Croatia Day 9

Once again, I had planned for another early morning to get to Dubrovnik before all the crowds. I wanted to walk the narrow city walls without any issue of us wanting to stop for pictures or having to jostle position with lines of people, and before the heat creamed us. And once again, the girls decided to join me and were up on time.

Our hotel was about a 15 minute drive outside Dubrovnik old town, a location I had flip flopped back and forth on staying at but ultimately I thought having a resort with the pool and the sea, at the end of our trip, would more than make up for the inconvenience of having to take an Uber and besides, it was a free stay on points!

We got to the old town about thirty minutes before the gates opened so we walked around a bit enjoying the fairly empty streets. It was hard to believe that only thirty years ago, the city was under siege.

Anyone who is a Game of Thrones fan would recognize many locations in Old Town, especially the fort and fortress, as it is used as a filming location through the entire show. Once the gates opened, we were the second ones to climb the ridiculously steep steps up to the top of the old city walls (82 feet high at the highest and 6-9 feet thick) and were immediately met with a striking view.

Walking along the top was fantastic with the view over the orange tiled roofs of the buildings in old town on the left and then the views out to the sapphire Adriatic Sea and Lokrum Island to the right. There are so many sites that would have gone unnoticed if we had just stayed down on the passages below.

We walked the entire 1 1/4 mile length of the fortification before descending back down to find a nice spot to have a cold drink in the shade someplace.

We passed by a church so I went in to light a candle for my dad as I head not done so in Croatia yet.

I had made a reservation months prior to have lunch at the Panorama restaurant located on the very top of 1,350 foot Mount Srd. We made our way up more and more steps until we arrived at the cable car station where we would get a ride to the top! (You can see the restaurant on top of the mountain in the previous picture)

Once on top, the view was everything one would expect it to be – beyond stunning looking way down on the old town enclosed by the soaring fortification. We thanked our lucky stars for yet another day of azure skies and a nice breeze and another scrumptious meal, especially the octopus carpaccio.

We discussed going back to old town to explore some more, but we felt the heat and the early morning wake up so instead decided to take advantage of the pool waiting for us back at the hotel.

The drive down the mountain ended up being beyond nerve wracking. Everyone knows I have a thing with heights, unless I am attached to something like a climbing rope or encapsulated in some sort of a container, like a plane or a gondola or even a hot air balloon basket. What does not quell my fears is being encapsulated in a vehicle; in fact, it does the complete opposite. It is even worse than if I was standing on the edge of a precipice with no barrier at all AND it’s even doubly worse if I am not the person driving the vehicle… and so it is, that our poor Uber driver found out the hard way.

Not even five seconds after he picked us up we came upon the first S curve for which there is no guardrail, no jersey barrier, no evenly spaced boulders, no nothing. There wasn’t even a bush to hide the fact that maybe three feet from where the tarmac ended the ground also ended. And to top it off, this eight-foot wide “road” was for two-way traffic – who the heck thought that was a good idea?

In that first five seconds we encountered a car coming up. We had luckily not quite gotten to the S curve so we managed to back up and let him pass, but not before the “Oh my Gods” started. Continuing on, the road cut inland more and dear Noella kept assuring me it was all good… that was until we ended up back on the side of the cliff. At this point we ran into a traffic jam with four vehicles, two of which were passenger vans, were coming up while us and two other vehicles were coming down. When our Uber driver started maneuvering the car out of the way, that’s when I undid my seat belt. When he pulled forward toward the edge with no guardrail, that’s when I started to panic, even Jenny who was up front was getting a bit nervous.

Funny thing was once back at the hotel, I couldn’t find the handle to get out of the sliding car door and laughed that, “I guess I wouldn’t have been able to jump anyhow!”

I retired to the pool to get caught up on my blog, while the girls had a nap before joining me an hour or so later. The only problem with the location of the hotel was there weren’t any great restaurants around to eat at and our dinner at the hotel the first night was only ok and certainly not worth the price, so we decided to go back to the old town.

Noella found us a cute restaurant with great reviews and it did not disappoint. We shared some apps and a large platter with a variety of fresh seafood. And since we had been light on dinner, we treated ourselves to gelato at the the highest ranked store in Dubrovnik!

We walked around for a bit longer, turning left and right down the labyrinth of passageways, not having a destination but just wanting to see what was around the next bend.

At one point, we stumbled upon an unmarked door leading all the way through the walls out to the other side where the sea meets the rocks the walls were built on, and there was one of the coolest bars I have ever seen!