18,055 steps, 7.85 miles, 52 floors
The views from the top of the mountain overlooking Dubrovnik
We woke up and had omelettes for brekky right next to our room, then brought the car back to Avis, which is about 2.5 miles away. Thankfully they gave us no trouble with the fact that we weren't able to return last night, and also refunded money for putting extra fuel in the car. That's a first!
The walk back was a nice way to see part of the city outside of the walls. Most of the walk was the super high-end resorts and swanky restaurants, but we did see some sweeping views of the coastline.
When we get back, we pay for a ticket to walk the walls, and make a loop around town. There were two other couples that we saw the whole time...otherwise it was empty but for 4-5 construction workers. This man of apparently asian descent was dressed in what I would describe as a combination of "ridiculous" and "awesome" and maybe a little "omg." Once again I snapped no picture despite my eagerness to do so. He had a baseball cap that said "so fresh", some cool 80's sunglasses, straight-line bangs, and some funky red starter jacket. It was a nice pick-me-up to start the day.
The view just outside the old town walls
There were cats everywhere in Dubrovnik, milling about like they own the place. Here are a few pictures, out of about 300 we could have captured:
Some Croatian youngsters showing their stuff on the pitch. Pretty sweet place to play if you ask me! Basketball hoops are all over the country, providing clever decorative accent to places where people play soccer.
After seeing the walls we have some much-needed and rare downtime to relax and maybe plan a bit for the next few days. But mostly relax. By the time we motivated again, we caught the very last tram to the top of the hill at 4:30pm. It didn't give us much time to go to the museum, but despite the ticket lady's discouragement I bought two tickets to the war museum at the top. Up we go!
The panoramic views from the top of the museum.
The museum was pretty interesting. It was all about the battle in Dubrovnik in the early 1990's. Few expected an attack on what is probably the crown jewel of the Adriatic, however the Yugoslav army (fighting for the Serbian side, under Slobodan Milosevič) began to pound Dubrovnic with air strikes, bombs, etc. the townspeople banded together and fought back, and used this hill as a strategic point to defend their city. It was, I believe, the only time that Dubrovnik's centuries-old fortress was ever attacked. Originally they didn't have many weapons but some brave souls snuck out into the night with hunting rifles and surprised Serbian forces.
Not everything in the museum was in English, and we ran through very fast...so we didn't gather an holistic understanding of the battle, but the Croatians lost many lives yet in the end kept their city. Today you notice that some roofs are a brighter red, which typically means they were replaced after being destroyed in the 90's.
The phrase above is a catholic statement made famous by St. Francis, which in Latin means "peace and good," or sometimes translated as "peace and salvation."
We took some pictures from here, and took in the sweeping views of the beauty while also imagining this as a military position. Crazy to think of this one spot in two very distinctly different ways.
When we went back to town we stopped into a place for a glass of wine and some appetizers, but they only had seafood to eat so we just stuck with wine. I have occasionally tried some local fish, but Sierra isn't a seafood lover and the seafood here isn't the kind for someone who isn't a seafood lover (lots of heads, skin, bones and they like the fishy flavors). We would later learn that we missed out on an epic fresh seafood platter at this place. After leaving there we search for Taj Mahal, a Bosnian restaurant we saw earlier and both thought sounded fun to try.
After some searching, we find Taj Mahal and go inside, and it has six tables and a total of 6 other people inside. The waiter is in a traditional black vest and everything inside seems pretty old school. We spoke to our neighbors who are from Minnesota and own a Spirit Halloween store and are traveling toe Czech Republic and Transylvania after the Balkans. We try to figure out what language the two blonde girls near us are speaking...it's very unique...and we ultimately decide they are Finnish. But we never bothered to ask. Another American-sounding, hipster-looking young guy rolls in and sits where the English couple had been. I ask why it's Taj Mahal if it's Bosnian, and the waiter says that the Taj Mahal was built as a gift for a man's love, and the owner built this restaurant for their love of Bosnian food. It's his/their "Taj Mahal."
The food was nothing short of fantastic, and everything was in traditional-looking plates and bowls. We each had a fantastic soup and then shared a couple of dishes, including the house specialty, which was meat wrapped in a fluffy croissant-like dough, and topped with a tzatsiki-like topping. It was incredible (the next day we would be told by a friend to try Taj Mahal, and to specifically try the house specialty...glad we did)!
Our soups and the house specialty in the middle.
We went to bed and set our alarms for a morning bus departure to Kotor.
Looks fantastic mate! I was back in Hervey Bay last week where Wibbly Wobbly Adventures started! Speak soon.
ReplyDeleteLove the cat orbiting up... Only you!
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