Intro to Dubrovnik

This morning we met our OAT group and had our orientation meeting with our tour leader. There are 12 of us, plus the leader, and an additional OAT employee who is in training to become a leader.

View from our hotel room balcony

After the meeting, we walked to the bus stop, where our leader distributed bus passes to us. There are many hotels in this area, so when the bus arrived, it was already packed. We crossed the street and boarded an outbound bus, rode it to the end of the line (not far), then had to get off and immediately re-board and run our bus passes once again. That way, we were the first on for the trip dow to Pila (PEA-lah) Gate -- the main gate into the old city.

Our tour leader turned us over to a local guide, who tried to give us a couple thousand years of Dubrovnik history in 20 minutes. It's complicated! We didn't retain a lot, but the gist was that Croatia has had its own ethnic and political identity since Roman times. It was independent for 500 years, following the fall of the Byzantine Empire up until conquest by Napoleon in 1808. The years following WW II, under Tito, were a departure from a long independent and more or less democratic tradition. And the Balkan war of the 1990s was a tragedy. But today, Croatia is a relatively prosperous member of the European Union.

Pockmarks from bullets on the stone wall of the church

Inside the gate, a few reminders of the 1990s war remain. One of the churches near the gate still bears bullet holes, and pock-marks in the stone pavement, here and there, remain from schrapnel hits. But the old city is mostly restored.

City fountain

Some of the sites were churches (mostly Roman Catholic, but at least one Serbian Orthodox), the town fountain (which still dispenses water pure enough to safely drink), the town hall, and the palace of the elected "rector," who served as both executive and judicial roles while answering to a town council.

Rector's Palace

She was also kind enough to point out her favorite restaurants, gift shops, ice cream joints, and coffee shops (probably on commission). This is a tourist town, so there are dozens and dozens of each type of establishment filling the narrow streets.

The architecture is reminiscent of Malta or Sicily, a very Mediterranean atmosphere. We were served lunch as a group in a little cafe on a side street that we would never have found on our own. The local dish was a risotto and the local red wine was quite good.

But the primary feature here is the city wall, which remains intact after more than 800 years and God only knows how many wars. With a purchased ticket, which our tour leader provided, one can climb the stairs to the top of the wall and walk a full circuit of approximately 1.25 miles. And we did. A couple other group members were with us, but most opted only for a partial tour.

Views from the walls were spectacular! The red tile roofs of the houses, and the backdrop of the surrounding mountains and Adriatic Sea, gave a different vista at every turn.

After a hot and sunny walk around the walls, it was beer time. We sought out the famous Buza (BOO-sjuh) Bar. Buza means "hole" in Croatian, and one finds this little bar literally by passing through a hole in the old city wall. Perched high on the rocks overlooking the sea, it's a great little spot to enjoy a drink. But we may have been the oldest folks there by a couple of decades or more.

Back inside the old city, we made use of the Dubrovnik Cards we had been provided to visit a couple of museums. At the Maritime Museum we learned that, for a while during the 16th century, the Republic of Dubrovnik had the third largest merchant fleet in the world, behind those of Spain and Holland. Never mentioned in the history books.

At the Rector's Palace, now the Museum of Cultural History, we learned a bit about how the system of government worked in the 15th to 19th centuries, as well as seeing a collection of art. Most of the paintings were by artists unknown to us, but clearly after the style of some of the old masters. Many were badly in need of restoration.

We took the city bus back to the hotel on our own, without incident. Our phones tell us we've walked somewhere around 5 to 6 miles today, so our legs are pretty tired. We ate a light dinner and called it a night.