Wednesday, August 17- First Day in Dubrovnik

 

It was wonderful to be in Dubrovnik again- it was probably one of the best trips Ron and I had made, back in 2009.  Thanks to the popularity of Game of Thrones and the proliferation of mega-cruise ships, Dubrovnik was now overrun with far more tourists than I remembered.  Ron and I had stayed at the Hilton very close to the city gates; the tour group stayed at the Kompas, a nice hotel but an hour’s walk from the city gates.  We took a public bus into town in the morning and it was pretty miserable- jammed with other tourists, of course, no A/C, hard to breathe if you were wearing an N95 mask (we were, most people were not).   I walked back to the hotel at the end of the day.  That was a far nicer choice!

The city walls were spectacular- that hadn’t changed.

St. Blaise, the city's patron saint.

On the previous trip Ron and I had kayaked around there walls and I went swimming every day in the small bay at the top of the picture.  Note the kayaks in the other bay.