Dubrovnik - by the cliff by the sea
"The Pearl of the Adriatic" is one of the names Dubrovnik boasts. A small city with a population just above 40.000, but during summer I have a feeling just as many swedes visit the city, and there are plenty of other tourists as well.
As our guide told us, during winter she can walk the main street in the old city and just barely see 7-8 people, while during summer there can easily be 7-8000 on the same stretch. Dubrovniks old town is it's by far largest magnet, attracting tourists in the thousands, and the numbers are still increasing with about 10% every year. The fact that it's been used as King's Landing in Game Of Thrones doesn't put a break in the steady stream either.
The city walls stretches almost 2km, although it really didn't feel that long when we were up there. The cost to get up is 100 kuna (about €14), and everyone is willing to pay it.We arrived in Dubrovnik around mid day, but the threat of thundershowers made us go directly into the city instead of walking the wall after our guided tour three hours later as the initial plan had been. The rain started dripping quite fast after we got up there, and within some hundred meeters the lightning and thunder was upon us. Packing a raincoat had been a good idea, and I was happy to stay on the wall and take photos for as long as we could. Most of the group had left us, but knowing the meeting point and time for the guided tour was all I really needed. We did however come to a bypass where the tour guide was waiting for us, the others had found shelter at a local waterhole - or rather winehole to be spesific.
As we could get down from the wall at a few places and then continue from the same place later the same day, it became obvious that we really should get down. Having lightning hit the courtyard about 30meters from us was also a good sign that it was time to seek shelter. The very heavy rain poured down for about 1,5 hours, and after it stopped it quickly became very hot and dry again, and we could enter the wall and fulltill our wall walk before the guided tour.
The next day there were nothing planned other than the farewell dinner at night. I went back to the old town along with another of the travellers to continue looking at museums as we'd bought a package-ticket the first day with enterance to 9 of the towns various museums. Our first stop was the Ethnographic museum which was a very pleasant surprise. The rain started more or less when we left the buss this day, so we had to run through the streets that was almost getting flooded before we got to the museum. On the main floor it was a strange exhibition of the pagan religion, along with stories of their main characters, but also stories and information on their scare-stories to keep children away from wells and other potential dangerous places. These stories always have a similarity to other pagan religions, but I still find them very interresting and entertaining.
The farewell dinner was held at a resturant that had mexican and pizza, there are apparently very few places serving mexican in Croatia, and it was indeed very strange. Nothing like I've had before when ordering mexican at least. All but one of the group met for dinner and they a drink before we said goodbye and left for our own corners of the world. I had very much enjoyed this kind of trip as it opened some cultural doors I wouldn't have been able to find myself, such as the BBQ at the guide from Sarajevos summer house, the many local resturants and the maybe not so important croatian words. Jazarvac!
Post title references the japanese movie "Ponyo by the cliff by the sea", which has nothing to do with the city. Game of Thornes (as written earlier) does however as several scenes are filmed here.
