Day 22 - Dubrovnik, Croatia

So we woke up at 4:30am and caught a 30 min cab ride to the airport (public transit wasn’t fully running at 5am). We arrived at the airport to find our flight was delayed until 10 (and later was delayed even longer). We are now 2 for 2 with Sky Europe in long flight delays. What should have been a full day in Dubrovnik with a 9am arrival turned out to be a partial day with the mid-afternoon arrival.

All of the pictures you see of Dubrovnik are of Old Town. It is a small city surrounded by huge fortified walls on the coast (like a huge castle). The city is entirely pedestrian, and to enter the city, you must walk through one of two castle drawbridges. The city got shelled heavily in 1991 and 1992 by Serbian war ships and artillery, however the city has rebuilt itself and gone through an astonishing resurgence.

We chose to stay up on the hill just outside of Old Town so we could have a view of the city and Adriatic Sea below. It was a 3 bedroom house owned by an old man named Josep. The only downside – 250+ steps to climb to get to our place! We both thought we were going to faint while climbing all of those steps with our luggage in the heat. Once we got there, Josep greeted us with welcome beers in our fridge (however, all we wanted at that point was water!). The view was sweet . . . seeing the city below from our balcony was quite the site (we'll post pics from the balcony in a later blog post).

We were quite tired from our early morning wake-up and the climb, so we briefly toured the town, snapped some pictures, and sat down for a seafood dinner outside in the square before heading to bed.

This is Placa, Dubrovnik's main street for processions and festivals, as well as for shopping and strolling: