Dubrovnik
The little jewel at the bottom tip of Croatia, Dubrovnik was always going to be a stop on the trip. It rose to more prominence within our group for being the real home of Game of Throne's King's Landing (along with a few other settings in the show). The Game of Thrones tour was one of our main tourist attractions coming into the trip, and the three-plus hour walking tour of Dubrovnik's old town and the Bokar Fortress (The Red Keep) next to it. Dubrovnik itself is quaint, beautiful and just a truly enchanting little town nestled deep down the Adriatic Sea.
We stayed in an AirBNB, with an overly stressed and difficult host (someone who had the gall to actually want to impose the stated quiet hours), about a 20-minute walk up from old town. It is in the more residential part of Dubrovnik, close to the Rixos 5-star hotel. The AirBNB had a beautiful balcony overlooking the sea and the sloping coast of Dubrovnik. With Mt. Srd behind the Dubrovnik city line below it, the view reminded me distinctly of Cape Town. Maybe not as perfect as the Cape Town view is (Mt. Srd is no Table Mountain), but it comes really, really close.
The old town is the heart and soul of Dubrovnik, nearly fully rebuilt form the NATO bombings in the late-90s. The town is replete with orange tile roofs that sparkle in the sky, creating just a perfect sense of old-town Europe - and coincidently, King's Landing of course. The old town is full of small tunnels of alleys and pathways with high steps and vertical drops. For such a small area, it is scary how topologically diverse it is. The streets are full of upscale restaurants, including one that deserves its own shoutout - 360 Restaurant, at the corner of the Old Town at the riverfront.
360 Restaurant is a tremendous restaurant, with an amazing view, and incredible food. You can either get a 2 or 3 course meal for about $70, or a 6-course tasting menu for about double. We all got the 2 or 3 course meal, which also came along with an amuse bouche of deconstructed, frozen celery (really good), and a dessert plate of reconstructed cookies. My appetizer was perfectly cooked scallops with truffle sauce and squid-ink chips, and then a main of pigeon, with lavender-crusted pigeon filet, and a confit-style leg, with a foie gras side. The food was incredible, the setting, with a nice solid wind, was great, and the whole envioronment was a special night in Dubrovnik.
And little did I know the night was just getting started. The night ended at one of Dubrovnik's main night spots, Culture Club Revelin, a nightclub built into the walls of the Old Town, in a 16th century fortress. The club is large with a few different bars, people in cages, lights, DJs. We came on a night with neon lights and streamers passed around everywhere. The best part of the place, really, was their AC that ran really well throughout to keep the place cool. Of all the clubs we went to on the trip, Revelin was my favorite experience.
The rest of our time in Dubrovnik featured seeings the depths of the town, a quick trip to a rocky beach close to the Rixos resort, and the highs, taking the cable car up Mt. Srd to the Panorama restaurant. The food at the restaurant itself wasn't all that great, but the views, especially with our group seated at the edge with a clear barrier allowing us an unobstructed view of the entire city below. The old town was lit up nicely with flood-lighting iluminating the fortress walls, and the expanse back towards where we stayed too had enough lights to mark out the sprawling up-and-down nature of Dubrovnik.
Driving the Coast
The drive between Dubrovnik and Split is one of the most beautiful in the world. The Adriatic coast to the West (our left while driving), the hills and mountains to the East. The drive traipses up and down, winding through the coast and mountains, while taking a small little detour into Bosnia (more on that in a minute). The drive, if done in one go, takes about three and a half hours. Ours, with many, many stops for photos, a stop for lunch at a beautiful little seaside town, and some traffic, took seven, and it was a truly glorious seven hours.
