July 11-13, 2008

Croatia, and especially Dubrovnik, has long been high on my list of places I wanted to see. I feel like everyone I know has always raved about how beautiful the country is. Plus it was featured on The Amazing Race, so it had to be awesome.

I was in charge of figuring out accommodation for our 3-day holiday weekend. Unfortunately, Dubrovnik appears to have no large rooming hostels; just guest rooms that people rent out of their homes. Ominously, the reviews for every single possibility I found warned of “serious stairs.” Hmmm. I figured they couldn’t be too bad though – Megan and I are young and fit! (yeah, right) – so I went with the best choice. Little did I know that our house was located at the very highest point of a very high hill in the city. Oh, dear. They weren’t kidding about the stairs.

Undeterred, Megan and I headed straight for the beach once we arrived mid Friday afternoon. We jumped in the water right away. London was chilly and rainy when we left it, and the 89 degree heat of Dubrovnik felt like a furnace. The beach was pebbly – very pebbly. The rocks soaked up the heat and were scorching to the touch. Throughout the afternoon we took turns swimming and baking on the rocks. We didn’t get sunburned (then) but I distinctly remember some very odd, rather psychedelic daydreams, brought on no doubt by the extreme heat.



Despite being rocky, the beach was quite lovely, and the bottom turned to sand a few yards from shore. The water of the Adriatic was a glorious deep teal color, yet not as crystal clear as the Caribbean. After our day of sunbathing we satisfied our seafood cravings with seafood risotto and mussels cooked Dalmatian style (the southern area of Croatia is called the Dalmatian Coast). I am not really a fan of mussels or other shellfish; the chewy texture doesn’t appeal to me. But the risotto was fantastic, even with random bits of prawn scattered throughout it.

That evening we encountered our first trek up the five separate flights of steep, crumbly stone stairs. Oh lord.


Saturday we were up bright and early and hit the beach just before 9 a.m. We scored two fantastic beach chairs with an umbrella literally at the edge of the water. A few serious sun-worshippers were out, but we mostly had the beach to ourselves. I settled down with A Caribbean Mystery, the Agatha Christie that Megan found for me in a second-hand bookstore after we saw The Mousetrap.


By mid-afternoon I was so engrossed in the mystery that I didn’t even notice I was burning the backs of my hands where I was holding the book up. And the rest of myself, unfortunately. Even though I spent most of my time under the umbrella, a full day of swimming and being outdoors in the blazing Mediterranean sun took their toll. First I was pink, and then I was red. Very red. Oops. We’d intended to spend the late afternoon exploring the Old City, but Megan came down with a rather severe case of heat exhaustion, which involves faintness and dizziness. May I remind everyone that we had to traverse 5 extremely long flights of stairs from the beach to our hostel. That was a fun trip. We retreated agonizingly slowly; I had a touch of exhaustion as well, not too bad, but I was worried with every step that poor Megan was going to pass out on the stairs. I could barely get myself and our bags up the stairs, much less another person. We were in bad shape. She rallied and made it though, and at last we got back to our room and the blessed air conditioning. We whiled away the rest of the afternoon bemoaning our sorry state. Silly girls with deathly pale skin; we were never any match for the Mediterranean sun.

We were sufficiently recovered that evening to cautiously make our way only halfway down the stairs to a cute restaurant for dinner, where the owner gently laughed at us and our red faces. Oh well! The evening air was lovely but so humid it literally fogged up my camera lens.


The next morning we headed into the Old City – Dubrovnik’s major tourist draw, and what featured very prominently on The Amazing Race – for our last day in Croatia. The massive stone walls of the Old City enclose a maze of tightly packed buildings and narrow streets. Everything is built of stone, and wow does that stone pack a lot of heat. Megan and I ducked into the first shaded side street we came across and ordered water and refreshments directly. This pretty much set the pattern of our tour: wander a bit in the sweltering heat, snap a couple photos, search frantically for cool shade and water, repeat. We lingered longer at the waterfront, both because it was possible to get a bit of a breeze (and ice cream) there and because I am the type of person who needs to spend as much time as possible amongst the boats. We could follow the city wall all along the harbor until we reached a jetty thrusting straight out into the sea. People were swimming right off the rocks amongst the crashing waves. I wish we could have stayed longer but there was no respite from the sun on the jetty, so we headed back into the city.

After a detour so that I could find a souvenir of Croatia – I ended up getting a lovely painted egg, deep yellow with red flowers on it – we left the Old City behind. We still had a couple hours before we needed to catch our ride to the bus station, but we couldn’t stay in that baking stone city any longer. So instead we squeezed onto a packed bus that was even more sweltering. I have never endured such a miserable bus ride in my life. At last we jumped off at the base of our hill, and Megan and I dragged ourselves halfway up the incline before sprawling in the shade for a rest. Our ten-minute break turned into an hour and a half, which was enlivened when we saw our bus stop right in front of us up the hill. Megan: “Son of a bitch!”

Well-rested, we met our hostel owner, who kindly hefted our bags and gave us a ride to the main bus station in town, where we could catch a shuttle to the airport. He was incredibly warm and welcoming and spoke of his city with great affection. As our shuttle wound its way through the hills right next to the sea we got incredible views of Dubrovnik and the Adriatic. Croatia is absolutely as beautiful as everyone claims, and despite my sunburn I’m so happy that we got to visit it.