It's not you Dubrovnik, it's me...

This day was a cranky day... I woke up in a bad mood and for most of the day everything was crappy and nothing was right (in my cranky opinion)! We all have those days don't we?

But I got myself together and left the hotel, despite my desperate urge to hibernate for the day...

My first stop was the cloister of a little Franciscan Monastery at the top of the main avenue of the Old Town. It was very peaceful and pretty (except for the group of Japanese tourists who wouldn't know peaceful if it hit them over the head).

Franciscan Monastery cloister

Then I headed down towards the harbour because my plan for the morning was to catch a boat across to Lokrum Island (the big island just off the coast that you can see in yesterdays post. On the way I found a Dominican Monastery, so I dropped in here too.

Dominican Monastery cloister

I finally made it to the harbour and was told that Lokrum Island was closed for winter... It's an island!!! How can it be closed!?! This was just fuel to the cranky flame that was burning that day. Lokrum Island was one of the things I most wanted to do while I was in Dubrovnik. I had done quite a bit of reading on the internet and there is an old abandoned Benedictine Monastery that I really wanted to go to. NONE of the websites I looked at mentioned the island being closed! If I had known this I might have saved my trip to Dubrovnik till another time...

But I was here now and obviously I couldn't force them to reopen the island for a day. So instead I took a boat trip around the island. It wasn't anywhere near what I really wanted to do, but it was the only option. It was freezing and we kept getting sprayed by waves (which isn't cool for camera lenses or spectacles!) but it was interesting to get another perspective of the town.

The boat

Looking back at the mainland

The closest I got to the monastery I wanted to explore

After that it was past lunchtime and I headed back into town to seek a hot coffee and warm up again. I was still in a pretty foul mood and it was about to get worse! I went to the Dubrovnik Ethnographic Museum located in a tiny alley far up the back of the Old Town. You wouldn't find it unless you were looking for it. I got in for free because I had a Dubrovnik Card (a tourist discount card), but I obviously missed the sign that said no photos... I got out my camera to take a shot of the arched stone ceiling (the museum is in an old mill/granary) and a woman practically pounced of me and told me to put my camera away... I wasn't even photographing a display of the museum. It was the ceiling! After that she followed me around all three floors of the museum as if I was a criminal. Even when I stopped on the stairs to look at a photo display she stopped 2 steps behind me until I carried on.

The exhibits were quite interesting and well laid out, but I absolutely could not enjoy them with her breathing down my neck! I've already ranted about my opinion of museums that don't allow photography in a previous post, and this place could really do with the publicity. There was only me and one other customer in there the whole time I was there! Needless to say, my mood didn't improve... (and I have no photos to post).

After that I gave up on touristing. I wasn't enjoying it and I just needed to be alone. After a bit of a rest I decided to go and do my laundry in a laundromat I had seen earlier in the day and, bizarrely, my mood improved! The laundromat was a retro 1950's-style place (with modern equipment) playing cheesy old 50's music. I wish I'd taken a photo, but here's one from the interwebs... Now the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with post-it notes from around the world, so I had a good read of them and added one from Nelson, New Zealand. 🇳🇿

With clean knickers and in a considerably better mood (and 'How High the Moon' running through my head) I headed back to my room to pack myself up for an early start the next day. I needed to be on the road by 7am to catch the bus to Split, the first leg of a very long day/night...