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Although the Rick Steves' guides advise staying in Sobe (private rooms for rent), VBT has to book a group, usually about 16 guests, in one place so we stayed in the Hotel Bellvue Dubrovnik, a small chain of hotels called Adriatic Luxury Hotels and we resigned ourselves to roughing it.
Here is the view from the terrace where we ate breakfast. This is looking north.
This is looking south.
The woman in front of Stu is also on our trip. She is from around Boston and was probably on the same flights as us. (Later: her name is Barbara or in Bostonese, Bahbrah.)
After breakfast, we walked down the the western gate of the old city to meet Mario, the guy VBT hired to give us the orientation the night before. This time, he was working for himself but we figured we might as well hire him versus taking our chances finding someone on the street. Most, but not all of us, signed up for his tour. It turns out that the tourist industry is pretty well regulated and he wore an ID tag that identified him as a certified (regulated? licensed?) tour leader. There were many other tours going on at the same time and many of the guides had the same tag on a light blue lanyard.
Here's Mario at our meeting spot.
Mario took us to a spot outside the wall where we really got an appreciation for what a fortification it was. This picture doesn't really do it justice because you can't see how tall it is but it was probably 40 feet. If I was confronted with this wall, I think my strategy would be to wait them out and hope they had to leave to replenish supplies or empty their chamber pots.
He lead us through this hole in the wall into the old city.
Near the entrance, there was a map of the old town showing where bombs had landed and destroyed property in the war. It may be hard to see unless you blow up the picture but each dot represents some level of damage from shelling. I thought I remember the figure of 2/3 of the buildings but others remember a higher number. It is pretty amazing how much destruction there was and how quickly the city rebuilt in less than 25 years and that set the tone for the things we saw the rest of the day.
As we were walking through the city, we passed a couple of guys doing a bike tour. I ran back to get their picture. The alley was too narrow for me to get both of them in one shot. Notice that the second guy has a recumbent!
We visited the a museum off a plaza about war victims. There wasn't much to shoot but it began to make an impression about the devastation and human suffering inflicted only 26 years ago.
Outside the window of the museum was a street musician. He was the second guy we passed who played classical guitar. His name is Darko Pelugan and I thought he was pretty good so I bought his CD called "Hommage" for 100KN (about $18). I will upload a link to one of his tracks and maybe use some of it as background for when I get around to making a bike video.
We said goodbye to Mario after a little over two hours and began to walk the city on our own. A few people peeled off and the rest of us visited a Jewish museum and it was fascinating but there was no photography allowed. The young woman working in the synagogue section of the museum was very informative about being Jewish in Dubrovnik.
We split up again and the four of us took the cable car to the top of Mt. SRD. This is a mountain that overlooks the city and the views were pretty spectacular. There is a restaurant at the funicular station at the top so we waited for the next table and it turned out to be one by the railing. We turned it into our lunch spot.
This is an island off the coast.
This is the gate of the city closest to the hotel.
This is the harbor at the other side of the city. Notice the walls. I'll get to back to them again later.
After lunch on the top of the mountain, we walked around and discovered a museum dedicated to the "Homeland War" of 1991. The museum was within the walls of the old fort. Here is the entrance.
There many places like this spot on the left where they deliberately did not repair the damage sustained during the fighting.
Here is the stairwell that leads to the roof.
And here is the same door but looking at it from the roof.
Just over the walls were just more of the same old spectacular views of the harbor, Bosnian hills, blah blah blah.
The museum painted a picture of indiscriminate bombing of Dubrovnik. For a number of months, Serbian forces attacked and finally overran this strategic position because it allowed whoever held this spot the ability to control the city below. There were displays of armaments, documents, pictures of soldiers and civilians and a couple of videos on loops. We found out the next day that there is a BBC documentary of this event. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdS9M7oSVOg) More on this below.
We battled a chinese tour group for space on the cable car going down. Those chinese are a rude and pushy bunch.
Stu and I took a break for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We took the city bus back to the hotel for some down time while Walter and Mike kept going. We walked back to the old city later to meet them. There we also met some other people from our group and we did the wall together.
The wall is arguably the most popular attraction in the city and they have done a great job making it a fun and relatively safe thing to do even though the walls are at least 40 feet high and there is often nothing below them but a sheer drop to limestone floors or rocks and pounding surf. Anyone falling off a wall would be killed or maimed. There are three entrance/exit points and they lead to a one-mile path that circumnavigates the old town with multiple vantage points.
Here's one of the structures I call a roundhouse.
Here's a picture looking out from one of the roundhouses.