The drive is more or less fully on one road, Highway 8. The beginning of the drive takes a bit to get going, with not too many great photo stops in the beginning. The drive really starts to take off once you get into and out of Bosnia. For some reason, you have to drive through Bosnia to get to Split, with a bridge that would bypass this detour still under construction. This should be a tough roadblock, with not one but two passport checks, but while they have lanes for passport checks, when we pulled up and started to hand the guy our passports, he literally just waved us to go through. On the one hand, this was great as it didn't slow us down, on the other, what the hell was that? Is there literally no security on those borders? It is really a tiny part of Bosnia, and I imagine a good percentage of the crossers are inevitably heading back into Croatia, so maybe some sort of deal was made?
Anyway, once you enter back into Croatia the real magic of the drive begins. Each winding turn gives better views than the last. It has the mountains and sea combination that I last saw on the drive to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and while the natural beauty may have been slightly less regal than that, the small towns that dot the bottom of the hills added a bit of flair to the photos and the sights. Along the way you pass many windmills (Croatia seemingly is quite energy-forward), so many small towns, and so many mountains that tower over you. You even pass a winery, with Winer Rizman smartly setting up a shop right when you get back into Croatia. The stall servers food and wine tastings, has some sleek bathrooms, and overlooks rows and rows of vineyards in a truly pristine setting.
Sooner or later, we had to stop at one of the small towns for real to get something to eat. It was Gradac, right when the Highway 8 makes it way back to the coast after a brief jaunt inwards. Gradac has a sandy beach, a real novelty for most of Croatia, and a perfectly tamed water in an inlet of the coast, the mountain walls jutting up. It reminded me a lot of False Bay in South Africa, with the restaurants lined up at the bottom.
The rest of the drive included one memorable photo stop where I had to drive up a steep cliff to a small, deserted church to get a good view of the land, dotted with small towns and hills, behind it. It was dangerous, rash, and so very worth it. Sunset occured three-quarters of the way through the trip, creating a perfectly glistening shine on the towns and hills. We finally reached Split around 8PM, a wonderful day on the coast of Croatia behind us.
The little jewel at the bottom tip of Croatia, Dubrovnik was always going to be a stop on the trip. It rose to more prominence within our group for being the real home of Game of Throne's King's Landing (along with a few other settings in the show). The Game of Thrones tour was one of our main tourist attractions coming into the trip, and the three-plus hour walking tour of Dubrovnik's old town and the Bokar Fortress (The Red Keep) next to it. Dubrovnik itself is quaint, beautiful and just a truly enchanting little town nestled deep down the Adriatic Sea.
We stayed in an AirBNB, with an overly stressed and difficult host (someone who had the gall to actually want to impose the stated quiet hours), about a 20-minute walk up from old town. It is in the more residential part of Dubrovnik, close to the Rixos 5-star hotel. The AirBNB had a beautiful balcony overlooking the sea and the sloping coast of Dubrovnik. With Mt. Srd behind the Dubrovnik city line below it, the view reminded me distinctly of Cape Town. Maybe not as perfect as the Cape Town view is (Mt. Srd is no Table Mountain), but it comes really, really close.
The old town is the heart and soul of Dubrovnik, nearly fully rebuilt form the NATO bombings in the late-90s. The town is replete with orange tile roofs that sparkle in the sky, creating just a perfect sense of old-town Europe - and coincidently, King's Landing of course. The old town is full of small tunnels of alleys and pathways with high steps and vertical drops. For such a small area, it is scary how topologically diverse it is. The streets are full of upscale restaurants, including one that deserves its own shoutout - 360 Restaurant, at the corner of the Old Town at the riverfront.
360 Restaurant is a tremendous restaurant, with an amazing view, and incredible food. You can either get a 2 or 3 course meal for about $70, or a 6-course tasting menu for about double. We all got the 2 or 3 course meal, which also came along with an amuse bouche of deconstructed, frozen celery (really good), and a dessert plate of reconstructed cookies. My appetizer was perfectly cooked scallops with truffle sauce and squid-ink chips, and then a main of pigeon, with lavender-crusted pigeon filet, and a confit-style leg, with a foie gras side. The food was incredible, the setting, with a nice solid wind, was great, and the whole envioronment was a special night in Dubrovnik.
