Dubrovnik

I was happy to visit Dubrovnik at the beginning of November. The weather was perfect, warm and sunny, and there were relatively few tourists around. If I had visited touristy Dubrovnik during hot August, I think I would have hated Croatia forever, lol

Dubrovnik, a trading city founded by Greeks 1300 years ago, became an important and rich maritime republic during XIV century. Most of the beautiful buildings along the marble main street, the Placa, were built during the city’s wealthy period, from XIV century to XVI century.

I saw Dubrovnik for the first time few days ago, late at night. I remember that the marble slabs of the main street shone as much as the soft lightning of the city. There were almost no tourists, streets were quiet and the atmosphere was magical.

We started our day in Dubrovnik with a long stop at an old bakery, by the new port, with fantastic traditional (I suppose) cakes. They looked so yummy that we wanted to taste them all!

Then, on the way to the historic city, we crossed a small cemetery. It was 1^st November, the All Saints Day so it was quite busy with local families bringing flowers to the tombs. I usually like to visit cemeteries, I believe that cemeteries are an important part of a people’s culture and traditions but I found this small cemetery particularly sad with many recent tombs of young people who had not died of natural circumstances. You know what I mean . . I did not want to stay longer there, I felt sad.

When we entered the Old City through Pile Gate, we decided to keep our guidebooks inside the backpacks and enjoy the city just walking along its main streets or narrow alleys with no direction. We left the walk on the historic walls for after lunch. From the walls you have a different perspective of the city and you can appreciate its architecture better, especially the churches’ cupolas. The walk on the walls is a complementary walk to the city walk.

Time was out for me and S. who had the flight to Zagreb that afternoon. After the taking off and with nice sunset views over the Adriatic Sea, we were already going through the pages of my Western Balkans guidebook, trying to decide which would be the best destination for our next road trip to the Balkans. Because there will be a next road trip to the Balkans. In Autumn of course 😉