We reconnected with some of our group on the wall and we walked up the staircase below to a landing.
I went up and took a few pictures looking down as the rest of the group came up.
This is Tom. Here is from Massachusetts.
This is LeeAnne. She is from Denver.
And here we are for a group shot.
The picture we got from the day is that Dubrovnik was a peaceful and independent city-state for most of its history. The breakup of the former Yugoslavia produced a number of factions that aligned themselves mostly along religious lines: Christian Orthodox, Muslim and Catholic.
But we found out more the next day that suggests that it is not that simple. It never is.
Here's Mario at our meeting spot.
Mario took us to a spot outside the wall where we really got an appreciation for what a fortification it was. This picture doesn't really do it justice because you can't see how tall it is but it was probably 40 feet. If I was confronted with this wall, I think my strategy would be to wait them out and hope they had to leave to replenish supplies or empty their chamber pots.
Near the entrance, there was a map of the old town showing where bombs had landed and destroyed property in the war. It may be hard to see unless you blow up the picture but each dot represents some level of damage from shelling. I thought I remember the figure of 2/3 of the buildings but others remember a higher number. It is pretty amazing how much destruction there was and how quickly the city rebuilt in less than 25 years and that set the tone for the things we saw the rest of the day.
As we were walking through the city, we passed a couple of guys doing a bike tour. I ran back to get their picture. The alley was too narrow for me to get both of them in one shot. Notice that the second guy has a recumbent!
We visited the a museum off a plaza about war victims. There wasn't much to shoot but it began to make an impression about the devastation and human suffering inflicted only 26 years ago.
Outside the window of the museum was a street musician. He was the second guy we passed who played classical guitar. His name is Darko Pelugan and I thought he was pretty good so I bought his CD called "Hommage" for 100KN (about $18). I will upload a link to one of his tracks and maybe use some of it as background for when I get around to making a bike video.
We said goodbye to Mario after a little over two hours and began to walk the city on our own. A few people peeled off and the rest of us visited a Jewish museum and it was fascinating but there was no photography allowed. The young woman working in the synagogue section of the museum was very informative about being Jewish in Dubrovnik.
We split up again and the four of us took the cable car to the top of Mt. SRD. This is a mountain that overlooks the city and the views were pretty spectacular. There is a restaurant at the funicular station at the top so we waited for the next table and it turned out to be one by the railing. We turned it into our lunch spot.
This is an island off the coast.
This is the gate of the city closest to the hotel.
This is the harbor at the other side of the city. Notice the walls. I'll get to back to them again later.
After lunch on the top of the mountain, we walked around and discovered a museum dedicated to the "Homeland War" of 1991. The museum was within the walls of the old fort. Here is the entrance.
There many places like this spot on the left where they deliberately did not repair the damage sustained during the fighting.
Here is the stairwell that leads to the roof.
And here is the same door but looking at it from the roof.
Just over the walls were just more of the same old spectacular views of the harbor, Bosnian hills, blah blah blah.
The museum painted a picture of indiscriminate bombing of Dubrovnik. For a number of months, Serbian forces attacked and finally overran this strategic position because it allowed whoever held this spot the ability to control the city below. There were displays of armaments, documents, pictures of soldiers and civilians and a couple of videos on loops. We found out the next day that there is a BBC documentary of this event. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdS9M7oSVOg) More on this below.
We battled a chinese tour group for space on the cable car going down. Those chinese are a rude and pushy bunch.
Stu and I took a break for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We took the city bus back to the hotel for some down time while Walter and Mike kept going. We walked back to the old city later to meet them. There we also met some other people from our group and we did the wall together.
The wall is arguably the most popular attraction in the city and they have done a great job making it a fun and relatively safe thing to do even though the walls are at least 40 feet high and there is often nothing below them but a sheer drop to limestone floors or rocks and pounding surf. Anyone falling off a wall would be killed or maimed. There are three entrance/exit points and they lead to a one-mile path that circumnavigates the old town with multiple vantage points.
Here's one of the structures I call a roundhouse.
Here's a picture looking out from one of the roundhouses.
We reconnected with some of our group on the wall and we walked up the staircase below to a landing.
I went up and took a few pictures looking down as the rest of the group came up.
This is Tom. Here is from Massachusetts.
This is LeeAnne. She is from Denver.
And here we are for a group shot.
The picture we got from the day is that Dubrovnik was a peaceful and independent city-state for most of its history. The breakup of the former Yugoslavia produced a number of factions that aligned themselves mostly along religious lines: Christian Orthodox, Muslim and Catholic.
But we found out more the next day that suggests that it is not that simple. It never is.
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