{"id":9431,"date":"2024-09-04T20:17:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T19:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/?p=9431"},"modified":"2024-09-04T20:42:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T19:42:24","slug":"day-31-dubrovnik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/09\/04\/day-31-dubrovnik\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 31 – Dubrovnik"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Phew\u2026 that was a day in the heat! But wow! – Dubrovnik!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d decided last night that we wanted to do the Dubrovnik Old Town Historical Tour. So we\u2019d booked for the 10 o\u2019clock tour hoping to keep out of the blistering heat later in the day\u2026. We were partially successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had a quickish start this morning aiming for a 9am #6 bus from on the main road about 5 minutes walk from the campsite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Waiting for the #6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The buses come every 20 or so minutes, and we found the Dubrovnik Libertas Bus app to be useful in telling us where the stops were. It was supposed to show us how long it was until the next bus, but that seemed a bit hit and miss. But not a big problem seeing as the buses are so regular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was about a 20 minute ride into the Pile Old Town stop, and the bus was full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then it was straight into the Old Town to wait by Onofrio\u2019s Fountain for the tour to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Onofrio\u2019s Fountain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I won\u2019t bore you with all the details we found out about Dubrovnik. Other than to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Dubrovnik seems to derive from a word meaning Oak Wood, the hills were covered with oak trees<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The city traded on sea salt, ship building<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Much the city was destroyed in an earthquake in the xx century.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Yugoslavia meant southern Slavs<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The siege of Dubrovnik in the \u201cwar of independence\u201d in 1991 lives long in the memories of those that were there. Younger people are not so haunted by the war but it clearly is still part of the thinking of all locals<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The cruise liners are longer than the Main Street (300m)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Dubrovnik was never occupied except for when Napoleon arrived – at which point it stopped being a separate state. Even the ottoman empire stopped at Dubrovnik and only took payments instead of occupying the city<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Lots of other stuff<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Our tour guide, Ivana, brought mixed opinions. Sue liked her, but I thought she was a bit OTT. I also wanted to hear more about the trade, families that dominated the city and what made the city so successful. We got a bit of that, but not enough for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Tour guide Ivana<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Anyway the tour 1.5 hours went quickly, which is always a sign of a good tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I wouldn\u2019t necessarily have called this a history tour. It seems, though, that this differed from the non-history tour in that it didn\u2019t go into all the Game of Thrones references!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here\u2019s some pictures\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Jesuit Steps – Games of Thrones Walk of Shame<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    There are lots of statues of St Blaise around the city, and some of his \u201crelics\u201d in the Cathedral<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    St Blaise\u2019s Church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Old Port<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Stradun St<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Stradun Street translates to \u201cbig ugly street\u201d, clearly somebody didn\u2019t like the look of it. Now it looks pretty amazing. The limestone tiles that make the floor are so well polished with the shoes of millions of visitors!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Marin Drzic – Dubrovnik\u2019s Shakespeare<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Touching Marin\u2019s nose was meant to bring luck, we think! There was another jumping stone that was meant to do something with marriage, and we may have got the two things mixed up \ud83e\udd37\u200d\u2642\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After the tour had finished we found a coffee for a few minutes and had a quick call with Harry about some house stuff at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Then we\u2019d been recommended to go up the Jesuit Steps and round the back of the school to a door that led out of the city walls to a beach. The terraced cliffs led down to the see with a bar selling drinks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Buza Beach Terracing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    People were tombstone off the cliff\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Tombstoning<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Lots of people in the water<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Big cruise ships all over the place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    From there we wandered back to the bus stop for our number 6 home. It was still only about 1pm, but we were drained from the heat. Here\u2019s a few<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    More pictures as we roamed around\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    As you get away from the Main Street, you can find quieter bits of<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Another thought for the day\u2026 it\u2019s next to impossible to get good artsie photographs of these places now. There\u2019s just too many people, and in Dubrovnik\u2019s case, just too many sun shades. If we went into the city at day-break then it might be possible to get something more arty. But this isn\u2019t a photographic tour of Europe, the photos are just keep-sakes really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Gate to the Buza beach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Main west entrance to old city – Pile (chicken in Croatian but actually derives from the Greek for gate)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Lots of views Like this, 5000 steps in the old city<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Views back over the old city roof tops<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Back to the fountain, and filled up our water bottles from it\u2026 ice cold water<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    On the way back to the campsite we stopped one stop early to find Info Planet, that does phone repairs. They said they\u2019d take a look at Sue\u2019s phone but it was completely dead when we left it with them and he thought it had got water damaged. He\u2019s going to WhatsApp us in the morning to see what our options are. It never feels good to have to hand over a phone\u2019s lock-PIN, but we didn\u2019t have much choice. We\u2019ll be keeping a very close eye on what gets used over the next few days. But the shop seemed legit, and you\u2019ve got