Doviđenja Dubrovnik

 As I said in my last post, we spent our last full day in Dubrovnik seeing the sights in the Old Town and climbing the walls, quite literally.  We broke all of the walkings and "seeings" up with a mid-day kayak session so that we could beat the crowds and the heat, both of which were stifling and overbearing!  We had been warned ahead of time that not one, not two, but THREE cruise ships full of tourists would be hitting the tiny, compact city center starting sometime around 10 am so we made sure that our tour started before that happened and we would be on the water when the center was unmanageable. 

Since we were staying right in the heart of the city center, we actually had to leave Old Town to meet our guide and then have her walk us right back to where we started from.  This time she imparted her knowledge of the buildings that we had been wandering amongst for the past 3 days.  She told us a bit of the history of the town that used to be known as The Republic of Ragusa located within the Kingdom of Dalmatia until 1918.  With the fall of Austria-Hungary in that year, the area officially became part of the newly formed Yugoslavia, and from there it changed hands a few times until Yugoslavia split apart and fought a years-long war amongst itself.  Peace was restored in late 1992 and Dubrovnik, having been severely damaged in the war, underwent almost 5 years of reconstruction to repair the center to its former glory per UNESCO guidelines.  Today, you can still see a few scars (the red-tiled rooftops are new, the paler tan are original).  Mainly, all I saw was the beauty of the city and its fabulous, friendly citizens.

 The church on the left was right outside of our window (across the street), and if we looked to the left, we saw the clock tower and north entrance.

 

 The orange chairs were stacked up outside our doors each morning before the restaurants opened.  The left is one of the few staircases that you could climb to enter the city walls.

 I snapped a few pictures while waiting for our tour to start...Not too shabby of a view, huh?

I didn't take many pictures on tour - mainly because I had already taken the photos at other points during our trip, but I did snap this one of two cute girls enjoying their daily gelato just afterward... 

After the gelato, it was time for some pizza!  We took it back to our hotel, ate it leisurely and changed into our swimsuits.  We hit our kayak tour just in time and then came back to the hotel once again to clean up.  Ready for adventure once again, and with the cruise ships having been reboarded or having left port, we were ready to walk the walls.

 Entering the walls.  MadHatter had been told earlier that morning by our guide that there were 800 stairs in the walls.  She set out to count each one...

 The Stradun (main street).  Our hotel is by the clock tower at the end, on the left.

 The walls of Dubrovnik are over 2 km (1.2 miles) around and contain over 800 stairs (as I said before).  They are cited as one of the greatest fortification systems of the Middle Ages as the walls have never been breached by a hostile army.  The walls were mostly constructed in the 14th and 15th centuries though the building continued up until the 17th century.  Famous in their own right, they have become more famous in the past few years as the show Game of Thrones uses them as the location for Kings Landing (and if you are a watcher of the show, most of Dubrovnik is featured in some way on the show by my understanding).  I don't watch the show so I am no expert, but I do know that the views from up on the wall were magnificent.

 Another hotel swimming hole attached to the walls.

 New roof on the left, old on the right.

 What do you do with your old guillotine?  Make it part of your garden, of course.

  We made it down just in time to see the changing of the guard.

As to the number of stairs MadHatter counted on our walk - 801!  With all of that climbing up and down, we were famished (the kayaking probably contributed also) so we sat for a nice dinner while we listened to the wedding and party at the church next door and then headed back to our hotel.  We had an early start in the morning as we had to head back to Munich.  But just because it was early didn't mean that I couldn't snap a few more photos as we headed to our taxi.

 I got one final photo of the sun coming up over the walled city before we made our way to the airport and our awaiting flight.  I am so glad that we completed our tour of Croatia (from top to bottom and capital to coast) with this gem!  Truly one of a kind!