Blogs from Dubrovnik, Dalmatia, Croatia, Europe

Diversion "Ladies and Gentlemen," said the raspy voice from the flight deck. "This is your captain speaking. Due to high winds at Dubrovnik Airport we have no choice but to divert to Split. Coaches will be available to take you onwards to Dubrovnik. Sorry for the inconvenience." I rolled my eyes at Michael, who nodded in acceptance. "Bloody hell," I said. "So much for saving time by going by plane. Now we'll have a four-hour coach journey." Michael said nothing and turned to stare out of the window. "Aren't you bothered?" I asked. "Yeah. But what can we do?" I closed my book and looked at my watch. With a bit of luck, we'd be in Dubrovnik by midnight. Split Split airport spat us out into a terminal full of confused passengers. As well as ... read more

Day 5 The next morning we were up and out and homeward bound. Well, not completely homeward, our final destination was Dubrovnik. To get there we had to return the hire car to Herceg Novi, get the cross border bus, negotiate our way from the bus station into Dubrovnik and then find our lodgings. Easy. And so it was. The car we dropped off in a car park right next to the car hire place; we then walked up the hill into Herceg Novi and had a spot of lunch in the Trg Nikole Durkovica square and finally headed to a café on Njegoseva, which has wonderful views of the water, and rested there for a while before heading up a further hill to the bus station. We bought our tickets ... read more

There is not really to much to say about life at the Villa. It’s pretty much 10 days of “same old, same old” but it’s a tough life that someone has to do once in a while. So where is the villa ? Well, Omis is only about 25 – 30 km South of Split but it is about a 45 minute drive. Continue through Omis for about another 8 to 10 km and the highway passes through the village of Stanici and our landmark here for finding the villa is the Sunset Apartments. (Try a Google Maps query of Stanici, if you zoom in to about a 200 m scale you’ll see the Sunset Apts noted on the map) About 100 meters along, continuing sort of South-east and the steps to the villa from the ... read more

Dubrovnik I had booked my accomodation through a new travellers website and was surprised yhe owner offered to pick me up from the Dubrovnik port. Especially as I had only paid 15€ for a single private bedroom with shared bathroom and kitchen. We arrived to the spacious 3 bedroom house which is situated on the very top of the hill surrounding Dubrovnik and we sat down on the outside balcony which looked out over the entire harbour and surrounding islands. The owner wad delightful and very helpful with maps and a list of places to see and I was happy to put my bag down and deal with my bed bug issues after I had had a long relaxed skype with Mum and Dad. I also messaged Mikaela and Aaron who were due to get into ... read more

It just occurred to me that for the first half of this trip, we chose places with some pretty heavy recent histories: Russia, Estonia, and Croatia. I can easily remember when massive changes happened that have dramatically shaped each country in the last twenty years or so. In Russia and Estonia, it was pretty amazing to see and experience those changes through discussion with locals, checking out the various architectural styles, etc. Despite the fact that Dubrovnik was shelled hard during the Croat-Serb civil war, this is not where one goes for an exposure to recent Croatian history. For a view into a much older time period though, say 14th century, this is the place. To me growing up, any mention of Dubrovnik conjured up images of the infamous limestone protective wall that rises up from ... read more