Dubrovnik, then heading out

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the fourth post of our Croatia-Budapest Trip, June-July 2014.)
Thursday, June 19

Gundelic Square the morning after the Big Game. We head to the Konsum store and buy breakfast, as well as some hairspray and a chocolate bar. Just the necessities.

We venture out on the square to spot this Mr. Gundelic, atop his pedestal, in the middle of the morning market where vendors are selling tchotchkes and other knickknacks.

Dubrovnik can be considered a two-day town: do the wall, have dinner, buy some souvenirs, head out. We’re on Day Two-and-a-Half and decide to walk on the other side of this bowl-shaped town, and try for a few of the places mentioned in our guidebook.

First stop is The Church of St. Blaise, the man who saved the town by revealing an imminent attack, even though he’d been dead for years (some say he was an apparition who warned the town fathers). He’s everywhere. The noon mass was about to start, so we were quickly in and out.

Detail, St. Blaise’s Church (above and below)

We were told by one shopkeeper yesterday that there were no cruise ships scheduled to be in town today (and so she was opening later). But there seemed to be a lot of local kids–maybe their parents let them out when the tourists aren’t invading. And soccer — I mean, futbol — is on everyone’s mind.

Still the red-checked shirts are everywhere, for Croatia advances to the next round with their win last night. This is the typical shop with everything open.

And this is the shop front, closed. In the early days, the door would be a half-door, closed, and the shop keeper would bring you what you needed through the open window and the open half-door.

From the Placa, or Stradum, we walked up to the mountain-side of town, where the streets are so narrow that this tree had to work to get to the sunlight. Everything is folded up this morning after last night’s thunderstorm.

And folded up, this umbrella looks positively feminine.

Dead end with an outdoor oven. I’d like one of these at my house.

I spot some laundry high up on a line: a red-checkered shirt. We stopped and talked to one young man (in front of a restaurant) who didn’t get home until 8:30 this morning. Even though he started the conversation trying to get us to sit down and have lunch, I thought, well, while you’re yakking up the tourists, I can talk to you too. I mentioned Croatia’s decisive 4-0 win last night, and he said “No, no. 3-0. One didn’t count.”

We walk a little further and another young man tells us he got in just before the big thunderstorm, “by two minutes at most.” He told us about a thunderstorm that winter that hit the church tower and knocked out “all the charge machines in the restaurants and all the music and the speakers, too,” two components of tourist life here. Dave and I decide that there are many very tired young men in Dubrovnik this morning. (And old American tourist couples, too.) This was confirmed later on when we decided to eat pizza at our pizza place (not shown above, but isn’t that a great name for a pizza joint?). The young man serving us, who had been there the night before, brought us new rolled-up utensils at the end of the meal. “Oh, whoops!” he said, then exchanged them for what we wanted: the check.

First stop after walking was the Franciscan Church, where I snapped this perfectly lit window.

Next was the Franciscan Monastery and Pharmacy, just beside the church.

It’s only five bucks to get in, and good thing, as there’s not much to see. So we take our time with the cloisters.

The capitals of each column are different.

This sign says “Europe never sleeps when World Cup is being played.”

No pictures in the pharmacy, so we head out, catching a perfect light on the stone.

I really have to make a red-and-white quilt, I think.

We had another salad at the pizza place by our sobe: Pizzeria Castro. I can recommend it heartily. We had originally thought to eat at a “typical” Dubrovkan place, but when we walked over there, having had a late breakfast of chocolate croissants, peach juice, and fruit, we were really too full to hunker down over a plate of grilled meats, although it got great reviews. After our salads, we were still ready to walk, but fat, heavy drips of rain began falling, so we climbed back up the three flights of stairs to our room, and took a break. It’s rained nearly every day here, but we’ve been able to dodge it with judicious timing.

After the rain, we decide to walk around the thick walls that border the harbor, just to see what’s on the other side.

A goofy water vehicle to show you the sights, which we both thought reminded us of Disneyland.

On the backside, you can see the little island off the Dubrovnik coast, and just miles and miles of the Adriatic Sea, teenagers smoking, old men swimming, and tourists, like us.

Oh, and St. Blaise, high up on a city wall.

