Monday, November 13, 2017
Day 24,
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Today is
a port that both Val and I have really been looking forward to. We are visiting Dubrovnik, Croatia and will be exploring on our own. The
big attraction is the historic walled old city area.
When I
got up this morning I was a very happy person as I had slept all night with no
bouts of coughing. We got up around
8:00 and when we looked outside it was very dark and overcast, but not
raining. The shuttles were
waiting as we walked off the ship and after a short wait, we
were on our way to the Walled City of Dubrovnik.
As we
drove through the city we could see what looked like a huge castle ahead of us,
but as we passed by we could see it was the outer wall of the Old City. It was much larger than I expected and very
impressive. The shuttle dropped us off
outside the wall and we made our way to the main gate called the Pile Gate, which is one
of several gates to the city. After
walking through the gate, you enter into a plaza with a wide walkway called Stradun (Placa Street) leading across the city. There are also many streets and narrow alleys
that wind their way through the city.
The streets leading off to the left of Stradun are uphill and
require climbing many steps.
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| From the outside, it looks like a castle, but those are the city walls. |
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| Pile, the main gate into the walled city. |
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| Stradun (Placa Street) |
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| Narrow streets and alleys led off the Placa Street. |
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| We were surprised to see Christmas decorations. |
Val had
read about a type of jewelry called konavle buttons that are unique to Croatia so her first goal
was to visit shops that sold that type of jewelry.
The street she was looking for was called Od Puca, which she had found in
her research to be the best place to find the jewelry she was looking for. We found the street and started looking at
the various shops. She found something
she really liked in the first one, but wanted to see what else was available so
we walked on down the street checking out other shops before returning to the
first one to make her purchases. The Old
City is not very big inside the wall so it was only about a half mile walk from
one end to the other.
While
Val was picking out what she wanted I wandered around a bit and then it started
to rain. We were prepared and I already
had my rain jacket on, but I decided to wait in the store as it started to come
down pretty hard. Val had picked the
perfect time to make her purchases because by the time she found what she wanted
and also found some Christmas gifts for others, the rain had let up.
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| After the deluge. |
Shopping
done, our next order of business was to go up on the wall and walk around the
perimeter of the city. One bad thing
about the rain was that it had left the streets very wet and slippery as the
cobblestones and pavers were very smooth.
We had a travel book by Rick Stevens who is a well known travel expert
and he had recommended entering the wall at the Ploce Gate, not the main
gate. Try as we might we could not find
the access point. There is a charge to
walk on the wall so access is controlled and you have to buy tickets before you
can go up. We climbed many flights of
stairs and walked around outside the wall, but could not find the entrance.
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| In our search for Ploce Gate access point we went up a lot of stairs ... |
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| and back down again. |
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| We did find the Ploce Gate, which led out to the harbor, but no access point to the wall. |
Finally,
Val said I could go on my own as she was not walking up and down more slippery
streets or stairways. I reluctantly
agreed and we decided to meet at the main gate in two hours. After continuing my futile search for the
ticket office I finally gave up and headed for the main gate where I knew
there was a ticket office.
I found
the ticket office, bought my ticket and after a climb up a long flight of
stairs, I was on the wall. As I walked
along the wall the views of the Old City, the town and the harbor where
amazing. It was well worth the effort
and even though the elevation changed quite a bit and there were numerous
flights of stairs to go up and down it was not too strenuous. I took numerous pictures some of which you
can see below.
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| I gave up my search for the Ploce access and returned to the main gate where I climbed the stairs to the wall. |
While I was walking the wall, Val was exploring and taking photos of the city on her own.
I
finished the walk back where I started and made my way back down to the main
gate where I was to meet Val. I was a
half hour early, but Val was already there and while I was on the wall, she had
been exploring and doing a bit more shopping. She had bought a ring that had to be resized
so our first order of business was to pick that up. We were both hungry so we looked for a café
to have some lunch.
We found
a little café on one of the small side streets and decided to eat there. We both had a pasta dish and they were both
very good; Val particularly liked hers.
We noticed on this cruise that the big meal of the day in Europe is often eaten at
what we call lunch and today was like that so we probably won’t be hungry for
dinner tonight. After lunch we started
back towards the main square, but made a stop for some ice cream for desert.
After
finishing the ice cream, we wandered back to the main gate and started back
towards the spot where the shuttle would pick us up. We did a little more exploring and picture
taking, but we finally were on the shuttle and on our way back to the
ship. Despite the early rain, the
weather had turned out to be pretty nice.
It wasn’t cold and while the sun didn’t shine, we could see spots of
blue sky. This was a wonderful day and I
think we both could spend a lot more time in Dubrovnik.
After
getting back on the ship and relaxing a bit, I decided to get right to the blog
so I didn’t forget anything today. We
sailed away at 5:00 and unfortunately it was already dark. Val and I went up on the Lido Deck thinking
that maybe we would see the Old City Wall, but we were too far away and there
wasn’t enough light; I would love to do a sail away when it was still light.
Val and
I weren’t very hungry tonight since we had eaten a large meal for lunch so we had a snack in the Neptune Lounge before finishing our night
in the casino. After the casino we
returned to our room and were shocked to find that we were losing another hour
of sleep tonight. We didn’t expect that
and we are now ten hours ahead of California.
Tomorrow
is our first port in Greece and we have a tour scheduled for first thing in the
morning so that means we will be getting up quite early, especially when you consider the
clocks being set ahead an hour. The
weather forecast is once again for rain, but we are hoping that it turns out as
well as today did
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