World Tour Stop 28 - Dubrovnik, Croatia

A short flight from Venice to Dubrovnik and the sweetest Airbnb hosts to pick us up from the airport and we arrived at our place in Lapad. Obviously staying in Old Town or right outside of Old Town would be optimal for getting around, but we opted for the 20 minute walk to save some money. Plus, Uber was pretty inexpensive so it made more sense to stay a little further out. Lapad also has a number of great restaurants and a strip along the bay that is worth checking out if you have a little extra time.

Our first day we arrived around 6 and got to our place around 7. We showered and got ready and then headed into town to visit Buza II. Buza translates to hole in the wall which is pretty accurate given that it is literally a bar built into the side of the city walls of Old Town. It looks out over the sea and has some pretty fun cliffs to jump off of and is a must visit for a beer and a view. Reminder, it is strictly a cash bar, so make sure to have that if you want to imbibe.

We then went to dinner at restaurant Komin. It was great and I highly recommend eating there. Service was amazing (we were sitting outside and it started to downpour so they gave us some Rakjia while we waited inside). The cuisine is very much Croatian cuisine (known as Dalmatian) and you should try the rooster. This restaurant is located right in the heart of Old Town so it is a bit on the pricey side as well as crowded, but we did not eat until close to 10 so it was perfect for our needs.

We of course had to check out the "steps of Baelor" or the "Shame Steps" on our walk out because Emily and I are kind of obsessed with Game of Thrones.

From here we walked through town and picked up some more Rakjia (the liquor of choice in Croatia) before heading to the club Revelin which is underground in Old Town. It's a club in a castle and is insane. It is listed as one of top clubs in the world because of the huge dance space, entertainment, number of bars and atmosphere. We went on a Tuesday and there is no way we could have handled this place on a Saturday. No pictures of the inside. but honestly, that is for the best.

The next morning was an opportunity to walk around Old Town during the daylight hours and see what everything was about. Before entering the city, there is a fort to the west side, Fort Lovrijenac, which is atop a cliff and looks down on Old Town and is where I started my self guided tour. This fort was built to defend the city roughly a millennium ago, but still stands proudly above the sea. It's about a hundred steps to get to the entrance and then about 15 USD to enter. This fort is also where a lot of King's Landing shots for Game of Thrones were shot, most of which included Cersei (Lena Heady), so I think she really got the best filming sites.

On the way to Old Town from the fort you come across the entrances that Tyrion Lannister and Davos Seaworth used to sneak into King's Landing as well as the dock the Myrcella was filmed being shipped off from. It was really cool to see all of these iconic scenes from my TV screen in real life. Plus it made this city seem even more like it was built from a storybook instead of real life.

Finally we entered Old Town! First of all, you have to walk through one of the city gates, probably the most used one is the Pile Gate which is where we always entered, but there was also the Ploca gate on the other side of the city that you could enter through.

Seriously, everyone is filtered in and out of the city in essentially single file lines. They definitely built these walls to face some attacks that we don't understand today.

Once inside I took in the number of art stalls and the daily markets that sold fruits, veggies, trinkets, clothing, etc. And I also had to go visit the shame steps in the daylight.

The first thing you see when you walk through the gate is the first bell tower and a wide road with tourist shops on both sides as well as Mount Srd looming in the background. If you go down alleyways and get yourself lost in the maze of the city you can find some great spots for pictures. Also, the boat harbor is gorgeous and you can see to the closest island, the island of Lokrum which houses one of the Iron Thrones and is where a lot of the scenes from Qarth (back to Game of Thrones, sorry) were filmed.

From here we went back to Buza bar for a cliff jump. The jump is about 25ft so smaller than the one we did in Hawaii, but a little bit more of a risk since there was a ledge you had to jump over and hope to avoid the rocks when you enter the water. Both seemed more scary when you're up there but actually we had no problem clearing either.

We walked back home, did a shower and outfit change and then had dinner and drinks in Lapad at the Cave Bar. The drinks portion was outside with beautiful but windy views, and then we walked inside to see the cave bar. This hotel was build into the side of the rock and preserved the cave that it was built on top of and you can walk out over the drop on Plexiglas. Pretty cool place to check out that is not as touristy due to the location.

After dinner and drinks we had more drinks and visited Dubrovnik BeerCo.mpany. There was the sweetest Australian shepherd there that I wanted to take home, but instead resisted and just had a flight of beer. My favorite was the stout, because I just really enjoy a good stout but I think that DBC did a good job on their Belgian style ales as well.

And we ended the night by heading to the harbor in Old Town to watch fireworks as they kicked off their 70th anniversary of Summer Fest. It was beautiful and photos of fireworks just never turn out, so you will just have to take my word for it.

The next morning we scheduled a Kayak tour with Adventure Dalmatia. This was really fun although I wish they were single kayaks instead of doubles. First, there were three of us so I went with the stranger, who happened to be a really nice kid, but still, more fun to control your own kayak. And second, two person kayaks are just harder. There's more weight and you have to be in sync to make sure you're not working against each other. Anyway, that was the only negative, otherwise it was an awesome tour. There were about 10 boats plus the guide and we kayaked all the way around Old Town to a cave, where we again did some cliff jumping. This time it was a little higher up and a more difficult climb to get to the jump point. Then we kayaked to Lokrum and then back to the bay outside of Pile Gate. All in all about 8km of kayaking over 3 hours.

After the tour we grabbed a quick bite and showered and changed again before touring the city walls. This is something you cannot miss. The entire loop of Old Town can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours depending if you're stopping for a lot of pictures or drinks or anything along the way.. The views are incredible and we took hundreds of pictures, but below is just a small sampling.

This city is just amazing and I want to live here. The people are so kind and proud of their heritage, the food and culture are wonderful and being right on the Adriatic sea with ocean, mountains, history, is all just the perfect combination. Croatia has my heart.

After the city walls tour we took the cable car up to the top of Mount Srd so we could watch the sunset over the city. Definitely recommend doing this at sunrise or sunset (and bring a jacket or a blanket because it is cold on top of the mountain). The cable car actually moves pretty quickly but there are only two cars going at any time, one going up and one going down. I think you can buy advance tickets but I don't think you can do anything to skip the line on the way back down.

I would say if you have the time and money this is another thing I wouldn't skip, but again, there is so much to pack in so if you can't make it to the top of the mountain, you can always just get a postcard. We did hear that there are option to climb to the top which takes about 2 hours, but we took the easier way. There are also ubers or vans that will try to sway you to go with them, but the glass enclosed cable car seemed more fun for what we were looking to do.

We took the cable car back down and then walked back to our place and had dinner on the Lapad side of Dubrovnik. We also decided to rent a car and go explore Bosnia and Herzegovina the next day, so this was really the end of Dubrovnik for us. Definitely an incredible place and fulfilled some of my bucket list places to go and things to do. Three days is not enough, especially because it is a hopping off point to visit Bosnia and Montenegro as well as all of the fun islands near by (Korkula, Hvar, etc).

Pozdrav for now Croatia!