Dubrovnik

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So far, not the biggest fan of Dubrovnik. I’m waiting for a bus to go back to Split and just went to the bathroom before starting this blog. When I came out, a woman told me that I had to pay 3 Kuna to use the bathroom… It’s not much money but I can’t believe they made me pay. I guess they frequently make you pay to use the bathroom in transport stations in Europe, but my experiences in Dubrovnik can almost be summarized by that story.

While the city is absolutely beautiful, it is entirely overrun with tourists (in the Old City, the part that you go to Dubrovnik for), overpriced (compared to other places in Croatia), and tacky. They even charge you to walk the walls. I’ve been to a lot of walled cities since I came to Europe and this is the first that charged for it. I also think that Emma and I and the others staying at the hostel were the only ones in between 10 and 40 in the entire city. I probably would like Dubrovnik more if I had left the Old City and seen other parts that locals go to, but you come to see the historic parts.

I’ll start from the beginning:

We were driven from Split to Brac by the owner of one of the hostels in Dubrovnik, on the other side of town from the Old Town. He was from Dubrovnik and had a great knowledge of the history of the area and shared personal experiences of his time during the wars. This was absolutely irreplaceable. We also made two stops along the way: the first at a small stand where a man sold homemade fruit brandy (bought a bottle of lemon) and the second at a stand where you could buy freshly caught oysters and mussels. Apparently, according to our guide, this was the only place in Europe to get actual European oysters. I guess they all used to be of this species, then died out and were replaced with Japanese oysters. They tasted about the same to me but looked very different.

We arrived at the hostel to a very warm greeting from his mother, a welcome beverage and a pastry meat pie that was local to the area. The hostel was nice but there were only about four people staying there, so we decided to stay one night and move to another hostel in the Old Town the next night. We spent our evening exploring the Old Town and getting a great seafood dinner of squid, mussels, prawns and fish.

The next morning, we packed up and went to our new hostel. There were already more people around looking for things to do. We had planned to go to a nearby island called Lokrum and invited our new friends James (New Zealand) and Alex (North Carolina/Colombia) to join us. We grabbed split up to grab some snacks and made for the boat, all but Alex who was left behind to sadly watch us pull away.

The island was beautiful. Someone had imported peacocks that had pretty much taken over. There was a small salt-water lake where we spent time eating our lunch and taking a nap in the sun. We then set off to explore the rest of the island that supposedly had a purple cave, but ended up finding only a nudist beach by the time the last boat came, so we headed back.

Emma and I split off from James and decided to walk the walls. This costs about €7, but is worth it. The views of the city were absolutely incredible (see my facebook for pictures). We made our way back to the hostel where we found Alex, James and some other girls and invited them to a cliffside bar on the sea, simply called “Cold Drinks”. The drinks were expensive, as expected, but the view was well worth it and the company was great.

We returned to our hostel and had a welcome beverage, a shot of some local Croatian liquor that every hostel seems to give out. We had happy hour at the hostel and made our way for some dinner. By “some dinner”, I mean an amazing seafood feast that we all shared. We had mussels, seafood risotto, and small fried fishes, like whitebait. The dinner was delicious and shared with good company.

After dinner, Alex, James and I went to see The Toasters, an American ska band, perform. Two of the members had come into our hostel earlier in the day to advertise and I had discovered that they were on my Ipod. We went to the show and laughed at all the Croatians dancing to the ska music. After the show was over we hung out with the guys from the band a bit and headed home. On the way home we ran into some drunk Albanians who were friendly to James, the New Zealander, but did not hold back on telling me that they thought Americans were trying to take over. Naturally, when I am drunk at 3 am and haven’t been in my country for a few months, this sort of comment is going to make me angry. We left the Albanians and James and I discussed American politics the whole way home, continuing loudly in the hostel for all of the sleeping people to hear. Oh, fun times in Croatia.

The next morning a very hungover Alex and Erin woke up a non-hungover Emma to get some pasta and catch a bus to Split. We had a delicious lunch that helped to kill the hangover and made our way to the station, where I started this blog.

While Dubrovnik was not my favorite place in Croatia, after going through this blog I realize that I had some really great times there. I would recommend going, but avoid the tour groups and bring really good people.

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