Slept lightly and were awake well before our alarm which was set to go off at 6am. Up and off to the bus-terminal 10 minutes’ walk away. The bus for Dubrovnik left at 6.45am, drove along the coast for 10mins then onto the ferry to take us the short trip to the mainland. Onto the mainland coastal road and a good drive to Dubrovnik, where we arrived at 9.30am. As usual, greeted at the depot by a few accommodation touts. We weren’t keen to stay in the bus station suburb 2-3km away from the Old Town, where most of the accommodation is, so accepted an offer to look at a room within the Old Town after haggling over the price for a bit.
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| Pile Gate into Dubrovnik Old Town |
Onto the local bus to the town walls, met by the tout’s brother Edi and taken 1 minute’s walk to his house right on the waterfront. Just couldn’t do better than this. Haggled again for a good rate for a “room with a view” and got him down to 260 Kuna instead of 300 Kuna, and for a better room too. Have a gorgeous view over a little pirate bay, right beside the city walls and looking out onto a secondary fort just to our right. Am tapping away while I listen to the sea outside
J. The owner has just extended his wireless to cover our floor.
We have used the laptop so much. It’s a step up in grunt from a netbook but only about the same size (11.6” screen) and weight (1500g). It’s been great for sorting transport (traveller forums are a far better source of info than the locals), sights, the blog of course, and work (which I have to do tomorrow).
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| The Stradun (main street), Dubrovnik |
Munched down a quick breakfast then had a very quick recce inside the town walls, decided we were far too warmly dressed (after our early start) so bought some bread and went back to our room for lunch and stripped down. John sneezing abominably the whole day again but much less coughing. He is rather sick of it all – to say the least. Back to explore within the town walls. Found out that a 24hr Dubrovnik Pass provides much better value for viewing the museums/walking the town walls/free bus pass than paying for everything individually. The only catch is you have to use it within 24hrs and can’t spread it out over a few days. A number of the museums/galleries are closed today (Monday) so we’ve decided to kick off the pass on Wed morn.
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| St Saviour's interior |
While the weather is so fantastic, we thought we would do the hike up to the top of the hill above the town tomorrow morning (John’s cold permitting). There is a gondola which goes up but we figure we could use the exercise and have plenty of time on our hands. We are here for 4 days and want to get out and about as much as we can. We’ve generally been walking for a couple of hours each day on our general explorations but would prefer to do more. Having said that, after wandering around the streets within the town walls today for an hour we picked up an ice-cream and then some beer and headed down to the little jetty straight below our room and sat in the sun for an hour and read.
It’s actually really nice having a few days off research for the book. Virtually every place we have been to so far has been at least partly for the book, and we have concentrated on searching out museums, taking useful photos, talking to local people etc. etc. Our time in Dubrovnik will be ours to do what we want with, hence the plan to find time for more exercise and just cruise in an absent minded “tourist” way.
Had an excellent dinner tonight at one of the 50 odd konoba. An very tall American-speaking waiter who was particularly friendly. Had to send Karen’s undercooked risotto back, but it was superb on its return. Almost embarrassed ourselves. We had run down our kuna rather too much, and after paying for dinner were down to the grand sum of $3.50. Time to visit a hole in the wall.
