Dubrovnik!

Considering the reasonably short distance between Athens and Dubrovnik, It took a LOT of traveling to get there! I left my hotel in Athens at 6:20am and arrived in my room in Dubrovnik at 11pm, having flown through Istanbul and Zagreb to get there.

What a weird and wonderful place! My hotel was right in the middle of the Old Town and other than a couple of small forays to places just outside the walls, I didn't see the rest of Dubrovnik. So I can't comment on the part of the city outside the walls other than to say that it exists...

In keeping with what seems to have become a theme for this trip, I started the day with a whole lot of up... by climbing the city walls and walking the full circuit of the walls that surround the Old Town.

Halfway there!

Looking over the Old Town

View from inside one of the corner forts

Next stop: top of Mt. Srd (pronounced 'surge'). But why walk when there's a perfectly good cable car? 

Taken from the city walls

The views from the top were stunning! I stopped for a coffee and wrote a couple of postcards. Then went and visited the Museum of the Croatian War of Independence in an old stone building up the top of the mountain.

The views were spectacular, but it was a bit hazy

Looking inland, pretty barren

Foyer of the Museum of the Croatian War of Independence

After returning to my room for a quick rest and regroup, I went for a wander around the Old Town. Filming of a Robin Hood movie had just finished the day before so in places they were still disassembling the set.

Robin Hood set

Other than the Stradun (main street) the whole Old Town is made up of little alleyways with varying amounts of steps depending on the slope... (as always, click on the pics to make them bigger).

One negative thing that I do have to mention is the the Old Town is full of stray cats... albeit apparently well-fed ones. All the streets smell of cat pee, and you have to be careful where you step. It was quite common to see the locals out scrubbing the alleyways outside their shops/houses so they had a clean entrance. But having said that, I never once saw or heard a cat fight. They all seem quite content to ignore each other.

Flat alleyway

Steep alleyway

Every now and then you find a hole in the wall, and it's amazing what you can find when you step through to the other side!

Hole in the wall...

A bar perched on the rocks outside the wall

By then it was heading into evening. Time to grab some tea and head back to my room to prepare for more adventures the next day.

From brunch until late night, the restaurants set themselves up in the alleyways