We walked over to Dubravka, where we’d made dinner reservations, and they again put us at a table on the patio, overlooking the sea. Returning visitors can use the 10% off coupon that they included with the meal last night, which makes particular tourists very happy.

Many quotes on the Jana water bottles are from Paul Coehlo’s book The Alchemist, although this one may be from somewhere else. One of the better blurbs, I think.

I had Dave’s pasta with mushrooms and ham from last night, but he had “American Chicken.” I’ll bet you didn’t know we adorned our chicken breasts with bacon, did you?

We ended our lovely meal with Orange Cake, which was like last night’s cake of layered chocolate, cream and nuts, but orange in all the right places, recommended by our waiter (“It’s my favorite cake”). During dinner it began to rain, but Dave was able to scoot his chair in under the edge of the umbrella; the rain chased off the chain smokers behind us, as they had no umbrella (they were just having a drink–no dinner–and really, they had finished).

Dave’s panoramic shot from the table. We learned how to use that feature of our iPhones while we were in Croatia and had a great time taking a variety of pano-shots. We head back into town, and we stop at a shop to buy the city’s souvenir: a silver “button,” made of scrolled filigree silver wire. The man explained that they began as buttons on soldiers’ uniforms, but have now become known as the traditional souvenir. His father made them all, he said, and unlike the tablecloth sellers, I was inclined to believe him.

We chose the butoni we wanted, then he weighed it and sold it to us by weight. No credit cards, he said, so we paid cash. Mine was about the size of a silver charm on a charm bracelet, but there were many others, from tinier to much larger. Of course, now I wish I’d purchased another for a necklace, but that’s tourist hindsight talking. (The earrings above are an illustration from the web.) Often we are told they don’t accept credit cards, and often, like now, we don’t receive a recipt.

A very light rain is falling, and I notice the votive candles on the ledge. We wonder if it’s because we are now across from the Serbian church. But no, they are everywhere.

We walk down towards our square, and see a procession, led by children of the church dressed in white, followed by priests carrying a canopy, shielding people as they walk. Behind them are church-goers, and as they walk, they are singing. I can’t seem to get the video to embed, so click *here* to hear their haunting singing.

The singing continued inside the church, and I usually never do this, but I was so caught up by the music I took a quick, hopefully discreet, video. Click *here* to watch and listen. Now you can see the Titian-attributed painting at the front of the church all lit up, the church resplendent with harmonies and light, changed from the darkened cavern of the day before. A magical moment in Croatia, as the locals celebrated the Corpus Christi holiday.

We make our way back to our sobe, through squares filled with World Cup fans watching large plasma TVs in restaurants and bars. We again shut the windows and turn on the air conditioning, hoping for sleep.

In the morning, we hit the Konsum grocery store not only for our breakfast, but also for things for a little picnic along the road to Split, our next destination.

We pack up and leave, but I can’t quit feeling like we’ve left something. We go over the room again, looking everywhere, but don’t see anything, so head down.

We pass the keyhole in the wall (usually covered up by the textiles seller) and our favorite half-circle steps.

As it our habit as tourists in a foreign land without 4G wifi, we took a snapshot of a map and kept it on our phone, making our way to the Hertz rental car company, just outside the main city.

Through the first Ploce Gate. . .

. . . and the archway where — who else? — St. Blaise guards the entrance and exit. It’s a busy street. We get our car, and are off up the coast, to Split.

Next up: Split is Splitsville

Dubrovnik Slows Our Pace

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the third post of our Croatia-Budapest Trip, June-July 2014.)
Wednesday, June 18

This is the view from our third-story window, towards the left, overlooking Gundelic Square.

This is looking straight ahead (taken on the first night we arrived).

And this is looking right, towards the steps heading up towards The Church of St. Ignatius.

Usually when heading out of our sobe, we turn to the left toward the main street, the Placa area, but this late afternoon we turned right and headed up the steps on the other side of the slanting bowl that is Dubrovnik. I notice the men in their Croatian T-shirts: spirits are high here tonight for the Croatia vs. Cameroon game at midnight.

Most all the souvenir shops carry some form of the checkered shirt (one of my souvenirs from Croatia, purchased later on that night), and many of the waiters are wearing them. One young man told us that the owner of the place brought them to work to get the waitstaff to put them on.

