Summer is Coming

Hey guys! I'm sorry for the delay. I was traveling pretty frequently and trying to fit so much into every day that by the time I got back home I could barely keep my eyes open, much less give this blog the attention it needed. So... exactly the same problem as I had keeping this up traveling last year! But unlike last year, my days of non-stop travel are temporarily suspended, as I have arrived in Freiburg, Germany, and will stay here until the end of June, so I'll have time to catch up and keep you updated. Starting with the events of May 24.

So I woke up the in Dubrovnik. Which is one of those places that is just unfairly beautiful. I woke up thinking it was rainy and cloudy and miserable, because it was 8:30 and still not very bright outside. When I walked out the door I realized that the streets were so narrow light just wasn't reaching our window, because it was a beautiful, bright, sunny, day. I trekked up the insane flight of stairs to the main building of my hostel, got some advice on where to go and what to do while it was sunny (because the forecast was for rain the next day, but more on that later), and I got moving. First stop: the city walls

I mentioned them in my last post, but they're worth talking about again, because they are incredible. They are just huge. Dubrovnik has always been a walled city, and they've just kept adding to the walls and remaking them until they are huge. Like, they are so massive that they were helpful in the war in the 1990s. That's how impressive these walls are, and they go all the way around the Old Town, so you can go up on them and walk around the city and get some amazing views. Which I did.

I took a ton of pictures and here are the highlights! Because really, I took a TON of pictures.

This is from the walls and it looks down the main street of Dubrovnik. The original site of the city consisted of the land (to the left) and a small, rocky island (to the right) separated by a channel (that's what you're looking at) that the early settlers filled up with rocks and paved and made their main road. At the other end of the road is the harbor, and that tower is from one of the many churches in the Old Town. 

There's the Croatian flag flying over the entrance to the walled city, and in the background is this

Fort, which is just outside the city walls, and looks really impressive. In my opinion. 

Selfie with Dubrovnik!

I really love this view along the city walls, I think it helps to show just how impressive they are. 

 and this is the short, small side of the walls.

Which is of course short because there are CLIFFS

There's the fort and the little bay between the fort and the walls is where I went kayaking that afternoon. 

On the right is Lokram island, which will come up later

This is a typical street in Dubrovnik: very narrow.

 The low-lying building you can see in the background is the Quarantine. In ye olden days, a quarantine was a place where sailors and merchants and their goods had to wait for forty (Latin root: quarant-) days before they could come into the city to prevent diseases the sailors had picked up other places from spreading to the city at large, because Dubrovnik was a walled city: if one person got sick, everybody got sick and the city was in shambles. So Dubrovnik was actually the first city to implement Quarantine, and because of it they managed to escape the worst of the black plague.

This is the Dubrovnik harbor, still used today. 

A little beach right outside the walls.

 I honestly just love these picture because it really shows off the sometimes bizarre geometry of the city walls. 

 The harbor

The city

The giant tower fort thingy on the walls

Lokram, but the whole thing this time. 

 Yeah, I just found the walls to be sort of endlessly fascinating.

But that's also it, there you have my tour around the city walls of Dubrovnik. 

So I walked around the city walls and got a good chance to look at the city itself, the ocean, the surrounding land, and it was really amazing. I love being in high places and getting to look down on cities. I think it offers such an interesting perspective, so the view from the city walls was a special treat for me. I feel like it really helped me get to know the layout of the city and just get a feel for it. 

After that I went and had lunch at this lovely little outdoor café with an incredible view. I had grilled shrimp and veggies and it was delicious. Though there was actually one vegetable I've never seen before in my life. It was like a lima bean in shape and color, but it was also definitely not a lima bean. It was tasty, though. 

After lunch I went back to my room, put on my bathing suit and 

Went kayaking. 

It was actually pretty stormy and windy when we left for kayaking, 

 As seen in these increasingly dramatic pictures of where I went kayaking from.

 OK. These two actually look like shots out of Game of Thrones.

(Have I mentioned that they film Game of Thrones in Dubrovnik? Because they do. But luckily they weren't while I was there, because I feel like they would get in the way. The locals actually apparently call it Game of Parking because they take up all the parking in the city.)

But it cleared up beautifully when we were out on the water. There were only 10 of us on the tour, plus our guides, so we had a really great trip. Two of the other people on the tour were Spanish-speakers, one from Spain and one from Argentina, so we had fun chatting in Spanish. 

We took the kayaks around the old city and went to this awesome cave near the harbor. 

Seriously. Doesn't it make you angry how pretty it is? I mean look at it!

Places don't have the right to be that beautiful. Especially when they are as far away from my normal place of life as this one is. 

Anyway, we pulled our kayaks into the cave, ate sandwiches, I went swimming, some people jumped off cliffs (I did not jump off cliffs, because I am neither brave nor stupid and you have to be one of the two.) and it was really lovely. 

This is just a piece of the coastline we passed with a very lovely villa on it. 

Then we went out to the island of Lockram and learned a little bit about the history of Dubrovnik and specifically the curse that the monks apparently put on the island when they got kicked off of it. 

There was a monastery on the island (you can actually still see it), but then someone in power decided to come in and control the island themselves, because it was very strategically important and also pretty. But before they left, the monks went around the island burning candles and cursed it that no one who owned it would be able to enjoy it. And apparently it's worked, since all the owners of the island since that time have been killed, gone bankrupt, or somehow not been able to keep the island. It's now the property of the Croatian government (insert joke about the financial state of Croatia here) and functions as a sort of city park for Dubrovnik. 

By the time we were heading back the waves had gotten even higher and I was getting a little green around the gills, not to mention tired, but we made it safely back to the city and it was a great experience. A lot of time when I travel I spend a lot of time inside or just walking around a city, so it was really fun to get to go do something different for an afternoon. 

After kayaking, I went back to my hostel and took a shower and went to dinner, which was very nice, and then I took a cable car up to the top of a nearby mountain. In all honesty, I would have walked up the mountain, but for a couple of things: 1) I was going up near sunset and it is like an hour and a half walk, and I wanted to get there in time 2) I felt like I had already gotten my exercise in for the day 3) there were supposed to be great views from the cable car. 

And there were:

And that all worked out pretty well, actually. I took the cable car up 

and then walked around, 

explored, 

took pictures, 

just sort of sat and enjoyed the beautiful scenery 

and watched the sunset.

I also took this picture

because I thought it looked like an artsy boy band album cover. I swear these two guys were posing. 

 Then I did actually walk back down the mountain, which was really cool, because I got to see some new perspectives on where I was. Also, the way up the mountain was the stations of the cross, so going back down I got to see the places where the stations were, and it was really cool for my religion major heart! 

I also got to see the city at night again, which 

Still beautiful. 

So at this point I was obviously pretty tired and I went home and went to bed! 

As for what I did on May 25th, that'll have to come next post.