and houses, all of which have also remained unchanged for centuries.
One of the main tourist attractions of Dubrovnik is the Stradun (the main street in the old town) entirely made of white marble and with beautiful late-Renaissance houses on each side of street. Dubrovnik’s Stradun crosses the city from the Pile Gate on the west side to the Rector’s palace, the bell tower and Orlando’s column on the east side just beside the port.
The remarkable preservation of the smartly contained old town earned it registration as a UNESCO World Heritage site. This wasn’t an easy task as it underwent meticulous reconstruction after the earthquake of 1667, and also renovations were required to return the city to its former splendor after it was attacked during the civil war of the early 1990s. Today, all new building work is strictly controlled.
We stayed just inside the city walls. It was a basically (nothing fancy) appointed apartment, close to a city gate, but the stairway was a steep, long walk down to the Stradun, with no hand-rails on the stairs. We had issues with the apartment, but it was close to the action. I thought we should have been issued hard hats en route to the apartment. The entire walkway from the gate to our apartment was under construction. I don’t mean repoint a few tiles, fix a curb, repair a water line under construction, I mean city permit, backhole, roadway replacement kind of construction. Hmmmm, I wonder why they didn’t mention that in the travel brochure?
Walk of Shame
The NUMBER ONE thing you MUST do in Dubrovnik is walk the walls. This is a phenomenal experience! Get up early and get on the walls. They open the gates at 8 AM. Be the first in line. It will cost you 100 kuna for the walls, but that will be the best money you spend in Dubrovnik. Just pay for the wall walk. I think that was 100 kuna, but the Dubrovnik pass costs 250 kuna, but I’m not sure there’s anything else (but the fortress) worth the price. Warning. Even if you buy a 3-day pass, you only get one trip up to the wall.
Next, go to Tower Lovrijenac also known as St. Lawrence Fortress (50 kuna). It is located on a large cliff just outside the western edge of Dubrovnik’s city walls. Above the main entrance to the tower, there is an inscription saying Non Bene Pro Toto Libertas Venditur Auro means “Freedom must not be sold for all the gold in the world”. You access the fortress through the Pile Gate on the west end of the city around the kayak rental center.
We had a great time here, and it really is magnificent. We found the crowds from the cruise ships to be oppressive, prices excessive, and once you walk the walls and tour the old town there really isn’t much to do unless you want to go to the beach, hop a boat for an island, or rent a kayak. You need to do it, but I’m not sure how long you might want to stay.
Learn a little about Game of Thrones before you come so that you understand some of the landmarks. Don’t be, “Who is Circe?”, “What is the Walk of Shame?”, or “What dragons?”