Walled Cities & Waterfalls - Croatia

My accommodation in Dubrovnik, Croatia, was a homestay with the lovely Mare ... 83 years old, with no English and one of the most hacking hoicks (at least ten minutes every morning without fail) that I've ever had the misfortune to wake up to.  She managed to tell me that her husband was gone (I assumed dead since she crossed herself multiple times) and proceeded to say how good it was!  She kept feeding me, little pieces of cake and wine, cheese and olives.  Even a slice of her dinner pizza.  So it made up for the distance I needed to walk each day to get to the old town.

Dubrovnik has incredible walls ... solid, complete, towering above the bay.  And you can walk around the entire circumference of the old town, along with the hundreds and thousands of tourists.  Something to tick off the list but I was more fascinated with the actual old town itself, which gleams in the bright sun, all polished ivory stone and hidden nooks and churches.  And the tourist essentials, restaurants and more restaurants.  I chatted later to a real local who said that the old town now has only 382 permanent residents, making it more of a museum than a community.  He said that the only time people came back to live in the area was during the winter when there wasn't the demand for tourist accommodation.

There seem to be lots of churches and monasteries in Dubrovnik's old town and I visited quite a few.  They were full of treasures and beautiful icons, reliquaries and statues.  I stopped in an orthodox church for a while, listening to the two priests chanting ... there was no one else there.  And, unlike most churches and cathedrals, there were no pews.  Are they working religious places?  Or is it all just a performance for tourists?

The head of St Damianus ... can you see the skull?

A reliquary with the forearm of St Thomas, the apostle.  I was a bit perturbed about this ... did they dismember the poor man after he died?  Mind you, I'm skeptical that it's his arm since he reputedly died in India.

Evidently, this is the actual body of St Silvan, the 4th century martyr, whose throat was cut. They say that he never rots but occasionally his wound will leak fresh blood.

It was time to do some exercise.  I walked up to the top of a plateau above the city ... and yes, there were great views but what really interested me was the Homeland War Museum.  This was all about the war that resulted when Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, with Serbia and Montenegro attacking the country and laying siege to Dubrovnik.  They constantly bombed the old city, causing a lot of damage, injuries and deaths.  A woman who was there at the museum was quite bitter that Europe and the world seemed more upset about the damage to Dubrovnik's walls than with the human cost.

View towards the islands

The path had the 14 stations of the cross at intervals ... a good excuse for a breather!

A great view of the old town, surrounded by its massive walls ... not very big, is it!

The museum was housed in a fortress built by Napolean

I decided to do a day trip to the island next to Dubrovnik, Lokrum.  The boat ride gave a great view of Dubrovnik and those walls.  The island was another filming location for Game of Thrones (Dubrovnik was full of GOT reminders, souvenirs, walking tours etc) but its attraction for me was that (a) there weren't many people there, (b) there were interesting walks to do and (c) things to see.  Tick, tick, tick!

In the middle of the island was a lazaretto, built in 1534.  This was designed to hold people for 40 days quarantine, to protect the trading port from the plague and other morbidities.  There was a cistern for drinking water (see above ... I wouldn't drink it!) and wall with small rooms attached, each with their own fireplace.

There was an inscription that read "Erected ... with money collected from the wills of pious people.  May almighty God keep us from perishing."  Scary times.

I had a small moment of home-sickness when I visited the botanical garden on Lokrum ... discovering that nearly all the plants were from South America and Australia.  I must have looked weird (and naughty) ... picking gum leaves and sniffing them.

I had made the excellent decision to miss the buses and trains, and instead take a ferry to Split.  It was a delight and I'm a bit sorry that I didn't stop at some of the islands, even just for a day.  But time was ticking so instead I went to one of the best accommodations of the trip.  It was just outside the walls of the old town and so convenient and new and it also had a great terrace ... where I met a couple from Brighton.  Boy! They could drink!  And did virtually all day!  It seemed to be their version of going to museums and monasteries ... beaches and bars!

More gates, more walls, more narrow stone alleyways.

But Split is quite different from Dubrovnik because it has a slightly schizophrenic air to it ... part Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Italian, French and now Croatian.  So there are Roman ruins (in fact nearly all of the old city is Diocletian's Palace) as well as beautiful classical buildings.  

The old town of Split was wall to wall high-end shops, restaurants and bars.  And tourists ... all shopping.  I escaped the hoards by visiting the Green Market, where locals shopped for fruit and vegetables, cheese and meats, and I did too ... planning to make a monster salad that night for dinner.

What's with the duck shops?  There were three (!!!) in Split, one in Dublin, one in Dubrovnik.  I don't get it!

The Green Market

I wanted to buy some feta cheese for the salad but was offered this instead.  The cheese inside this sheep's stomach was delicious ... sort of like a cross between feta and cottage cheese but with a sheep's stomach sort of tang.

Dried screaming fish, anyone?

OK, after climbing the hill to Marjan, where there was a stunning view over the city, I left to go to my last walled old town ... Sibenic.  Oh, I did like Sibenik, mainly because I kept bumping into locals when winding my way through the very narrow alleys, rather than heaps of huge tour groups.  Yes, there were tourists but it also felt more authentic and lived in than the bigger centres.  

You can't waste any space!

A very bashful Adam

But the main reason for going to Sibenik was that it was within a short bus ride to the Krka National Park, famous for its waterfalls.  What a beautiful place!  It was quite a warm day so it was delightful walking along the boardwalks, the sounds of falling water all around me.  There were lots of birds (didn't succeed with a single photo), frogs and fish, flowers and beautiful green moss and algae.

But it's time to move to Zagreb ... and even more waterfalls!