This post is proud to introduce the third and final member of the Balkanopoulos adventure team - Leo Drinias who spent the last two days travelling from Sydney to Doha to Frankfurt to Dubrovnik to arrive the day before Paris and I on Mon 13 June 2022.
Dubrovnik (Pop 42,615) is a city in southern Croatia fronting the Adriatic Sea. It's known for its distinctive Old Town, encircled with massive stone walls completed in the 16th century. Its well-preserved buildings range from baroque St. Blaise Church to Renaissance Sponza Palace and Gothic Rector’s Palace, now a history museum. Paved with limestone, the pedestrianized Stradun (or Placa) is lined with shops and restaurants.
Dubrovnik New Town (City) would NEVER have been built here if it weren’t for the Old Town founded in the 7th Century by nomads. This is because New Town is built along a narrow steep valley at considerable cost – that Old Town is what paid for it all with the massive tourism it attracts each year. Not only did it withstand that test of time but even survived a major earthquake in 1667 and Napoleon in 1806 !!!
Dubrovnik Old Town (PROSECO protected) is the quintessential walled fortress-town and clearly the best preserved and most impressive of all the Old Towns we have seen to date in Croatia. Large but easy to see on the inside but the wall on the outside is another story – 1,940 metres and 1,080 steps all the way around and in 32C heat it is the best way to lose weight and collapse !!! Honestly I do not know how people walk this wall during August !!! Nevertheless, walking the wall is a MUST DO. The Old Town’s best kept secret is the RECTOR’S PALACE, the residence of the ruler and most clocks in it are frozen at 5:45am which is the exact time that Napoleon invaded the town in 1806 – similar to the frozen clock in Kalavrita Greece when the Nazis executed most males in WWII.
Paris, Leo and I also took a
9hr day long cruise of the 3 best local islands: Koločep, Lopud, Šipan –
another MUST DO given the crystal clear waters for swimming, fresh grilled
mackerel and unlimited local wine all for 75AUD !!! We also visited the nearby
13min away island of Lokrum where I swam 2.2km amongst some of the biggest
sunken boulders I have seen to date. The show stopper however was the DOLPHIN that swam alongside our boat for a few minutes - completely unplanned and a surprise - even to the crew !!!
Our only incident in this great city was our first auto-machine-dispensed coffee in a small supermarket. The flat white showed a full cup of coffee and all we got was a 20% cup fill and refused to pay for it given the photo – we chucked a Michael Douglas in Falling Down and did not pay but were kicked out of the shop !!!
Food here was terrific. The
mixed grills are very popular but my favourite was the Croatian equivalent of
French Ratatouille or Greek Briam – a medley of veggies steamed and then flash
fried in olive oil – soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside – what a
treat !!! The local beer is also heavily leaned towards LAGER and quite refreshing. Paris ignored all of this and chose the CANDY STORE in the Old Town has his favourite food - see photo.
The highlight for me was the birds eye view of the Old Town from Imperial Lookout – I had to manufacture the Dag Dance Picture from two separate shots to enable Paris and Leo to appear – they refused to go anywhere near the edge !!!
Enjoy classic Croatian Dubrovnik, “the pearl of the Adriatic”...
DUBROVNIK:
THE ISLANDS:
FOOD:
THE FIRST BUT NOT THE LAST !!!
No comments:
Post a Comment