Dubrovnik -Fifteenth city on our two month tour around Europe

Dubrovnik a.k.a King’s Landing was definitely way busier than I had been expecting.  Apparently before Game of Thrones filmed there it was just a regular tourist destination, but after the series took off, so did the tourism.  Being there in the height of summer was pure craziness.

Luch and I might not have been the biggest Game of Thrones fans, but we still wanted to know where all the locations were in Dubrovnik, but didn’t want to pay for a proper Game of Thrones tour.  So what did we do?  We Googled it and found out where to go.  We would stand next to a sight and then compare the pictures from Game of Thrones on our phone.  Worked like a treat!

I’d booked another Airbnb gem, except that it was about an hour and a half away from Old Town and with our big suitcases we knew we’d never make it.  So, very unusual for us, we actually took an Uber to our accommodation.  The only problem was, even our Uber driver wasn’t sure exactly where to go, or if he could drive up these steep roads to get there.  With a lot of confusion and multiple calls to our Airbnb host, eventually we figured out where we needed to be and checked in.  I thought our self catering flat was going to be a bit bigger because the pictures online had shown a balcony, but it turned out that that was the flat next door.  At least we had an aircon and washing machine.  Clean clothes made all the difference in the world.  As did having a grocery store just down the way from our accommodation, even though we had to climb a seriously steep hill to get back up again.

The next day, we haphazardly figured out the bus system with old fashioned printed out bus timetables.  As it was, the bus ended up being our cheapest way to get into Old Town from our accommodation and then we would just walk from there.

Our first day was literally spent walking through the entire Old Town and trying to dodge the people as much as we could.  We were so grateful for the hour or so that it rained and even though we had to duck under a restaurant’s roof to stay dry, it at least cooled down the air a bit.  Walking around and doing touristy things in 36 or 37 degree heat is the worst!

We also didn’t want to spend too much money, so walking on the Old City Walls was out of the question.  Instead, we consoled ourselves with the fact that you don’t get the best view from the walls themselves.  We actually got the best view from Fort Lovrijenac and also the top of Srd Hill.  We wanted to go up Srd Hill on the Cable Car, but couldn’t really afford that either, so took a bus instead.  The only problem was, the bus only came to the top of the hill every two hours or so, so we walked out; got amazing views and then had to sit on a rock and chill until the bus returned again.  At least it did return because otherwise we would have had about a three hour walk ahead of us.

Surprisingly, although it was pretty impressive to see the Old City Walls and the entire Old City in general looking as if it hadn’t changed one bit since Medieval times; the most fun we actually had was just deciding to skip all the queues for a day and walk to a secluded beach instead.  We researched beaches online and found out that although the main beach – Banje beach – which we had actually found to be very overcrowded and full of rubbish is supposed to be one of the best beaches in Croatia; Sveti Jakov Beach was the nicest.

Don’t get me wrong, it was still incredibly busy and they had all these sun loungers with purple umbrellas that were booked days in advance, we still managed to find an open spot of sand and rent an umbrella for the day.  Probably one of the most expensive things we ever paid for was renting umbrella’s in Croatia, but man was it worth it.  I think we probably would have died otherwise, with the rocks and pebbles that make up the beach baking in the sun and then burning our bums and legs when we sat down.  I also only swam like twice because I just couldn’t face to try and walk into the water over these tiny pebbles that felt like they were bruising my feet with every step.  Luch loved them.  Said it was an awesome massage for his feet, but every other girl on the beach definitely agreed with me.

Climbing the steps back to civilisation was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do.  If I could have just lived on that beach I would have.  I Googled it afterwards and it was 160 steps in total.  No wonder I felt like I was dying.  It didn’t really help that we were both still a little bit wet and chafing on the way up.  It was just those steps that killed us though, it turns out that there are actually 4343 stairs throughout the whole of Dubrovnik.  I think we climbed all of them!  At least we were pretty fit by the time we left Croatia.  🙂

Our last day in Dubrovnik was a bit of a bust.  We had to check out of our Airbnb accommodation and make our way back to Old Town where we would check into our hotel for one night before taking a ferry across to Bari-Italy.  I always feel like checkout days are the worst.  I spend my morning trying to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything and stressing about making it to whatever transport will take us where we need to go, in this case a bus.  We made it in time with our suitcases and laptops in tow and at least the bus wasn’t crowded yet, so we could actually sit down for a change.  We left our suitcases in the hotel and spent the day on the beach again, but when we returned to the hotel, we found that the restaurants and bakeries around us only took cash which we didn’t have.  A night of leftovers from lunch was our only option.  Sometimes leftovers can be a lifesaver! 🙂