Croatia Part III - Dubrovnik

Our last stop on our trip through Croatia was "The Pearl of the Adriatic", Dubrovnik. We had heard nothing but good things about Dubrovnik, and it didn't disappoint.

We stayed at a waterfront hotel in the Dubrovnik suburb of Lapad, just north of the old town. It was too far to walk into town, but luckily the bus stop was right in front of our hotel, so we were able to commute easily between our hotel and the old town each day.

We arrived too late on Wednesday to head into town, so we just spent an hour or so at the hotel before going to bed. In the morning, we went for a swim off the rocks on Lapad Bay right by our hotel. As in Split and Korčula, the water was great. After our swim, we cleaned up at the hotel and took the bus into the old town of Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik's old town is surrounded by a huge wall that dates back centuries. The entire old town is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was quite a sight; marble streets, narrow side streets, houses stacked up side by side and one on top of the other. It was great seeing another city so well preserved (despite the fact that 2/3 of the buildings were damaged during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's -- when doing the repairs they made sure to do the repairs in the original style they were constructed in).

Despite being a major tourist city, Dubrovnik is quite small, with a population of only around 40,000 people, so we were able to see a lot of the city in our 3 full days there. On Thursday, we walked around the city walls, which offered great views of both the city and the Adriatic Sea. On Friday we went to a beach just outside the city, and afterwards enjoyed a nice dinner on a patio overlooking the old harbour before having drinks at one of the coolest bars we've ever seen. Dubrovnik has two bars outside of the city walls, located on the rocky cliffs above the Adriatic. Having drinks on these rocks, with the city wall behind us blocking out all sounds of the city while we looked out over the sea was a great time, and a great memory we will have for years.

Saturday, we intended to make a day trip to the nearby island of Lokrum, but a huge thunderstorm thwarted our plans. We would have been happy to go to the island despite the rain, but the boats that take tourists there weren't running. So instead, we spent a bit of time running around in the rain looking for a decent restaurant to eat in (only to be disappointed with the one we found... oh well), before heading back to the hotel and exploring the area of Lapad a little. After a nice dinner in Lapad, we headed back into town (now that the rain had stopped) for another drink at one of the cliff top bars outside the wall. Despite not getting to do everything we wanted this day, we learned a valuable lesson: if it starts raining in Dubrovnik, get inside ASAP. In a town where everything is made of marble and stone, there is nowhere for the rain to go except on you. The streets became rivers and we got absolutely soaked.

We had an early, early flight on Sunday, which of course was delayed 2.5 hours. Luckily they held our connecting flight in Zagreb for about 40 minutes to let us on, and we were able to get back into Zürich only about 30 minutes late. Despite the minor troubles our last couple of days, we had an amazing time in Croatia, and it was a great final vacation to have before we leave Europe for the USA.

Croatia Part II - Korčula

The next stop in our trip was the island of Korčula, about halfway between Split and Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian Coast.

We arrived in the evening and checked into our hotel, which was possibly the worst hotel we've stayed in in Europe. Apparently many of the hotels along the Croatian coast were built by the communist Yugoslavian government during the 1970s. This one probably hasn't been updated since then. The accommodations were pretty dingy and the staff was incredibly rude, but the hotel did boast a nice location right on the water, just a 5-10 minute walk from Korčula's beautiful old town.

The old town of Korčula is a walled city dating back to I think the 13th Century or so, and has a small population, only about 5,000 people. It is designed in an interesting way, with tall (for the time) buildings and narrow streets, and if you were to look at it from above, a map of the city streets would look kind of like a big fishbone. There is one main street down the middle, with side streets fanning out along from it. The sides streets were angled in a certain way so that cool summer winds would blow through the streets in the hot summers, but strong, cold winter winds (coming from the other direction) wouldn't penetrate the city. We went into the town, had some dinner, then went back to the hotel for some sleep.

In the morning, we decided to go to the beach right after breakfast. When we booked the hotel, we were under the impression it had its own beach. We wouldn't really call it a beach, it was more a bunch of rocks along the water, which wasn't what we had hope for, but was still alright. We walked along the rocks for a little while and found a quiet, semi-private spot where we could go swimming. The swimming, as in Split, was great. Perfect temperatures, nice and calm, all you could ask for.

For dinner that night, we followed a recommendation from our guide book and went to a really nice family-run seafood restaurant. We had some great fish, caught that very day, on a nice sidewalk patio along one of the narrow side streets looking down to the water. It was probably the nicest dinner we had on our trip.

When we got back to our hotel at about 11:00, we were not-so-pleasantly surprised to find out that there was an outdoor rock concert going on right next to our hotel. This was something our hotel neglected to tell us, both when we booked the hotel and at any other point during our stay. It kept us up until after 2 AM (and this was on a Tuesday night too), which made for a pretty miserable night. The hotel of course didn't care at all, and brushed of our complaints.

However, we didn't let it ruin our time in Korčula. The next morning we went for another swim off the rocks, and had a nice lunch at a pizza place along the water in the old town. Later in the afternoon, we had our next ferry trip, this time to Dubrovnik. Korčula was great, despite the awful hotel. It made us wish we had more time and were able to see more of the Croatian islands.

Croatia Part I - Split

Our final vacation in Europe before we move to the States took us to Croatia. We flew from nearby Friedrichshafen, Germany to Split, Croatia. We spent two nights in Split before moving on to the island of Korčula and Dubrovnik. We'll start off with Split.

We arrived in Split early Saturday afternoon. We were met by a girl from the company that we rented an apartment from, and after taking us to our apartment, gaves us some recommendations for places to check out. The apartment was in a cool part of Split's old town, right next to Diocletian's Palace. Diocletian's Palace was built around 300 AD. It was abandoned by the Romans some time after that, and in the 7th Century, nearby residents started residing within the palace, and it eventually became the main part of Split's old town. It was really cool walking around in a town where the buildings are 1700 years old and still intact.

On Sunday we went and toured the basements underneath Diocletian's Palace. The basements had been forgotten for centuries, and it wasn't until something like 50 years ago that they were rediscovered. Apparently back when people first started living in the palace, they lived above the basements, and looking for somewhere to dispose of their garbage and human waste, just broke holes in their floors and threw their trash into the basement. Eventually the basements filled up with garbage and people just forgot the basements were there. Anyway, they've now been emptied of the garbage, and they are preserving the basements the way they originally were, which was interesting to see.

We headed to Korčula on Monday afternoon, but before the ferry ride we had time to kill in town, so we headed to Bačvice Beach for a swim. Despite being a "city beach", which a lot of Croatians apparently thing aren't all that nice, we really like the beach. The water was crystal clear, the sand was soft and white, and you could walk out what seemed like 100 yards before the water was up to your shoulders. A really enjoyable beach.