Western Balkans Part VI : Croatia 🇭🇷

Today we have the last border crossing of the Intrepid trip – a few hours drive from Kotor to Dubrovnik. The coastal drive along the Montenegrin and Croatian coastline is stunning and it’s not long til we get our first view of the city of Dubrovnik:

With our guide Bashkim:

We’re staying in Lapad which is about a fifteen minute bus journey from Dubrovnik old town. We drop our bags and are anxious to get into town as we need to see as much as possible in one day. We have a 1-day Dubrovnik card which gets us 24 hours travel on the bus and entry to walk the walls and some other museums. We arrive into the pedestrianised area within the walls:

From above you can see the large water fountain which I promptly fill my water bottle from.. yes that big round thing has water fountains all the way around!

We start by walking the walls which provides so many good views from different perspectives:

I was afraid this very popular town might not live up to the hype but I’m really thrilled to be here and it certainly lives up to its reputation.

Although it’s a lot busier here than anywhere we’ve been, we’re lucky that it’s not too overrun with hordes and we walk around in relative comfort.

The views are amazing every each way you look… this is the view over to Fort Lovrijenac which we’ll climb to the top of later:

We’re so lucky the rain has held off and it’s sunny as we complete the full walk (about 2kms) of the walls.

We spend the afternoon walking around the old town which has cool narrow side streets with lots of restaurants, bars, cafes, museums and souvenir shops but there are also lots of homes here.

We even stop for a little refreshment and we can sit outside on the steps:

Game of Thrones is popular around here!! We see people walking around with bags from the “official merchandise” shop! I’ve never seen it but I do know some scenes were filmed here in Dubrovnik. Apparently these steps were in a scene:

St Blaise is the patron saint of Dubrovnik and he is everywhere…. Whether it’s a statue or a painting he is easy to recognize as he’s holding the walled city of Dubrovnik in his hand.

We visit the cathedral which has relics of St Blaise which we visit for €3 in the Reliquiary Treasury behind the alter. No photos allowed but below gives you an idea of what we saw… I particularly “liked” his left arm as you could actually see the bone!! I also had a flashback of queueing up in my local church, in the early 80’s, to have my throat blessed as he’s also the patron saint of sore throats! I wonder does that still happen.

There are many churches within the walls including the Dubrovnik cathedral and the Church of St Blaise.

We check out the Rectors palace which is now the Museum of Dubrovnik and I see an unusual looking bust of Cleopatra from the 5th century

As we make our way toward the main gate there’s a Franciscan monastery, built in the 14th century, with a lovely cloister. On one side of the cloister there is an exhibit of the original pharmacy with journals of drugs and implements for measuring doses etc.

We leave the walled city and head across to climb to the top of Fort Lovrijenac:

Looking back to the walled city from Fort Lovrijenac:

We head back to Lapad for our final dinner with our group and you’ll never guess what I have again… chevapi although in Croatia it’s chevapcici! I can’t get enough of it!

Next morning it’s one last look at this beautiful city before we pick up a car and head further up the coast