Day 2: Dubrovnik old city

Made my 10,000 steps today and then some. 19,500. Between exhaustion and sleeping pills we slept until 9:30 this morning. We are staying in the Pucic Palace. "Palace" means mansion in this part of the world. Think 17th c Venice without the canals. Full breakfast included. This morning I went English with an omelet and mushrooms. Tomorrow I think I will go more European.

Dubrovnik was shelled during the "Homeland War" in the early 1990s, targetted by the Serbs even though it is a World Heritage City--as a way to demoralize Croatian culture. The girl at reception pointed out that every roof in the city is new. Instead of splotches of different colored tiles, they are all the same. Lots of restoration still going on, especially now in the off season. Tourism is the primary industry of coastal Croatia with 7 cruise ships a day landing in Dubrovnik in summer. Steve read some reviews that talked about the wall-to-wall tourists. Not at this time of year. But the review recommended autumn, which is no doubt drier.

It was not raining this morning, so we took off to explore the old city. Cloudy enough that I resisted a LOT of pictures and only took 80+.

Wandered lots of little streets like this.

We entered last night through the gate directly under us here. Our hotel Pucic Palace is down this main street to the end and then two streets to the right. When Steve looked at a map, he was kind of irritated at our taxi driver for dropping us off here instead of a gate to the left that would have been much closer--until we walked that way today and saw that we would have had to descend a couple hundred steps with our luggage. The guy knew what he was doing.

We paid the fee to walk the city walls. Well worth it for the fabulous views. I was amused by this basketball court in the middle of the old city, but then as Steve pointed out, there are a lot of good Croatian basketball players.

Gave into my fetish for shooting through doorways and windows quite a bit. This is from a guard tower in the wall similar to the one you see in the picture.

Skipped lunch after such a big late breakfast and had afternoon coffee here. I got a kick out of the fleeces they provided to encourage customers not to mind sitting outside even though it is chilly.

Turns out our ticket for the wall also includes this fortress. They were already closed when we found that out, but the ticket is good for twenty-four hours, so we will go tomorrow morning.

For dinner tonight I had octopus ragout with polenta. Wonderful! Steve had roast beef Dubrovnik style. Looked good, but boring by comparison. After supper we walked a bit and enjoyed the city by night.