Notice the big screen TV. They were everywhere.

Usually outside of each restaurant there is the person who talks to the tourists, chatting up the menu and getting them to sit down at a table. We saw this man every day because their place was just outside our sobe, but tonight he has other things on his mind, especially when I asked him who was going to win tonight. “We are!” he said, arms out wide.

St. Ignatius is at the top of the steps on a small plaza, church at one end and three restaurants at the other, bordered by those steps and another old building (shown above-above), which I found out later was the Jesuit college, where, according to Frommer’s “1658 Jesuit College (Collegium Ragusinum), the school where many of Ragusa’s greatest scholars were educated.” Ah, got it. And apparently those steps we walked up were supposed to mimic Rome’s Spanish Steps, but that was lost on me, as the scale is so dramatically different. But in hindsight, I suppose they do resemble Rome’s staircase.

Just inside the door, on the right, is the grotto dedicated to miracles and Mary. It was not the last time we would see a grotto in a church, as they appear to be a popular motif.

Lots of crutches (some vintage) were lined up, as well as with other mementos of miraculous intervention by the Virgin.

And beside her, as long as you donate some kuna you can light a candle for your prayers and hopes. I could think of a few to add. St. Ignatius is like so many churches we saw in our travels. Without light (either artificial or natural) the paintings around the church appear slightly gloomy, certainly well-done but by a lesser artist than the Big Ones, the decorative gilt rather muddy in the dim light, in short, another dark Italianate church with pictures of ascension, deliverance, and redemption that we couldn’t quite engage with. On the web I’ve seen photos of this church lit up at night and it presents a much different feeling, like the next night when saw main Dubrovnik cathedral all lit up, the brilliants lights calling our eyes to the decorative surfaces which now, in this church, were obscure.

I caught only this grisaille rendition of a gathering of saints, outlined in a blue and white garland, near where the door opened.

We walked alongside the old wall bordering the sea, looking for that famous Hole in the Wall Bar that had a terrace that opened out onto sea views. We found it, but kept going. (It was pretty packed but we weren’t yet ready to sit.)

Looking from the sea side of Dubrovnik, down and across and up to the mountain side. The twin-steepled church there in the middle is the Serbian Church.

Sights along the walk.

Newer electrical wires snake along the outside of old stone houses by the hundreds of miles of cable, it seems like.

This is a detail from the Serbian church, as we walked down from the wall back towards the Placa (main street) in the center of Dubrovnik.

Details from St. Onofrio’s large fountain near the Pile Gate.

Bubble maker in front of the fountain. His was an unusual way to make money. We saw many singers strumming guitars with their tip jar just in front of them, or young men and women (why are they always young?) accosting tourists as they passed by, drumming up business for an island cruise, to enter a restaurant, or to purchase bus tickets for a trip to somewhere.

A small altar high on the wall just inside the Pile Gate. Icon for icon, I still think the altars on the Italian island of Burano are the best. Out the gate we wandered, looking for a place to have dinner.

We stopped to look at the restaurant on the right, Dubravka. It’s the best candidate of the evening.

We shared the grilled vegetables, and Dave had the mushroom pasta with ham and I the shrimp risotto. Of course we both shared the chocolate cake. The view was wonderful and we enjoyed our meal as we watched the colors shift during the setting sun.

We walked back through the Pile Gate, noticing the night sky once again, as well as a teenager talking on the phone in her window high above the Placa and the futbol game enthusiasts, trying to broadcast Croatia’s checkerboard on walls or floors.

Sign at the pizza place just below our sobe. Since his place was right next door, he stored his chair cushions, the sign and the plasma TV in our lower downstairs hallway.

After getting ready for bed (still jet-lagged tourists, here) we could hear lots of noise from the square. I looked out, but the umbrellas obscured the tables with people staring straight ahead at the plasma TV set up for the game. About 11 p.m. the sound was switched over to the loudspeakers all around the square, and whenever a favorite song would come on, it seemed the volume would go higher, never returning to the original setting. The sound was funneled up to our windows, echoing and reverberating against the buildings all around us. By midnight, when the game began, we put in our earplugs, closed the shutters, the windows and turned on the A/C. I finally drifted off to sleep only to be awakened by a booming clap of thunder sometime in the night. I groggily opened my eyes to see Dave standing by the open window. And then I didn’t hear anything else, and we didn’t wake up until 9 a.m. the next morning. He told me he couldn’t believe how raucous it was down in the square, but at 2:30 a.m. just as he opened the window to see what was going on, a torrent of rain and thunder arrived, clearing out the square.

