Monday 17th Dubrovnik

We woke really early – before sunrise, so watched the hills of the Dalmatian coast appear as it got light.  And then we were out on the verandah as we sailed into. 

Dubrovnik has been on my “wish to visit” list for 20 years, so I was full of anticipation as we arrived.  Because I really wanted to know more about the place we’d opted for a 3 ½ hour guided tour with individual radios to listen to our guide. 

Our guide was a fellow apparently in his late 70s who lives in the old city and was so knowledgeable.  His mix of historic cultural and religious information interspersed with personal anecdotes about the various cultures of the region and living through the wars that occurred at the break up of the former Yugoslavia.  While not a cheap excursion I am so pleased we did it, as it has filled in lots of areas of ignorance for me.  And a city that I wanted to see exceeded my expectations. 

One of the most interesting things was that while all the history books had Dubrovnik commencing at around the C7^th AD, quite recent archaeological diggings beneath the city’s cathedral has revealed that it is built on top of a C6^th church.  And not just any church.  This C6^th church is the same size as the current cathedral.   And apparently the rules about the size of cathedrals then (& perhaps now – not sure) is that they must be big enough to fit 1/3^rd of the town’ population in when they are commenced.  So in the C6^th Dubrovnik was a large and prosperous town.

We loved the area so much that rather than taking the bus back to the ship at the end of our tour we stayed on for a few hours wandering and just absorbing the beauty and history of the place.  We had lunch & a few beers in a delightful street about 2M wide, overlooked by 5 story buildings – enjoying the breeze, as it was quite warm.

We also chose to take the cable car up to the top of the very steep mountain directly behind the town.  Well worth it & Rhonda has some photos which really give a great perspective of the place.  What was also really striking from up on the mountain is how desolate the region is – steep rocky mountains that appear to sustain little beyond stubby grasses and small stunted pine trees.  Very inhospitable.

We’d got quite hot in the sun, so decided not to walk the 3 Kms back to the ship, but took a Eu10 cab ride back.  I realized that this was the 1^st cab ride we’d had for the trip to date.

We had time for a shower and then up on deck to watch up pull out of port and head south.  We stayed out on deck until we could barely see the land & then headed in for dinner. 

All up a great day.