You may have heard we traveled to Dubrovnik, Croatia this summer. It was warm, sunny and there was no snow on the ground. Not that I’m bitter now. Not at all. If you want to read more about it, I’m told The Morning Star ran a story of mine in this Sunday’s edition. It’s not online though so I’m going to invoke author’s privilege and paste it below. The real thing has a funky newsprint crispness to it along with delightful photos all beautifully laid out by Morning Star travel editor (and Coldstream’s biggest fan) Richard Rolke. It may have also had any typos fixed, so don’t blame me if there are a few below.
George Bernard Shaw, the acclaimed early 20th century playwright, once called Dubrovnik, in a round-about fashion, “paradise on earth.” Ever since, it seems, the Croatian city has been milking the praise, using it in tourism brochures and every other sort of promotional material.
It really doesn’t need to. Dubrovnik, where my girlfriend and I started a week of travel in Croatia in late-September, can stand on its own as one of Europe’s premier tourist destinations.
Perched on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea – Italy lies on the opposite side and has strongly influenced Croatia’s coast – Dubrovnik boasts more than a thousands years of history. For much of that time, Ragusa, as Dubrovnik was then known, was an important Mediterranean city state, ranking just below Venice in terms of sea-faring power.
The powers that be of those days of yore did more than build one of the largest fleets of ships the world had seen, they built one heck of a fortress too.
Like millions before us, we entered Dubrovnik’s UNESCO inscribed old city at the majestic Gates of Pile. At the drawbridge the Adriatic Sea swirled to our right watched over from above by Fort Lovrijenac. It’s walls rise 100 feet above the sea and are separated from Dubrovnik’s city walls by a small inlet
To our left the walls followed a rocky outcrop up, way up, to a circular watchtower that commands Dubrovnik’s skyline. The walk across the drawbridge, down a series of wide concrete steps and through another arched gate into the city’s interior is one of the best 30 seconds of pure tourism and sightseeing the world has to offer.
Standing just inside the gates, with the walls extending up the hillside to our left, the large round Onofrio’s Fountain to our right and, ahead of me, Placa the city’s main drag, it became instantly obvious why Dubrovnik is becoming one of Europe’s fastest growing destinations.
A boulevard before boulevards were made famous by the French, the street is the hub of activity in Dubrovnik and, even off-season in late-September, was clogged with tourists when we visited. Boasting a clock towers at both ends and lined with four-storey tall buildings, the marble road (it like the rest of old Dubrovnik is barred to cars) actually shines.
As we slowly toured the main road, the sun began to beat down on our necks and we began to be grateful that it was not the middle of July. For a couple hours we just cruised, revelling in the splendor of St. Blaise Church and perusing the shops of the city’s main shopping street Od Puca.
Every now and then we’d hang a left when everyone else went straight and it was on these random ventures that we found Ragusa.
The old city of Dubrovnik lies in a sort of a trough with the terrain rising north and south of the main street. To call the paths between homes roads, or even lanes, in this day and age is misleading, but that’s exactly what they were when Dubrovnik was being built. The lanes, no more than 10-feet wide, climb towards the walls. We climbed one small staircase after another, and each step seemed to take us further away from modern day Dubrovnik back towards 15th century Ragusa, when this town was, if not king, then at least a mighty strong prince of the seas.
While we didn’t run into many locals, traces of the thousands who still make their home within the walls were everywhere. Laundry hung between buildings, plants lined streets and kittens poked their heads around doorways and taunted neighbourhood dogs.
Heading back into the tourist fray, we charted a course towards the city walls, which offer prime vistas of the Dubrovnik and it’s surrounding area. They are, by far, Dubrovnik’s must see attraction, the walk ways along their length interrupted every 50 metres by open terraces atop fortresses that once functioned as keystones in the defence of Dubrovnik and Ragusa and from where cannons were aimed towards any ne’er do wells that threatened the city.
Ancient colossuses of stone and cement, the fortresses were built during the days of galleons and gallows. But with Croatia experiencing its own war in the early 1990s and with Dubrovnik under siege from the Serbs, who shelled the city from their commanding position on the hill overlooking the city, the largest fortress of the bunch became sanctuary for civillians fleeing the onslaught.
Several hundred roofs were damaged in the siege, which lasted from October 1991 to May the following year, and its effects can be seen in the glimmering new orange tiles that line many houses built hundreds of years earlier. Still, for a city that has experienced war in recent times, Dubrovnik’s soul emerged unscathed – especially compared to other eastern European cities ravaged during the Second World War.
Back in the city we made our way for the old harbour, which was replaced in recent centuries by a larger harbour on Dubrovnik’s northeastern end and where huge cruise ships regularly cast anchor. Today the harbour is home to a large marina of private vessels, as well as serving smaller boats that ferry tourists around the area and to several of the nearby islands.
It was aboard one of those vessels that we hopped a suttle boat to Lokrum, a small island spitting distance from Dubronik’s old city. The island may have been among the wierdest places I’ve ever ventured but it ranks as a highlight of our Croatian excursion.
The island is likely an entirely different beast during mid-summer when tourists and locals likely crowd its rocky beaches to soak up the rays and bask in the warm sea. But during a late-September blustery afternoon, Lokrum was more like the anti-tourist trap. Sure a cobbled walkway led to a monastery and a restaurant.
But turning away from the monastery and following the tiny map on the flip side of our boat ticket, we headed towards the island’s botanical garden. We found piles of leaves raked long ago and an array of frankly boring plants seemingly cobbled from someone’s backyard.
It was enough to make us depart before exploring further and we haphazardly wandered the interior of the island, which boasts the skeleton of walls used who knows when. I sure didn’t – there was nary a sign to be found.
After checking out the blustery beach – more a collection of exposed rocks – we made a beeline for Fort Royale the most-promising sounding locale on our map/ticket. A mixture of the creepy and the beautiful, the cylindrical fort was built by the French and now overseen by no one in particular. From atop the fortress we enjoyed the sublime views of Dubrovnik and its environs. Someone, obviously, wasn’t satisfied and placed a cheap reclining plastic chair on top of the stone cylinder that houses the fort’s internal staircase. Nobody had felt the need to remove it, apparently. Within the fortress, stairs lead into it’s basement and down to a pitch black room that would work nicely in a horror movie.
Over this very interesting and somewhat creepy location watched…nobody. There may be a couple tourists up here, and it may be on a map, but a tourist trap Fort Royal is definitely not.
In fact, that can apply to all of Lokrum on a fall afternoon. We headed down from Fort Royale and discovered a back entrance to the aforementioned botanical gardens and an unmarked array of colourful cacti, Joshua trees and other decidedly interesting fauna. After taking photos and revelling in the sub-tropical, un-Vernon-like atmosphere, we made a bee-line towards the north end of the island and a popular beach area. On the way we passed what seemed to be a camping complex shuttered for the off-season. To our left a small soccer field was populated by a dozen or so peacocks, the males ineffectively strutting their stuff for disinterested females. And nearby a playground sat vacant.
I’ll let someone else make horny peacock jokes now but the temptation was too hard to pass up at the time. The scene seemed to weird, in a slightly-creepy but very un-touristy type of way that it was a perfect cap to an unforgettable day of contrasts in Dubrovnik.
