Today we caught the bus to town. The guide book says the driver will tell you where to get off for the old city – oh no he didn’t so half a dozen of us ended up in the new city about a 40 minute walk away! Still it was quite a nice walk back and at the time it wasn’t raining.
With no cruise ship passengers, the risks of covid and the rain meant that the streets were not too full, in fact many of our pictures have no one in them at all. We explored the alleyways and small squares taking shelter in hostelries during the showers of rain. The “must do” tourist attraction is walking the city walls but we will leave that for later in the week in the sunshine.
A little bit of history for you. Dubrovnik was founded in the 7th century after the city built in Cavtat, where we are staying, was destroyed by Slavic raiders. The outcrop on which Dubrovnik is built was much easier to defend.
The city was seriously damaged by an earthquake in 1667 so most of the buildings date from soon after and are very photogenic, hence the tourists and film crews (Game of Thrones among others was filmed here).
This coast is known as the Dubrovnik Riviera, it is a thin strip of Croatian territory running down the coast which in some places is only a couple of miles wide.
This seemed a little too tempting to the Serbs during the 1991 war and they laid siege to the city firing shells from the hills above damaging 50% of the buildings, they claimed the city was really part of Serbia although only a few percent of the population consider themselves Serbs.
Damaging a picturesque city did not help the Serb cause in the rest of the world, there were comments that the foreign news made a bigger noise about the damage to buildings than to the people who were killed but after seven months the siege was lifted. All the serious damage has been repaired but there are still plenty of shrapnel marks in the walls.
Below is the same street now (in the rain) and then (raining bombs).
Tomorrow we will explore the area around Cavtat where we are staying as well as investigating bike hire and wine tours both of which sound appealing if the rain stops.
The forecast says it will be fine from tomorrow afternoon, watch this space for more exciting news.