Cruising the Croatian Coast - Dubrovnik & Split

The time had finally arrived; Meaghan and Ryan arrived two wednesday's ago already almost a week into their 17 day coverage of europe that would take them from Iceland, to London, to Dublin, to Croatia, and back on a similar path (sans Dublin). After a night of pub crawling and gastro-pubbing and a night of packing and recovering, our flight to Dubrovnik arrived. We came in on an amazing Friday morning, sun blaring and vitamin D abound!
We spent the first day in Dubrovnik, the most beautiful walled city in the world, meandering about the city and climbing around the walls. The city enjoyed its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, when it was a trading center in the mediterranean. This is when its beautiful walls that protect the city were built, surviving multiple earthquakes that destroyed many of the city's buildings. The buildings are mostly from the late 1600's.

During the Bosnia-Serb conflict, the serbs invaded the town and it was under seige for several months. However, the serbs could not penetrate the city's old walls even in the 1990's, and the young men of the city held off the Serbs until the Croatian army came from Split.

It has such amazing history and the beautiful orange roofs and massive walls seem like they are out of a fairy tale. We walked the walls (counter-clockwise of course, thanks Slick Rick Steves) under the hot sun and afterwards, made it to Buza I, which is a tiki bar and scattered chairs placed between the western-most wall and the water, on a few rocky ledges. We had our first of many Ozjusko's and then jumped in the water at the foot of the bar. Not a bad start for this vacation! For dinner we ate at the old port seafood stop called Lokanda Peskarija, went to a shishi club called Gil's (no need to go unless you are somebody SUPER cool) and then to a 15th century fortress hosting a nightclub. Rick Steves talked of a young crowd, but we felt like we were babysitting highschoolers. Since we paid admission, we made ourselves have fun and actually ended up having a great time dancing and making some underage (i.e. 18) friends while we were at it:-)

The next morning, we had a cup of coffee with our Sobe proprieter, Pero, who runs Villa Ragusa. There should be no other option when staying here, as we paid €30 per couple to stay in the heart of the old town...which is unheard of in Dubrovnik. Pero even dropped us at the car rental place, from which we were off to Split to get our boat!

On the coastal drive that makes Hwy 1 up the Northern Cali coast seem like playing house with your sister, we stopped in Ston, a cool little village with the second longest fortification wall in the world after the great wall of China, which we found pretty impressive. The walls were erected to protect its salt mines from being pirated (see far left of photo below). During the 1500's, salt was more valuable than silver.After arriving in Split to a minor (nearly major) boat complication, we got everything worked out, and walked into Split to enjoy a pizza for dinner and cruise Diocletian's Palace, which dates back to the 300's when the former Roman emperor built it as his retirement home. It was eventually taken over by the town and today the 1700 year old palace is still integrated into the city, with cafe's and banks still tenants in the palace. It was a very unique experience as if this was in the US, it'd be a national monument, but here, its just the local hangout where as Slick Rick would put it, teenagers lick ice cream off eachothers faces:-) We set sail tomorrow!