Living in an ancient city

The Old City of Dubrovnik is amazingly clean each morning, but not because people there are any less piggish than we are. In fact, with the World Cup games going on while we were there (and if they were not on, some other sporting event was evoking the same high level of excitement) there was a pretty consistant amount of loud drunken behavior each night, and resultant trash including beer bottles and just debris lying.

Sam was our early riser most mornings, getting up around 6 to get out before the heat and humidity made running uncomfortable and traffic on the roads made it unsafe. There were few places for him to run, so he enjoyed heading into the old city and running the Stradun and up and down the narrow streets. Anyway, he reported that the cleaning crews are out early, sweeping and washing the streets so they can shine. Here I caught sight of someone actually vacuuming the gutters heading out to the Ploce gate.


There are generally no vehicles inside the old city walls. The gates are JUST wide enough to permit NARROW vehicles and it was interesting to see that these delivery trucks were probably 2-3 feet narrower than the ones out and about on the regular new city streets.

Most of the goods, however, seem to be dropped off just outside the Ploce Gate and then brought in by cart by manpower, but we also saw small motorized carts as well.

Deliveries are then made to the various shops and restaurants. All this is completed by 9:00 am, when the first busloads of tourists tend to arrive.

By 9am the streets are clean, deliveries have been made and put away, and all is shiny, ready for the tourists. So, as you can see with these photos, not only are the streets amazingly narrow...some as narrow as 5 feet, but many many many have steps. In fact, the Old City is actually shaped like a bowl, with the Stradun in the center and flat and the parallel streets flat, but as you head one side or the other, up you go!

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There are grocery stores in Dubrovnik, but the larger ones, more on the scale that we are used to in the US, are located in the new city. The old city food stores are pretty small, more on the scale that residents of New York City would be used to. Bakeries are scattered throughout both old and new cities and there are butcher shops as well. Meat is hung open to the air and hacked into chunks...no plastic wrapped packages.

We often walked to the plaza where the green market is held for our breakfast...to sip our coffee and eat some eggs or pastry. The early vendors were already there but we could watch the green market come alive as more vendors appeared with fresh produce and items packaged for the tourists. Since most day tourists generally do not appear before 9a.m. and the cruisers until 11am, the early shoppers are residents, and even in the 10 days I was here I noticed the regulars.

Carol has her favorite vendors, either people who enjoy seeing an American who appreciates their town so much that she choses to live there or she avoids the ones who try to overcharge her thinking she is a stupid tourist. We followed her advice there and anywhere we shopped, to enjoy good service, decent prices with high quality items.