to make a judgement call sometimes! \ud83e\udd37\u200d\u2642\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We had a chill at the van for a couple of hours and then went to find the pool of a local hotel that were supposed to get access to. There\u2019s a whole bunch of hotels, water parks, shops and stuff near the beach we went to yesterday and the Sunny Hotel is affiliated with our campsite. The pool was pretty decent to be fair, and was well worth the effort to find to cool down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Cooling down at Sunny Hotel pool<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    This pool was literally just above the beach Sue swam at yesterday\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Beach from yesterday<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Thought of the day\u2026 there didn\u2019t seem to be a lot of the Dubrovnik Old Town\u2019s soul left. You get crippling sense (confirmed by our guide) that there\u2019s nothing left in the old town except that which attracts tourists. Most of the housing is either apartments or owned by wealthy foreigners. I think you still get to see the fantastic architecture, but there doesn\u2019t seem to be any of the life that made it such a wealthy city left in the place. It\u2019s not that it\u2019s been turned into a Disney attraction, it\u2019s just that it only exists to be a tourist attraction now. Perhaps we\u2019re being disingenuous, but that\u2019s how it came across to me at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Tomorrow we\u2019re going to get up even earlier and try to do the city walls walk before the heat sets in. We should also hopefully get Sue\u2019s phone back, even better if it\u2019s mended!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Harry, Hermione and Ron are just setting up Dumbledore\u2019s Army!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Phew\u2026 that was a day in the heat! But wow! – Dubrovnik! We\u2019d decided last night that we wanted to do the Dubrovnik Old Town Historical Tour. So we\u2019d booked for the 10 o\u2019clock tour hoping to keep out of the blistering heat later in the day\u2026. We were partially successful. We had a quickish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2024-summer-holiday-to-greece","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/746a0839-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8yl38-2s7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9470,"url":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/09\/05\/day-32-dubrovnik-walking-the-walls\/","url_meta":{"origin":9431,"position":0},"title":"Day 32 – Dubrovnik Walking the Walls","author":"John Martin","date":"September 5, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Wow! Again! Sue thinks this was the best day of the trip so far, and that was before she got her phone back! It was a reasonably early start again today. We left the campsite just before 8 with no breakfast. The #6 arrived pretty quickly, authenticated our Dubrovnik day\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2024 Summer Holiday to Greece"","block_context":{"text":"2024 Summer Holiday to Greece","link":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/category\/travel\/2024-summer-holiday-to-greece\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6698-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6698-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6698-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6698-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6698-1.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6698-1.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9405,"url":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/09\/03\/day-30-trogir-to-dubrovnik\/","url_meta":{"origin":9431,"position":1},"title":"Day 30 – Trogir to Dubrovnik","author":"John Martin","date":"September 3, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Another travel day today. 250km to cover. We have a space pre-booked at the Solitudo Camp Site in Durbrovnik, the only camp site, that we could see, in the town. Trogir to Dubrovnik - ~250km There was no particular rush to get packed and on the road, so Sue went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2024 Summer Holiday to Greece"","block_context":{"text":"2024 Summer Holiday to Greece","link":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/category\/travel\/2024-summer-holiday-to-greece\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6552.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6552.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6552.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6552.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6552.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_6552.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9536,"url":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/09\/06\/day-33-dubrovnik-to-barri\/","url_meta":{"origin":9431,"position":2},"title":"Day 33 – Dubrovnik to Barri","author":"John Martin","date":"September 6, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Well it was a good job we packed last night! As we went to bed last night I could see sheet lightning filling the sky to the north of us. And as I watched it for the next few hours it seemed not to be getting any closer. But\u2026 just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2024 Summer Holiday to Greece"","block_context":{"text":"2024 Summer Holiday to Greece","link":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/category\/travel\/2024-summer-holiday-to-greece\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/746a0970-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/746a0970-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/746a0970-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/746a0970-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/746a0970-1.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/746a0970-1.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9925,"url":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/09\/25\/day-51-lecce\/","url_meta":{"origin":9431,"position":3},"title":"Day 51 – Lecce","author":"John Martin","date":"September 25, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"If you\u2019ve been following along so far then you\u2019ll know we started today on the outskirts of Brindisi, being woken by the dogs that sent us to sleep last night. We have 2449 km on the SatNav to get us home. But today we\u2019re going to be heading away from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2024 Summer Holiday to Greece"","block_context":{"text":"2024 Summer Holiday to Greece","link":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/category\/travel\/2024-summer-holiday-to-greece\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_7770.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_7770.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_7770.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_7770.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_7770.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/img_7770.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9243,"url":"https:\/\/purplemeanie.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/08\/27\/day-23-travel-to-plitvice-lakes\/","url_meta":{"origin":9431,"position":4},"title":"Day 23 – Travel to Plitvice Lakes","author":"John Martin","date":"August 27, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"It\u2019s another travel day. 1460 miles on the odometer before we left. Sue had another run this morning as she realized she could have run the 6k all the way around the lake\u2026 just had to be done. 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