Croatia beat Cameroon, 4-0.

Next up: Dubrovnik, heading out

Dubrovnik’s City Walls

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the second post of our Croatia-Budapest Trip, June-July 2014.)
Wednesday, June 18

Dubrovnik once was two cities, divided by the sea: Ragusium and Dubrovnik. Over time the canal between them filled in and after an earthquake in the seventeenth century, the city’s wide thoroughfare, the Stradun, was straightened out and rebuilt. After I read this in my guidebook (and elsewhere) the use of the word I was seeing everywhere (Ragusa/Ragusium) made sense to me, as well as the shape of the city: shaped like a snowboard half-pipe, with the Stradun (or Placa as some of the locals call it apparently), being the lower flat portion between two sloping sides. And which also explains why the task we had before us that day, to climb around the City Walls (up then down then up then down), meant it was StairMaster time for the tourists.

I was awakened early by what sounded like someone setting up for a church supper: tables being set up and chairs being set around.

I was partially right. They were setting up for the market. I closed the shutters, and crawled back into our two-part bed: two twin beds shoved together, a common way to get a queen bed in Europe, and read emails, uploaded pictures on Instagram. I soon heard another sound: it was pouring.

Dave and I dressed, and with umbrellas, went out to the market for some fruit (harder to do when it is all gestures and when you are NOT ALLOWED to touch anything–the seller is the only one that can touch their own fruit). A Konsum grocery store (mini-sized) is also on this square and we ducked in to find some heaven: chocolate croissants just coming out of the oven. We’ll take forty please. Just kidding (sort of). Two, please, and that loaf there with the seeds on top. Point point point and she handed us our wares. We picked up a yogurt–the first in a long selection of yogurts (all different) by Dave to see if they match up to his memory of an incredible yogurt he had on his travels in France some twenty-five-plus years ago (they never do)– and checked out. We used our umbrellas to get across the tiny square because it was still raining hard.

We climbed back up the four flights of steps to our room, with the last flight increasing in steepness because we figured we were really staying in the place’s attic. We are still getting the light switches on the stairs mastered–some are automatic and some you turn on when you are at the top, then turn them off when you are at the bottom of the flight.

(The famous clothes closet, which figures into the narrative at a later time.)

Our sobe came equipped with a tiny table and chairs and a tiny kitchen, so we ate breakfast here every day. After our feast that morning, we got ready for the day. “Rain!” (still) so we fell back asleep, awakened only when the sun started to break through the clouds. We still hadn’t really meshed our internal clocks with what was going on outside, but when the sun woke up, we did too. And then it was panic: it was after 10 a.m. and we wanted to climb the City Walls and now all the tourists were going to be there, too. . . ACK! hurry hurry to beat the tourists! (Yes, I get the irony.)

We headed out toward the Ploce Gate, where the walls could be accessed, passing by what I believe is the Dominican Monastery. Apparently heading out this direction we did the right thing, as several guide books mention this is the Way To Do The City Walls. Start here, and then walk around. We fork over our kunas to the guy in the window and step out. . .

…to a gorgeous view of the small harbor to the west of the Stari Grad. The rain is gone, having washed the air clean. It’s pleasant, warm (but not too hot), but I made sure our sunblock was slathered on and our water bottles were filled up to the brim before we tucked them in our backpack.

As you can see in this map, the city walls (in orange) have a series of Towers and landmarks, with three entrances and exits. Dave turned on his GPS-tracking program, Endomundo, which at the end of the walk looked like this:

Right. But we begin:

We wondered how these people felt with all of us tourists playing voyeurs, spying on their backyard with their lush green grasses.

We were walking along the upper side of Dubrovnik, looking down on all the houses. Because it is such a small town, we could spot where our sobe was, our “neighborhood,” and were anchored.

We spy not only on the people who live in the city, but those tourists wanting to come on in.

