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Published: October 6th 2010
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First stop...Croatia.
Blake and I set off at a lame 4.30am from Carey Gardens Studios in Battersea to Gatwick Airport on Monday 4th
October 2010 - with no more than a backpack each, 2 hours sleep and adventure on our minds! Issue one..there's always an initial glitch, ours just happened to be our mini cab driver and his apparent death wish. A rainy, early morning probably didn't help the situation but when one doesn't check blind spots, ones car may generally eventually collide with another car or object!...Thankfully we didn't...missed by an inch. Slightly shaken, we arrived at the airport and went through our usual migrant strip search with ease.
Landing in Dubrovnik, we were met by Kate, the other half of Ivan of "Villa Ivan" - where we were to call home for the next few nights. Driving through the weaving mountains, we were a little reminded of Hawaii, volcanic looking hills and rocky cliff faces, crystal water...getting to the accommodation however, we were quickly reminded of how good we had it in Hawaii and realised this was in fact, not Hawaii.
The accommodation wasn't bad, just basic and Ivan and Kate so far have been very
hospitable. The view was amazing which made up for the breakfast - you could say it was fairly Spartan but none the less free and filling, bread and cheese anyone? Dubrovnik is a really beautiful place...when it doesn't rain. This presented glitch number two. A little rain never hurt anyone right? No, but a thunder storm and power cut certainly might inhibit. So with nothing else to do, we slept. Not much else to do but sleep in a power cut. A well deserved 14 hour rest and new power supply we were ready to hit the 'Old Town' again.
We hitched a reasonably priced ride up the newly refurbished cable cars for a breathtaking view of the Old Town of Dubrovnik, crystal clear Adriatic Sea, and the numerous islands. The original 1969 cable car system was destroyed during the War of Independence from 1991-1995. In the years leading up to the war, the Dubrovnik Cable Car was always enthusiastically used by more than 2,5 million visitors who wanted to enjoy the most beautiful panoramic view. On a clear day, you can see up to 60 km (37 miles). For this reason the neighboring fort Imperial was strategically built
on this privileged spot, back in the early 19th century. We perused the Fort Imperial, the symbol of the defence of Dubrovnik and a central target during the war. It's always difficult to imagine that such a touristy and quite beautiful place, was ravaged by war not more than 15 years ago. To imagine some of the young Croats of similar age to us, walking around Dubrovnik as possibly having lived amongst the rubble as young children - is just mind boggling. Its a very surreal place and at times eery. I imagine not a lot of tourists that visit Croatia even realise the turmoil that took place here such a short time ago, but by the time they leave it's difficult to forget it.
The Fort Imperial was really quite an eye opening place to visit, only 2 euros for the both of us it is well worth a visit. Lots of weapons and memorabilia from he War of independence and some footage taken of the very sight that we were standing on, you can even still see bullet holes and crumbling fixtures inside and out. I think the helmet with 8 bullet holes was most effective for
me. For Blake, I think the footage was fairly shocking.
There was no mistaking the view though, amazing even on an overcast day.
Back down we went to the "Old Town", the original area of Dubrovnik built in the 13th century and remains almost untouched to the present day. In 1991, after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the beginning of the War of independence, it was besieged by Serb-Montenegrin forces for 7 months and heavily damaged by shelling. Some of this damage is still visible but mostly it has been transformed to its original state, quite an impressive looking village. Dubrovnik has been referred to as the "jewel of the Adriatic Sea." A quote that rang true after our visit up to the walls of Dubrovnik, we were literally sitting on top of the city over looking the ocean with not another piece of land in sight for miles. Absolutely postcard stuff. The stairs were worth the climb up.
The rest of Dubrovnik is laid out on hilly surroundings, forcing us to work off our meals with eleventy-thousand stairs leading us to our villa. A god send as the food is enough to turn us into blobs...pizza
pasta pasta pizza..in a nutshell. By night two I'd had enough, so Wednesday we went in search of some local fodder...seafood. Once we had brushed all the damn cats off of our legs..yes Dubrovnik seems to have a lot of cats for some reason and not the pretty little house bound cats we are all used to, street wise, mob-like cats with scarred eyes and attitudes. The food at Lokanda, whilst recommended, was not brilliant, nor was the price. The seafood was fresh but odd - grilled prawns - was a tub of prawns soaked in garlic and something quite pungent that the cats seemed to like, not shelled we found ourselves in a matter, trying to both enjoy our food and keep the prawn juice from becoming our nightly shower.
Dinner having been done and the nightly hike up the millions of stairs also done, I find myself in my room preparing for a strange choice of journey to Mostar, Bosnia the next morning. I am hoping to find out a lot more about this the Bosnian war, I have been researching some pretty astounding statistics relating to genocide and crimes against humanity. I will try and write
a little about my findings once safely back in Dubrovnik.
Hvala! xx
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Kyle
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blog wars
great blog guys! "villa ivan" has such a nice ring to it... i picture communist era furniture and bullet holes in the walls. when we meet up in argentina it will be blog wars - see who can get the most hits. no cats to worry about in SA, just perros bravos (mean dogs). i reckon they have a taste for gringo blood. keep the blogs comin.