Welcome to Dubrovnik Croatia

I met Carol through the internet...there was a woman in the chatroom where I met Graham who said she was a travel agent. Carol was her boss and she soon became my primary travel agent for my boss's monthly trips. Ming Wang is not only a world class ophthalmologust, but he is also a ballroom dancer and and travelled around the US to various competitions and to China to an eye clinic he opened. Anyway, Carol and I became good friends and we visited with her twice over the next ten years. Three years ago we stayed with her for a few days as we started our Sacramento to Seattle vacation.


Two years ago Carol retired and moved to Croatia. Her parents were born here and she had been several times, loving it, loving the people and the way of life. We made plans to visit as soon as she moved and this vacation was orginally planned to come here and go a couple of other places (which then got cancelled) and only recently added Great Britain to the itinerary when Graham's paper was accepted at the conference in Nottingham.

So, time for a little history lesson just to understand where Croatia is and the specialness of Dubrovnik.


This country is located on the Adriatic Sea which is the large body of water that juts north from the Mediterrean Sea on the east side of Italy. The Dalmation Coast has had a long maritime culture with Dubrovnik rivaling Venice in the past in terms of which city was more active, more prestigious, more commercial.

As all over Europe, national boundaries have changed over the centuries. When you have a culture which is over 1500 years old, you can imagine the ebb and flow of who is in power. So, moving to more modern times, in the early 1900s the Ottoman Empire was waning and there was more shuffling. After World War II Marshall Tito came to power, aligned with the USSR and this country became known as Yugoslavia. Part of what we considered to be a Second World nation, the government was more socialistic than communistic, with very low income to everyone and limited selection of products in all stores. Visiting here, you can easily tell buidings that were constructed during this era, as they are basically blocks with no balconies, no adornment, just function as the primary motivation for design.

Tito died in the late 1970s and it was expected that the various cultural identities would cause the country to split up, but it managed to hold together another decade. You may remember that the 1984 winter olympics were held in Sarejevo. And then, a few years later, you probably will remember that this area was torn apart by a civil war, what they call the Homeland War here in Dubrovnik.

I will talk about this war in another blog entry, so you can have a better idea of what happened here. Just a glimpse: this area was bombarded for about a year during 1991-1992 from what is now Serbia. We have restricted Sam from running cross country here as there still might be landmines. Our host has a 100mm mortar shell from the war in the living room with cyrillac writing on it.

So, using the colored map as your guide, Croatia is the yellow area. Dubrovnik is located in the soutern area, almost to the pink of Montenegro. On this trip we drove up to the Pljesac Peninsula, one of the wine areas. Note the green for Bosnia Herzegovina that goes to the coast...that area was just north of where we turned to go on to the peninsula, but we went there to gas up the rental car, as petrol is less expensive there.


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This is very mountainous area, with the land rising from the sea. Like, West Virginia, the airport is located on a shaved mountaintop. And it is pretty small, just like the one we use as our home airport in Charleston, WV.

Carol arranged for a cab to pick us up at the airport to take us into Dubrovnik. These two pictures give you our first view of the area.

We stopped at an overlook and got our first view of the old city of Dubrovnik. This is one of very few walled cities in Europe where the entire wall is still intact. Considering it was built back to the 10th and 11th centuries, this is amazing. This picture shows the view with the old harbor in the foreground.



Some stones for the old city wall were actually tax payments by peasants who had nothing else of value to bring in to the local government.

Streets in the old city are very very narrow so no cars are inside the walls. The cab dropped us off at the Ploce (pronounced Plo-cha) and we carried and pulled our bags into the walled area.

Dubrovnik is a UNESCO World Heritage Site so there are rules about the exterior appearance of all buildings. I think the homogeneity of the structures...the old white stones and new white stucco exteriors with the terracotta roof tiles and the green or white shutters is part of the magic of the city's appearance.Umbrellas and sunshades are everywhere, offering a cool place to sit and sip coffee or beer or wine or mineral water, to people watch and to relax.

The main street of the old city is the Stradum. Originally a canal separated the original two villages (we are talking over a millenium ago), and was filled in. It is paved with the same stone as the buildings and is perhaps the width of a 3 lane street. The side streets are tiny, maybe 12 feet wide at most and often more than half of the width is taken up with tables.

The clock tower is located at the south end of the Stradum. Orlando's Column, a statue of a man holding a sword, provided the measurement for everything in the old city.

Even in the old city, swimming in the water is so inviting because it is hot and humid and the water is cool and so clean you can see the bottom. The blue-green tint is intense.

These guys were jumping from rocks about 20 feet above the sea while the little kids opt for a 3 foot jump near the old harbor.

There are so many restaurants here, but Carol and Ivo know where to get the best quality with terrific service. We ate our first meal at their friend Nana's restaurant and were introduced to the local sausages, cevapcici (che-vap-chi-chi) and fresh fresh fresh fish as well as local wine, of course.