Thursday, October 26, 2023

Walking walls

So far, I’m afraid I’m not loving Dubrovnik. Some of that is to do with all the stairs involved. It’s like climbing to the top of Sacré Coeur four times before lunch.

These are just the stairs to my very poky, very grody room.

(Which is not a hotel and it’s certainly not an apartment, which is what I thought I was getting from an outfit calling itself Dubrovnik Old Town Apartments, and from the photos in its Amex travel listings. I’m going to have words with them, when I get back.)

I am truly grateful I didn’t attempt this before I had both knees replaced.

Yesterday I did the first thing all the guideblogs said: walked the walls of the old city. They were started in the 13th Century and would probably have defined the limits of the city, because that was the purpose of Medieval city walls. That was a time when people felt high and thick stone walls would protect them from outside dangers; oddly, some folks still think that.






For something costing €35, you’d think they’d put out more (as in, any) bits of information about where you were at any given point and what you were looking. In fact, were it not for the Web, I’d have no idea of their history or efficacy.

It was also interesting to me that there are almost no handrails for all those stone steps, either for going up or down. But that seems to be the norm here in Dubrovnik. I wonder how many people take headers every month?

I saw two cruise ships near the city when we flew in, and this one was lying off the Old Port. There’s also an infestation of Viking Cruise tour groups. I saw three pass by while I took a beverage break in the early afternoon.

Some of The Game of Thrones was filmed here, and a lot of the tourons are here for that. Since I’ve never seen it, I have to say that this is an anti-attraction for me. Also, since apparently the TV series used a metric ton of CGI augmentation, I’m not sure how many of the locations would be recognizable to the fans if they weren’t pointed out to them.

So here are some snaps of Dubrovnik.

 





This guy looks surprised.



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