2014.29.06. Dubrovnik. Cable Car. City Walls.

[hier, auf Deutsch]


2014.29.06. Sunday. First, the cable car ride.

It's good to know, that the bus (any bus shuttle at all) that takes you back to the Dubrovnik airport, leaves from the ,,Cable Car" stop instead in front of the Pile (Peee-lay) gate (where you're dropped off when you arrive).

To get there, you walk to the old city, but instead of walking you, you walk around, following the road north-ish, outside the city walls. It's really the only street you could take.

There's a place to buy tickets on the cable car which takes euros-- a fair amount of places (but not all) around Dubrovnik do. A round trip was about 14 Euros (100 Kuna).

Here are some photos I took while waiting in line:



You can see Lokrum (which we'd visited the day prior) in the background:



Inside the cable car, there wasn't a whole lot of room to take photos.  Here's one I managed to take:




From the top, here's a view of the city and cable car:




I figured out a way to make a panorama from some of my pictures from the top -- this is as you look north and a bit east (you can see why they'd filmed a fair amount of Spaghetti westerns in Croatia):




You could also see the ,,Red Keep" from Game of Thrones :



[Compare with this still from the Game of Thrones (2.Season, 6.Episode).]  The photo also shows a (returning?) canoe-tour group. We didn't end up doing that ourselves, but it was popular among other conference-goers.  If you look very very closesly, you can also see (sort of ,,under" the Red Keep) the Pier.

More to the west, you can get a good view of the western harbor (the "real" harbor) of Dubrovnik, and the Elaphiti Islands:







At the top of the mountain stands the fort  Festung Srd (originally constructed in the early 1800s by Napoleonic French forces).  It is now a museum about the Croatian war of Independence (which they call the Homeland War, of1991-1995).  During the war it was shelled from nearby mountains (those pictured earlier). You can still see traces of the damage:




It's worth noting that the cable car was damaged during the war and out of commission for a while. It's only been somewhat recently that it's been repaired/renovated/replaced and up and working again.


City-Walls Walk

There are only about 2 places where you can start your walk along the city walls (which costs 100 Kuna, and no, you cannot pay in Euro).  We were wandering (after the cable car) around a bit first, starting through a northern gate into the old city:



We hadn't made it up the hill on the northern side of the old city, so we walked around a fair bit. I liked these nice tiny streets:



We also saw this rather funny tavern --- ,,Tavern Lady Pi-Pi".  The statue/fountain is of a woman peeing (I kid not).



Before finding the entrance to the city walls, we found a basketball court/playground and got some directions (half in Geman)

A view of the playground from the walls:



First view from the city walls -- this is what you see right after you enter through the Pile gate:




It was super warm and not particularly comfortable on the wall. We'd said this later to our host and he said you should only visit it early in the morning.













Here was another Game-of-Thrones place, the ,,House of the Undying"(still from the show):





There were also some empty buildings -- my guess was that these were sort of reminders of the war (or perhaps simply not repaired since then, for whatever reason):





End of the trip. Summary/ Thoughts.
On the next day, with the help of our host, we managed to use a way from where we were staying t othe Cable-Car stop, basically without stairs. It was incredible.

We were rather early, though, so we ate some lunch at ,,Yummi-Cafe" there.

A tip: Souvenirs are several Euros cheaper at the airport giftshop than in the old city.

All in all, Dubrovnik was very pretty and the people nice.

It was never clear to us how tipping works in Croatia, so we always gave something.

Where we stayed had a lot of steps between it and where we needed to go, but there were a lot of nice fruit trees around (lemon, apple) and everything was beautiful, green, and quiet. Also, most other places there had just as many steps.


The biggest ``attractions" of Dubrovnik are:

• the walk around the city walls
• the ride/view of the cable car (and the museum in Srd) 
• the Elaphiti Islands
• swimming in the very clear, refreshing, salt water 
• hiking in the mountains (not in the summer!) 
• canoe-tours around Lokrum and other places
• Snorkeling (German is ,,schnorklen") 
• tours with glass-bottomed boats
• eating fresh fish dishes
• good coffee
• beautiful, sunny weather (not always, but often)

We managed to do most of these things. I'd go gladly back to Croatia, although probably try out another city.

If you like swimming every day in the Adriatic Ocean and enjoying the sun, Croatia is a good travel destination.