Dubrovnik (nee Ragusa)

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We arrived by bus on the northern eastern corner of Dubrovnik and in the shadows of a huge cruiseliner: the Costa Mediterranea I think. Apparently these mega-craft accommodate up to 3000 folk. All hell breaks loose when they all converge on a small place like Dubrovnik at once. We experienced a bit of this as we entered the old town with backpack and wheeled luggage. Gawking tourists all around us and stopping whenever and wherever. We made our way to a quieter part of the city where Catherine, via someone else's Blog, had booked an excellent guest house. We ended up right at the eastern end of old town in a loft directly overlooking the boat harbour, above the old town wall, and absolutely in the thick of it without being noisy. A brilliant find, that was self contained and cosy!

The first part of our tour was the 2km old town wall of the 13th-16th century, which completely circumscribes the old town, and is intact, after some repair work following the most recent war. This place has a strong Italian feel which comes from centuries of trade and exchange across the Adriatic. Beautiful views across the town. At the western extreme, the walls fall vertically into the sea, broken only by an occasional bar perched on the rocks. These are the little places you see in the tourist brochures. People were swimming from various spots along the wall as the water was in the 20s. A light dinner in-house for a change.

Overnight saw the weather deteriorate with lightning, thunder and heavy rain. Better to be in a loft than on-board in this sort of weather. Plenty of private craft visited the harbour in the night to escape it. During the day we visited more of the city including an ethnological museum and of course, the maritime museum, which Cath had banned me from seeing for at least the first 24hrs of the visit! Dubrovnik had been a major trading port since Roman times when they referred to it as Ragusa. Seafood dinner tonight.

Tomorrow we continue our journey towards Tirana, Albania.

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Photos

Dubrovnik boat harbour
Our apartment is the 3 highest windows on the first red roofed building nearest the 3 storey Fort St John at the harbour entrance

Harbour view
The view from our living room!