Madness? This... is... DUBROVNIK!!!

Yeah Frank, I stole your allusion; deal with it.

In Dubrovnik I stayed with a lovely man named Božo (the "z" is pronounced as the "s" in "pleasure") and his family. I learned of them from my friends Frank and Jessica. They had come through this way last year and told me about it. Hostels are nice for meeting people when you're traveling on your own, but it can be a real relief to have some privacy for a change.

The first thing I did was head over to the old town. It's beautiful, a medieval Mediterranean town, still with its wall still intact. I decided to avoid the main road and took random turns down narrow side streets, just running into random sights.



I then payed to walk along the main wall surrounding the city. There were some quite beautiful views but it was terribly hot, and there was nowhere to escape from the noon sun. Luckily, I had just filled my 1.5L water bottle from the town fountain... I drank all of it.








I also went and checked out the aquarium built into a space underneath the wall. It was not very impressive. Maybe I'm biased growing up in such proximity to Monteray Bay Aquarium, but the exhibits were tiny, and not very numerous (considering the price), and I'm pretty sure the lone sea turtle was dead (I watched him for about 20 min and he never moved). Additionally, at MBA, there is a focus on conservation, but at the end of each description in this place, there was a little blurb about the different methods of catching the critters for consumption (excuse the alliteration). Still, it was a nice way to escape the heat, and I spent over an hour down there.

I hung around to watch some folk music, then wandered out a hole in the wall and down to the rocks to watch the sunset.



I spent almost the entirety of the next day on my ass. I slept in until about 11, then turned on the air conditioning and just sat around reading my book. I did some exorcising too, but it was nice to have a day to just relax. I made it down to the beach briefly around 4pm to go for a swim, too, but that was just as good.

My last day in Dubrovnik, I took the tour of the old fort that Frank had told me about. My host was a citizen soldier in the Croatian army during the war, and he and tiny band of guys held of the vastly superior (in terms of numbers and equipment) invading Serbian forces for months. It was fairly sobering to see the damage wrought by gun fire and artillery, and to hear him talk about exchanging fire and grenades across short hallways. But the views from the fort were incredible.



Artillery hit the wall here, about 2 m from where Božo was standing


Next stop: Istanbul