Friday 28th October 2022

Friday 28th October 2022
Well, this morning we woke up in Croatia. We travelled for 12 hours overnight on the ferry from Bari in Italy to Dubrovnik in Croatia. We now begin another adventure. We both slept well last night on the boat and were grateful for our cabin.

After disembarking at about 8.30am, we hired an Uber to get us to our hire car. We hired with Sixt this time and their office was in the fancy Rixos Hotel about a 10min drive away. After collecting the car, checking it over and sitting in it for a while as David wasn’t feeling up to getting started. It is always difficult to get moving in a new country, with new signs, a new language and a different vehicle. I booked the same car as we had in Italy, but as always they say a particular car or similar. This time we got a Peugeot 208, unfortunately, it is a little bigger making driving a bit more difficult. Oh well. Here goes.

We managed to make it to the supermarket without too much difficulty. A shame we can’t say that for the shopping experience. Another country, another language and different grocery packaging, makes for a very slow shop which ended up costing us 4 euro for parking. Oh well. We will eat healthy for the next couple of days. We had to replenish the essential things like oil plus a normal 3 day shop as we only had minimal left from Italy.

We then headed to our accommodation. This was a little apartment in a good location. About 10 min walk from the Old Town and also a beach. As always, this means narrow streets, minimal parking and a big headache. After much manoeuvring David managed to park, too close to the car next door for comfort but it was what had to be done. Fingers crossed we will have no damage tomorrow.

After lunch and a rest, we headed out for a walk. Dubrovnik is well known for its magnificent Old Town that is encircled with massive stone walls completed in the 16th century. These ancient City walls with their intricate and complex system of forts, bastions, towers and detached forts are quite amazing with the most incredible views. The city walls are the most important feature of Dubrovnik and a world renowned iconic symbol of the white stone beauty and they are the main reason why Dubrovnik is now known as the Pearl of the Adriatic. The characteristic appearance of Dubrovnik is unmistakable as no other city in the world has retained their medieval walls so perfectly and that is why Dubrovnik is included in the World Heritage List from UNESCO as far back as 1970.

Most of the buildings have had their tile roofs replaced due to the whole town being bombed in 1991. You can see the new roofs are the vibrant colour and there are very few of the older ones left.  We enjoyed a walk on the wall for a couple of hours, enjoying the view, experiencing in your mind the feelings you would have had defending your people from intrusion. It was such a magnificent structure, its size and position on the water’s edge as always making it difficult to penetrate. As always, I struggle to understand how they managed to build such enormous walls, so long ago.

The town has also been made famous from the TV series “A Game of Thrones”. You can even do a Game of Thrones tour.