And little did I know the night was just getting started. The night ended at one of Dubrovnik's main night spots, Culture Club Revelin, a nightclub built into the walls of the Old Town, in a 16th century fortress. The club is large with a few different bars, people in cages, lights, DJs. We came on a night with neon lights and streamers passed around everywhere. The best part of the place, really, was their AC that ran really well throughout to keep the place cool. Of all the clubs we went to on the trip, Revelin was my favorite experience.
The rest of our time in Dubrovnik featured seeings the depths of the town, a quick trip to a rocky beach close to the Rixos resort, and the highs, taking the cable car up Mt. Srd to the Panorama restaurant. The food at the restaurant itself wasn't all that great, but the views, especially with our group seated at the edge with a clear barrier allowing us an unobstructed view of the entire city below. The old town was lit up nicely with flood-lighting iluminating the fortress walls, and the expanse back towards where we stayed too had enough lights to mark out the sprawling up-and-down nature of Dubrovnik.
Dubrovnik as a whole is the right type of touristy. Tourism absolutely drive the cities economy. The city itself has a population of only around 50,000, but an annual tourism visitation of around 2.5 million. But the tourism is of a higher class than that of some major Western European city, or even Split, with hawking stalls selling touristy bullshit. Dubrovnik surprisingly didn't have that. It was a classy, untouched haven of tourism deep within Croatia's longer-than-expected coast.
Driving the Coast
The drive between Dubrovnik and Split is one of the most beautiful in the world. The Adriatic coast to the West (our left while driving), the hills and mountains to the East. The drive traipses up and down, winding through the coast and mountains, while taking a small little detour into Bosnia (more on that in a minute). The drive, if done in one go, takes about three and a half hours. Ours, with many, many stops for photos, a stop for lunch at a beautiful little seaside town, and some traffic, took seven, and it was a truly glorious seven hours.
The drive is more or less fully on one road, Highway 8. The beginning of the drive takes a bit to get going, with not too many great photo stops in the beginning. The drive really starts to take off once you get into and out of Bosnia. For some reason, you have to drive through Bosnia to get to Split, with a bridge that would bypass this detour still under construction. This should be a tough roadblock, with not one but two passport checks, but while they have lanes for passport checks, when we pulled up and started to hand the guy our passports, he literally just waved us to go through. On the one hand, this was great as it didn't slow us down, on the other, what the hell was that? Is there literally no security on those borders? It is really a tiny part of Bosnia, and I imagine a good percentage of the crossers are inevitably heading back into Croatia, so maybe some sort of deal was made?
Anyway, once you enter back into Croatia the real magic of the drive begins. Each winding turn gives better views than the last. It has the mountains and sea combination that I last saw on the drive to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and while the natural beauty may have been slightly less regal than that, the small towns that dot the bottom of the hills added a bit of flair to the photos and the sights. Along the way you pass many windmills (Croatia seemingly is quite energy-forward), so many small towns, and so many mountains that tower over you. You even pass a winery, with Winer Rizman smartly setting up a shop right when you get back into Croatia. The stall servers food and wine tastings, has some sleek bathrooms, and overlooks rows and rows of vineyards in a truly pristine setting.
Sooner or later, we had to stop at one of the small towns for real to get something to eat. It was Gradac, right when the Highway 8 makes it way back to the coast after a brief jaunt inwards. Gradac has a sandy beach, a real novelty for most of Croatia, and a perfectly tamed water in an inlet of the coast, the mountain walls jutting up. It reminded me a lot of False Bay in South Africa, with the restaurants lined up at the bottom.
The rest of the drive included one memorable photo stop where I had to drive up a steep cliff to a small, deserted church to get a good view of the land, dotted with small towns and hills, behind it. It was dangerous, rash, and so very worth it. Sunset occured three-quarters of the way through the trip, creating a perfectly glistening shine on the towns and hills. We finally reached Split around 8PM, a wonderful day on the coast of Croatia behind us.
