2 days in Dubrovnik, Croatia

 After some time in Kotor and then Herceg Novi, Montenegro, we took the bus to Dubrovnik, Croatia. Dubrovnik is a pretty famous city and often gets given the tag line of "the most beautiful city in the world". I really wanted to go here and check it out.

The view of 'old town' Dubrovnik from a spot we walked to while exploring.

We have had a lot of rain, hail, thunder and lightning recently. We had 3 nights in Kotor, 3 nights in Herceg Novi, and then 1 night in Dubrovnik and it RAINED. A LOT.

If you haven't been to this area, it might be good to review the geography of where Dubrovnik, Croatia is and the interesting intersection of land between Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia. Can you see how Dubrovnik comes way south on the coast compared to the rest of Croatia, and gets quite close to Montenegro? The closest community on the Montenegro side is Herceg Novi. 

Super fans of the mojofamily may recall my disappointment when I learned that Croatia would be joining the Schengen visa Zone as of January 1, 2023. We were hoping to be able to spend about a month in Croatia and be outside this zone. But since it is now a part of the Schengen, we cannot spend much time inside Croatia without overstaying our visa.

However, I really didn't want to miss Dubrovnik. We could have taken a bus from Kotor, Montengro to Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovena without going through Croatia. But then we wouldn't have seen this beautiful city. So I went ahead and planned for 2 of our days inside the Schengen to be in Croatia - the day we arrived in Dubrovnik and the day we left. And then we would have to spend a while in Bosnia to be outside of the Schengen again.

So we spent 90 min on the bus coming from Herceg Novi and arrived at the bus station in Dubrovnik at about 10:30am. The bus station was further from our accommodation than we'd like to walk with our bags, so we planned to get a taxi. (Note: on this trip we tend to avoid getting taxis and walk whenever we can, but we try to limit walking with our big backpacks to 1.2km or less. Further seems to lead to high levels of grumpiness.) Just before we made our way to a taxi, another passenger let us know that there were Uber rides available in Durbovnik and were typically much cheaper than a taxi.

Uber! Wow! What a treat. I don't think we've used Uber on this whole European trip but we were really happy about this. We didn't have language barriers describing where we wanted to go, we didn't have to pay with cash, we could request a taxi big enough for 4 people and our bags, and there were no issues with haggling for the fare or getting ripped off. Sweet!

We were allowed to check into our apartment early, which was also awesome. Our host was very friendly and our aparment was top notch. After being in some dreary, damp, cool places without many amenities, it was a huge treat to have a lovely warm and cozy place.  highly recommend the 'Apartment Maria' on booking.com as one of the very best accommodations we had during our whole trip if you are in Dubrovnik and don't mind some walking to get around. They even had a microwave and the views are lovely! We left our luggage and went out walking to explore the town.

Our awesome apartment - one of the very best. And it was actually warm!

The view from our apartment

And it rained. We did our best to enjoy ourselves and have fun anyway, enjoying the sites of the very pretty 'old town', the alleyways, the stairs, and the fortified walls. We had a small lunch from a bakery. We were surprised to learn that it was 15 euro (adults) / 5 euro (kids) to walk along the city walls. That's not a cheap activity for our budget, but we went ahead and did it anyway. We were the ONLY people up on the walls beacuse it was raining hard, very windy, and started hailing before we were done. But the colour of the water of the Adriatic sea against the red roofs of the buildings was still gorgeous. It was fun taking shelter in the little archways and guard houses here and there and giggling as rain dripped off our noses. After about half way around the walls, not everyone was giggling and we were eager to get dry and find a warm drink.

We didn't find any warm drinks, as it was Sunday and the off season, not many places were open to help us out. So we walked up the stairs (350-400?) back to our place (about a 15 min walk) and grabbed some groceries for dinner before going inside and drying off. Jason still managed to go back out and run up the hills behind our place, despite more thunder, because he is ... well, inspiring or stupid - you can decide.

All night it rained and thundered. I woke up early, wondering how our day might go. We had to check out at 10am but our bus for Mostar, Bosnia didn't leave until 4pm. When I planned this, it seemed like a great way to maximize our Schengen day and a way to see the town. But now I wasn't sure how we would fill our time if we would get really cold and wet before getting on a 3.5 hour bus ride.

Thankfully, our little cozy apartment and heater had successfully dried all of our gear and shoes from the day before. Also, our accommodations would store our luggage for the day and lend us umbrellas while we walked around!

At about 9:30am, the rain stopped and the sun made an appearance. So we were able to go out and explore walking around the city with patches of rain and patches of sun. We stayed much drier than we did the day before. We did some great geocaching and for anyone else who enjoys geocaching - this city has some good ones! We explored the fort. We also went to a real indoor restaurant and splurged to have a bigger lunch, knowing that dinner would be tricky with the timing of our bus. 

The city is preparing for the upcoming festival of St. Blaise (the patron saint).

We are really glad we went here and can see why people love this city. I can imagine that it's full of tourists in the summer, prices are way higher, and it would be lovely to kayak around to many of the islands and coastline or swim in the beaches and explore the caves here and there.

But we had to leave Croatia and get out of the Schengen. So we boarded a bus for Bosnia...