The walls kept this city safe for years, but were breached in the Bosnian-Serbian war, when the attacking forces sat on the hill above the city and pelted it with artillery. By one gate they have a sign detailing every hit, and certainly the newly repaired roofs (the brighter colors) attest to the city’s desire to recover and reclaim its reputation as the Pearl of the Adriatic Sea. In preparation for this trip, my father lent me a book about one traveler’s route around this sea, and the section on Croatia was dim, depressing and fairly morose in tone. Great, I thought. I’m going to a pit. (But I’m still glad I read it, as it helped me realize how far this city had fallen at one time.) But I realized that if Rick Steves, the master of the middle-class tourist trade had put Dubrovnik on his itinerary, it was probably recovered enough that we could enjoy the city.

Yes, these flowers are fake. But I liked them anyway.

Climbing up to the Minceta Tower, the highest point on the City Walls. It’s at the upper left corner when looking at the (far above) map. And up there on the tower is where Dave and I had our photo taken (coming up).

The walls are thick in this tower, and it’s shady and cooler than out on the deck, with great views of the Adriatic and the Croatian coastline.

Time for a tourist photo. We were reminded to do this after one young woman prompted us for her photo shoot, and then she took one of us: glasses on, glasses off, chin up, chin down, turn this way and that. It’s hard work to get those Christmas Card photos.

The view.

Leaving the tower, we saw this basketball court with a young man quietly studying, oblivious to the walkers high above him. Dave and I remarked about the challenge of being able to live freely in a town so land-locked, so filled with The Other (us tourists) and perhaps the only way is to live a separate, shadow life apart. I found out about that divide on our last morning when I hoped to take a photo of some children playing soccer in front of the church. I approached them, held up my camera and asked “Photo?” “NO!” the young boy yelled. I persisted, holding up my finger, “One photo?” This time all the boys playing turned and yelled “NO!” I got the message, and secretly applauded their parents for teaching them how to deal with invasive tourists who want to take photos of young soccer players. I snapped them surreptitiously as I walked away, as they were now involved in their game and back to ignoring these strange people with cameras.

While much of Dubrovnik has been rebuilt from the war, we often saw empty houses like this. I’d read about one family’s difficulties in Croatia, trying to get clear title to rebuild their grandmother’s home (they were Americans, trying to buy the home and then fix it). This process took over five years. I wondered how much of the emptiness I saw was due to bureaucratic issues, or how much was due to just giving up and moving away, as I know a lot of that went on. Again, a parallel existence, somewhat invisible to the tourist, as we are all supposed to fall in love with this charming city and leave our money behind by taking tours such as this one, buy souvenirs, and ignore fallen roofs and water-filled front rooms.

But for every ruined house, perhaps there is a counterpoint: an exquisitely tended garden, that indicates great effort, great care.

We are now joined by many others, having reached the Pile Gate entrance. But as it’s not hordes, we think the rain delayed all the cruiseship folk, too.

The restaurant Dubravka is to the right in the above picture, just to give you some bearings, and beyond that the Lovrijenac Fortress. Our ticket was good for climbing up there too, provided we did it on the same day. Sure. No problem.

At the Pile Gate entrance, we could look down on St. Onofrio’s Big Fountain (which would encourage us to hurry faster, given the mobs down below)…

…as well as the Stradun.

Back up into another tower, we climbed into the upper chamber for this view of the town. (By the way, these photos are a mixture between my husband’s and mine, between a snapshot camera and iPhones.)

St. Ignatius Church, a backside view

We’re rounding our second corner of this four-cornered gait, the Tower Bokar, and below it is more rubble and ruin. I did find this arch carrying a water pipe across interesting.

A view towards the city.

We have climbed back up again, as shown by this photo from an earlier vantage point, and now the city is on our left and the Adriatic on our right, as we walk along the old walls.

Now you see him. . .

. . . now you don’t. Obviously by the date on the keystone on the gate (1834) not all of this wall is truly ancient. Just old.

Now you see them. . .

. . . now you don’t. We are taking our time on this wall, because apparently it’s the Big Game in Town. We have traveled to other “Grade B” tourist sites (as opposed to “Grade A” sights like Paris, New York City, etc.) and all that means to us is that in these smaller venues the Big Sights are less famous, the pace is slower, the need to see a million things less pressing. It’s a more relaxing way to travel.

