Dubrovnik

So I saw Star Trek - Into the Darkness about a week ago... It was the same day I packed my bags to go on holiday to Croatia, obviously there was a shift at work, a train, a plane, a coach and a hotel to collapse in immediately after this so I had no time to really reflect or write up what I thought about the film. I'll get to it soon enough but in all honesty it didn't leave a hugely lasting impression on me. Although a really wonderful holiday to the Pearl of the Adriatic could shade anyone's perceptions.

Dubrovnik is a beautiful city, everyone should go visit, if not for the fact that a few scenes from Game of Thrones were shot there - although there is no evidence of this and I'm intending to rewatch the entirety of the show just to figure out if I actually inadvertently walked on any sets - mainly because I wasn't thinking much about that whilst I was there... Plus the idea of being near Kings Landing was pleasure enough. Obviously nerdiness aside, I thoroughly enjoyed poking around the Old Town, a place that is hundreds of years old and survived the onslaught of modern warfare in the early 90s in which the city, a known historical landmark, was brutally attacked by the Serb and Montenegrin forces under the guise of the Yugoslav National Party - I did a fair bit of reading whilst I was there... Although I didn't fully understand the conflict, the impact of it was still there in the old walls of the city, there are clear scars from the recent past and yet the place was so beautiful and idyllic, I don't think I've loved a place so passionately since Venice. Which is odd because history had it that Venice would control Dubrovnik (known as Ragusa back then) for a period of the 13th century, then they'd later become maritime rivals, both beautiful magnificent powers on the sea. Ugh, I read too much, got too excited...

The Old Town of Dubrovnik is a walled city on the coast, it's a city contained with a dock and three gates, my brain is blank so far but the main tourist one was Pile Gate (pronounced peel-eh gate.) The main street leading up from Pile Gate was The Stradun, this leads the cathedral and the dock, and basically was always jam packed with people, mostly those who had stopped for the day on a cruise and were getting tours, on the night the city filtered out and it was much quieter and serene. The Stradun is the only consistently flat part of the city and the flagstoned floor and gutters were polished smooth from years of people treading all over them. On either side the city begins to elevate and consists mostly of steps, on the left it's a perilous climb up tons of steps to get anyway, on the right it's flat for a little while but still there are steps... I hate climbing steps... As so most tourists, hence why the Stradun is clearly such a good place to start. I don't know why I'm going on so much, it's really a lovely city.

Each corner of the wall has a tower, the walls facing the sea are a sheer drop into the ocean, you can walk around the entirety of the wall for a fee of course, but it's worth doing. The rooftops that were shelled during the Conflict have all been replaced, the oldest surviving rooftops are aged and yellow, in comparison to the bright orange which consumes the top of the city. There is also secret bar embedded in the wall, overlooking the ocean, known as Buza. It's hard to find, it involves climbing some steps (that look like the Spanish Steps in Rome to my untrained eye) and following the signs for 'Cold Drinks' and there's a gate covering a hole in the wall which you clamber through to find some steps down to small tables arranged on the side of the cliff; it's quite a nice sensation to find it; they also close when the weather is bad because it'd be far too dangerous otherwise.

Anyways I could rant about how wonderful it was for ages. Also I did some sea kayaking which was two parts nightmarish, one part breathtaking, shaken on a choppy sea in a plastic boat with a drenching salt spray for good measure. Oh and my knees were ridiculously sunburnt. I also learnt of my love for swimming around in the sea (I didn't fall out of my kayak or anything...) Bobbing about in the ocean is a lovely sensation, not that I could do it back home, it's far too cold.

I've rambled enough I suppose.