Days 13 and 14: Dubrovnik and Ston

I suppose it's a tradition now that I get too tired at the end of a trip to do my last few posts, but it's only been six months, so here we go! If you can't tell from my heavy jacket and hunched pose, it was very cold in Dubrovnik.

 

Despite the temperature and wind, though, the days in Dubrovnik were perfectly sunny, all the better to wander the beautiful stone streets and think not about the city's interesting history, but about Game of Thrones and omg that's where Cersei did her walk of shame and there's where Daenerys had her vision!

 

Like in Seville in December, all the orange trees were heavy with fruit...though it wasn't warm enough for the air to take on that delicious citrus scent.

 

You really can't take too many pictures of city animals, so here's a cat in a box at the entryway to the city walls. As a guard, he was entirely useless.

 

The next pictures are views of the city walls as we walked the perimeter. They were built between the 12th and 17th centuries and run all the way around the city! Though one downside of visiting in the winter is that you can't go to the islands--it's too windy and the boats aren't running--you do have the walls almost entirely to yourselves. I can't imagine how crowded they would be when the cruise ships dock, so I'm glad we got to ramble around them for the first time without hordes of other people. There were maybe ten other people up there total, even later in the day.

So sad the store with the Iron Throne was closed...

 

I don't remember eating that creme brulee, but that looks like strawberry ice cream so I'm sure it was good. We also went back to Taj Mahal (very few restaurants are still open in the city by early January) and had peppers stuffed with spicy cream cheese, cheese dumplings, and burek, a Bosnian staple made of ground meat in phyllo dough. I didn't care for the burek--it was too heavy and not very flavorful--but the dumplings were impeccable.

The House of the Undying! (Actually Minceta Tower on the wall.)

We also took a quick day trip to Ston, which is near Dubrovnik and takes you along the stunning coast. Ston is most notable for its defensive walls--the second longest in the world, right behind the Great Wall of China. It's hard to tell in these pictures, but they go up pretty steeply and encircle two towns--Ston and Mali Ston. You can walk along the walls between the two towns, but at 5 kilometers long and much of it at a steep incline or decline, that was a little ambitious for us to attempt. Ston itself was sleepy and almost deserted, since of course it was low season for tourism.

 

One of the highlights for me when we returned to Dubrovnik that afternoon was visiting the bookstore--I love to see the different covers of books from my favorite authors, as well as the titles in other languages. I ended up hauling home a gorgeous (and very heavy) edition of A Game of Thrones, translated into Croatian.

 

After the bookstore, we went to a sushi restaurant that was supposed to be one of the best in the city--while I didn't try it, Taylor proclaimed the mussels the best he's ever had, and the teriyaki steak was pretty good too.

After our late lunch, we went back to the hotel to walk around the shoreline--the path from the Sheraton runs straight into a small town that you can tell is packed in the summer. We saw lots of shuttered restaurants and a park just waiting for the warm-weather throngs. Of course, the real appeal of the walk was the sunset.

Croatians have all the jokes!

 

As we walked back to the hotel, we saw the hotel bartender, Daniel, walking his VERY adorable and small puppy, who he rescued from the side of a mountain.  Was I as excited about a puppy as I was about the walls of Ston? Yes, yes I was.

 

For the final night in Dubrovnik, I agreed we could eat somewhere other than Taj Mahal, and we headed to Portun, one of the other restaurants that remains open all year. The Christmas lights were still up, and the glow on the smooth, time-polished streets was lovely.

We started with a meat and cheese plate, and then I ordered a traditional stew dish with gnocchi, and Taylor got the squid-ink risotto. (Portun specializes in traditional Croatian cuisine.) The highlight of the meal, though, were the manager and his girlfriend (also our waitress) who seemed delighted to share all their opinions about America, Croatia, and Game of Thrones. Apparently filming in the summer in those hot costumes created quite a stench...not a story that went well with dinner, but interesting nonetheless. They also told us the Croatian extras worked 12 plus hours a day, often standing around in the heat, for around $50 a day, and that Peter Dinklage drank just as heavily as his character in the show, and became a city favorite for his friendliness.

For dessert, we sampled a number of Croatian honey liquors, with the best of all being a fig flavor--it's thick, almost syrupy, and very sweet. The couple gave us some in a bottle shaped like a violin (ducktaped shut for extra class) and sent it home with us. They also offered to drive us to the hotel, cementing our opinion that people in Croatia are truly warm and friendly (like most people, when you're generally interested in their culture and experiences and not being an entitled asshole).

And that was it--the next day we flew to Frankfurt and spent the night before heading home. 

I always like to think about a city when I leave it--what did I like about? Would I go back? Would I recommend it to other people? Obviously I liked Dubronik a lot, since we're going back in the fall to visit the islands and explore more of the area. What stood out to me most, though, was how friendly the people are and how willing they are to share things about the city and their life there, as well as about the hardships they've faced in the aftermath of the war. When you meet a man whose daughter was killed by a landmine but who still has a positive and grateful outlook, it really puts history and life into perspective. I don't think we've have had the same experience in summer, when the cruise ships congest the city, so I'm glad we chose the winter for a first-time visit. We got to see the city in mellow, quiet beauty and that in turn allowed us to experience the culture in way that might not otherwise have been possible.

Paradoxically, I don't know if I'd recommend it to everyone--the city was very difficult to get to, especially given that the Dubrovnik airport only has so many flights a day and we struggled to figure out connections that made sense. And I'm not all that sure that it's really that different from the Italian coast, if you're just looking for a coastal Mediterranean vibe. (I'm sure Italians and Croatians would vehemently disagree--sorry guys.) However, since I was looking for a more cultural experience and also love Game of Thrones (mentioned maybe too many times in this post?) it was a great vacation for us.