One last sea-window.

Looking back towards Fort Lovrijenac.

In the lower right corner, a woman has set up to sell her tablecloths. Most of the sellers assure me that they are all handmade in Croatia by their family and some close friends, the genuine article. There are a lot of women doing a lot of handwork in Croatia if this is true, judging by the amount of table linens being sold. I was quite interested in one tablecloth, but since I don’t use the ones I have, how could I justify spending those precious souvenir kuna on another one? I passed, even though she dropped the price 30%.

I have to assume this is St. Blaise, hanging out there on the tower.

This church, St. Ignacious, is right up our street. I say “our” like I live there, but in touristing if I can attach myself to a place where I’ll be for a couple of nights and catch the rhythm , it may allow me to break past that invisible demarcation line, so I can briefly slip into the life in the town. Of course, this is a complete illusion on my part, but maybe just for a couple of minutes here and there I can stop viewing those around me as museum pieces. Maybe.

When I see signs like this, I recognize that I play a part in the fiction as well (Rent Me! Rent Me!). But I still loved this little balcony, slightly worn.

A seashell of a roof, one Instagram commenter noted (thanks, Judy!).

Recycled stone.

I loved the casual toss of clothespins into the window well. In another window I saw an old Singer sewing machine.

We are nearing the completion of our walk, and we are noticing the details on the old buildings around us: the course of stone in an old wall, the colors of the roof tile, the shape of an arch…

…and these perfect steps.

I did buy one small embroidery from this woman, who assured me it was made by her. . . or her family.

She was on the street coming down from the Placa gate and across from her was this interesting stone balustrade, seemingly melting back into the far wall. There really is a large space between the railing and the back wall. We walked past the only car we ever saw, from the TV/Radio station, and headed back to our sobe, heading along the City Hall street.

Every time I came by, the man in the plaid shirt was sitting there, feeding the pigeons. Not every city loves the pigeons. In Venice they are sometimes called “flying rats,” they are such a nuisance.

Title: Tourist in Yellow Shirt Leaving the Arcaded Building

From here we slipped into Dubrovnik’s Cathedral, and were supposed to look at Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin” polyptych (say that three times fast), but it didn’t look like a Titian to me (not that I’m an expert). In another guidebook, an author wrote that it came from “Titian’s workshop.” I’d buy that. The best part in this traditional old church were the modern rendition of the Stations of the Cross. I loved this one, with Simon walking beside Christ as he carried the cross. I had to look up that last detail when I got home — who was with Christ — but I wrote in my travel journal that it was an angel. It was quiet, serene, thoughtful.

Bistro tables made from old sewing machine stands.

The underside of the umbrella at the pizza place, with the red-checkered bunting and a Croatia scarf draped for color, for patriotism, for heralding The Big Game that night at midnight.

First, a stop at the pizza place just below us, for a salad (above) and a “Quattro Stagioni” pizza (below). Quattro Stagioni, Four Stages, means that you don’t have four ingredients all jumbled together in a pile like an American pizza, but that you have four different sections of pizza, as shown below. We first encountered this in Italy and we kind of laughed, but we’ve seen it again and again, so it must be the way they do it over here. That salad was to die for. Amazing, where everything had a taste, even those tomatoes.

Rain is predicted for the afternoon, a few showers, and we think it’s a perfect time to climb up to our perch and take a rest.

Next up: Dubrovnik Slows Our Pace

Dubrovnik, Croatia Beguiles

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the first post of our trip to Croatia, Slovenia and Budapest in June-July 2014.)
Thursday, June 17

After a long flight from Los Angeles to Munich, and then from Munich to Dubrovnik, we were happy to see from our airplane windows the coast of Croatia.

Having viewed maps and photos and watched video after video, I recognized the walled city immediately and pointed it out to Dave, equally jetlagged and groggy. We were happy to arrive after months of planning (car rental made in September of 2013, fully eight months earlier–this long-range planning would give us some troubles at certain points), and finally see that city that everyone is crazy about.

Our plane landed and they wheeled the exit stairs up to our plane. We walked across a street to enter the terminal. Given that we had to give the name of our firstborn child and submit to search, Xray and seizure in major city airports, the casual approach they took toward airline security (probably there, but just invisible to us) was interesting. In the small terminal we found the ATM, bought our tickets and waited on the hot bus for a seemingly long time (probably only 15 minutes) before we drove into Dubrovnik, about 20 minutes away from the airport. I thought the terrain looked like home–Southern California–with its rocky and sparsely vegetated hills; stands of flowers (hollyhocks and others) waved in the airport bus breeze as we rushed by.

No matter which weather forecast we looked at, rain was in our future. We were just hoping to get in some good touristing before we were kept indoors, so were happy to see the sun. “Sun!” we said, turning to smile at each other. “Sun!” we repeated, like the babbling, sleep-starved and hungry tourists we were. “Sun!” became the morning watch-cry, alternating occasionally with “Rain” (this one said with drooping shoulders, and search for the umbrellas).

The bus dropped us just outside the Pile Gate, an entrance to the west. Clutching our printed directions, we were to walk the main street, the Stradun, turn right at some other street, walk past the named pizza place, find the green door (or was it blue?) and ring the bell.

Start by following the tourists. . .

. . .all while rolling our suitcases, toting our extra bag and never wiping the smiles off our faces.

The limestone pavement was shiny with use. Nearly everything inside the walled city is pedestrian-zoned, where the tourists (sometimes up to nine cruiseship-loads, plus the rest of us) reign. I did read that in the early morning, cars come in from the old Eastern gate making deliveries, but only once did we see a car inside the city, and that was branded with a TV-radio station logo. A nice lady helped us make the correct right turn and on our second green door, we hit the spot. (I never did take a photo of that door.) The landlord met us, and as he huffed our two rolling suitcases up four flights of stairs, I found out that his wife’s family owns the building, his mother-in-law had the apartment across from ours on the top floor, that the lower part of the building was over two-hundred years old, and that I was going to hate going up and down the stairs every day. We got settled, hung up some our clothes in the closets, and then went down four flights of stairs to find dinner.

I have a predilection for wandering, especially in places where Dave is nearby so that we can point out (or take a photo of) the new and interesting, the unusual and the something-you-won’t-see-at-home. Sometimes the identification of that last category is often followed by a “well, why isn’t it found at home?” We take pictures not only to identify, but to capture the idea…and the moment. These are age-old habits of tourists, and the new social media enhances this impulse with quick uploads to a photo-viewing site and a brief comment to provide some context: #dubrovnik #croatia were my most common tags on Instagram those first few days. Often we were juggling both our iPhone and our regular snapshot camera, using each for their particular qualities.

This doorway reminded us of Munich’s Ocktoberfest, only Munich would have live garland interwoven with blue checked ribbon. I think this had been here all summer. And that is another thing we do — relate what we see with our new, fresh tourist eyes to previous travel memories.

World Cup viewing. Nearly every cafe in every square, and many restaurants, had a big-screen plasma television going just about 24/7.

Pred Dvorum street, which parallels ours. Behind us is the Cathedral and on the right side is a museum and City Hall (under the arcade’s arches).

At the end of that street we enter Luza Square, anchored by St. Blaise Church.

On a popular traveling website I’d written down some restaurant recommendations, and of course it was on the other side of this bowl-shaped town.

Looking down the steps back towards Luza Square.

We found the restaurant–under new ownership–so kept looking. I know what you are thinking. How could we pass up this place, tucked underneath this cute little church? We did.

Behind us was the “restaurant” street, Prijecko Street, and it beckoned because Dave likes to explore several options before settling in to one place. We call it the “restaurant street,” because we tended to give nicknames to locations, as we found the Croatian unpronounceable even though we tried to wrap our tongues around the words.

If we’d tried to sit and eat dinner here, we would have both fallen asleep. . . or eaten the cushions first. I think this was more of a bar.

These musicians started at one of the street and kept moving along, looking for the big tippers. We were still trying to figure out if we had the right kind of money, kuna, with 5.5 of them equal to one dollar.

One thing we dislike about Europe in general is their refusal to bring out tap water for our glasses. (This is how you learn that not every city in the world is like your city.) The water has to be purchased and they charge tourists excessively for the privilege of having something to drink with their meal, if you don’t want a glass of wine (we didn’t). One waiter tried to tell me that the water wasn’t good, especially after a rainstorm (right–and that’s why they let the tourists drink out of the fountains). But I took delight in the current logo being offered up by one water company, Jana, with their Croatian World Cup Soccer spirit. The Croatian game, our landlord warned us, was to be played the next night–at midnight–and the pizza guy downstairs had already “invited the youths of the city” to come and join him for a wild and crazy party in the square below our windows.

“It will be loud,” the landlord warned.

We smiled and said, “How fun!”

Dave’s meal–a pasta with some kind of meat sauce.

My meal: prawns with lettuce garnish. We demolished the bread basket, ate all of the garnish. We also ate all of the shrimp but were less than delighted with the Mediterrean way of serving them with their shells on. You have to work for your supper this way. It’s always a challenge when ordering your meal in a foreign country, as often what you order bears no resemblance to what you think you’ll be receiving. We sort of have a little contest determining which person had the better meal every night. Tonight, Dave won.

Our sobe, or room, is marked on the map above with a blue circled X, just off Gundulic Square. Stari Grad means Old Town. We ate sort of directly above the black number 7 (above the “R” in Grad), on the restaurant street. We didn’t feel like heading home, trying to stay up as long as possible to get on the new (+9 hours) schedule, so we walked the length of the restaurant street, where we discovered that pretty much every special at every restaurant was about the same as ours, and just as overpriced. The street was narrow, filled with tables, first on the right side of the street and then on the left. It’s one flight of stairs up from the Stradun, so down every side street we had views of the main street. We were also walking, waiting until all the launches had carried the cruise-ship passengers back to their ships and the city emptied out.

We headed toward Pile Gate (pronounced Pee-lay).

There is an outer gate in the walls, and an inner doorway to the left side of this open area, a wide-open space which is perfect for impromptu art shows and musicians.

The double-columned balustrade reminded us of Italy.

Outside, there are small gardens flanking the walkway through the gate, with views of the Adriatic Sea and Boker Gate on the old City Wall (left). The red umbrellas to the right of the photo are a restaurant, Dubravka, where we ate the next two nights.

The tourist board has hired two young teen boys to act as sentries for several hours every night. Young women liked to pose with them, and when no one was looking, they’d slump slightly on the top rail of the fencing. A small statue of St. Blaise watches over them. St. Blaise, according to legend, saved the town with his warnings that the Venetian Navy was set to attack the town.

The inner doorway…with St. Blaise.

Apparently if a young man can balance on this stone water spout while taking off his shirt, they’ll have good luck. And a broken keister. Dave thought stepping on it was good enough, and I agreed.

It was just outside this beautifully restive doorway of the Franciscan Monastery. Everything looked calm in the waning evening night.

Right across from the Monastery is St. Onofrio’s Big Fountain. All those faces have water pipes coming from them. Twelve faces, twelve pipes. Because the weather was always threatening rain (and occasionally delivered on its promise), the air was slightly muggy, yet we didn’t have scorching heat waves to deal with (where the water from the fountain would have come in handy).

Window shopping along the Stradun. Braccialini had some interesting handbags.

I looked it up when I arrived home. That’s right. It’s $1751.00. That’s SEVENTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS, and change.

The light was starting to turn, the streets were emptying out and the fatigue of the journey was beginning to hit hard. Just a few more minutes, we thought. We ducked in and out of gelato/ice cream shops without buying any, saw red-checked item after red-checked item (the red checkerboard is a centerpiece of the Croatian flag), people watched. And then that amazing European cerulean sky crept in over the city, making it all seem bejeweled and sparkling.

The people start to gather: to eat dinner (more tables have been put out on the Stradun, umbrellas and awnings raised), for drinks, and to watch World Cup games. And to wander, just like us.

The Church of St. Blaise at night.

The bell tower clock dial reflects only the hour, reiterated below in the left window by the Roman Numeral. The right window gives the minutes, but only in five-minute increments.

We leave the crowds under St. Blaise and climb the four flights of stairs up to our sobe.

One last look out the window, into Gundulic Square below. We leave the windows open to catch the cool air, and call it a day.

The Traveled Mind

Tag Archives: Croatia

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