Today is checkout day. The boat needs to turn over for the next excited and gleeful group of cruise passengers. I am excited for them! The Unforgettable Croatia Cruise company did a fantastic job. I would totally recommend them.
We had an early breakfast and finished the last few touches of packing. Got all the details of our new friends and promised to be in touch. Maybe some of us will meet up again. We have lots of places in the world to visit now.
Tena had expertly arranged all of our transfers and we headed to our new hotel for the next few days. Hotel Bellevue Dubrovnik is built into a cliff and has an elevator that brings you down to their beach club. Though G will take the stairs no doubt.
The hotel is almost all sea view rooms with balconies to maximize the view. It even has a glass elevator to bring you to your room. It was fully renovated in April this year, so we are one of the first few to stay in the new rooms. It has been around since the 1960s. It is gorgeous.
After we dropped off our bags, it was still early so we decided to walk straight to the old city and walk the fortress walls before it got too hot. The walk there was along the sea and very easy.
We lucked out and had partial cloud overhead so it wasn’t that hot. It had less people on the wall in addition. Maybe no big cruise is through yet. We got lots of great photos and no one pushed us!
The wall itself is remarkably well kept up. It is 1.9 km long and apparently around 800 steps in total. In some places it is more than 6 feet wide but in other parts it is single file only. The four fortresses stamp every corner.
There are three gates you can enter or exit the wall from if you don’t want to do the whole circumference. There are also additional towers to go up or down (to get more steps in).
We found a few more modern touches (a tennis court and a basketball court) as well as a beach club just outside the wall on the rocks at the foundation. There were a lot of tourist opportunities to buy trinkets or get an ice cream or a cold drink.
We could see the bay and all the boats and kayakers. I think that would be super fun to do sometime.
We also noticed the areas of war damage with rubble and overgrown home structures. Lots of roof damage as well. You could really see the differences of the new and old terra cotta roof tiles.
I love the panorama of the city. We took a few selfies but O’s are always the best.
After the wall was complete, we needed a little nourishment. We found an Irish pub as G really wanted fries and B really wanted wings. We had a drink and watched some Wimbledon while we rested a bit.
We walked through some of the smaller stair roads to explore as well as the main square again. I just love how the sun reflects off the limestone.
We wanted to get a bit of beach time in before dinner so we went back to our hotel. The day was a little cloudier and we were all tired from our early start. The boys promptly fell asleep on the pebbly beach.
I got to watch other crazy boys cliff jumping again. Even the little kids were into it. I’m such a mom of girls now. I can’t even look most times. Here are two videos I was able to watch after I could tell they were being safe (and the little kids parents were in the water with them).
Little boys backflip.
Older boys high dive.
We cleaned up for our fancy dinner and grabbed an Uber (we were all running late). We got reservations at Restaurant Dubrovnik which was very lucky. It won best restaurant last year and you can tell why. The food was outstanding and the ambiance superb. The service was a little slow and the little details could be a little better (if we are being picky for the best restaurant in Croatia!) But overall great experience.
We got an excellent open air table (this will become important later). We started with Rosé and rose cocktails again. Then for dinner we shared a few cold and warm appetizers and mains.
The cheese plate had soooo much cheese and all of it was so good. A few I hadn’t tried before and was delighted to taste.
The ceviche was so good that we got two. The beef tartare was surprisingly silky and went very well with the asparagus and crunchy polenta.
The warm appetizers were very pretty and tasted just as good. The mushroom truffle risotto with seared foie gras (sorry vegetarians! I really try not to eat it in general) was so yummy. The octopus arm really looked like an arm and was so well prepared. It was not at all chewy and the scallops melted in your mouth.
The boys had a main seafood dish for two called “gregada”. What used to be a poor fisherman’s stew is now an elevated main dish. The boys even got their bibs again!
I had the duck breast and B had the lamb. I think his was better but I liked mine too. His carrot purée really stole the show as did the pistachio crust on the lamb.
We were so full by this point that we decided to forgo dessert and just have espresso.
We paid and were just about to leave when the heavens opened up and started pouring. We had seen some dry lighting but it was not supposed to rain tonight. Luckily the expandable roof covered us and we got minimally wet. There was a small space in between the roofs though where water started gushing in and they had to bring out huge urns to collect the rain.
We however were at the far end of the old city and could not get any covered transportation without running along the limestone streets in full torrential rainfall. And none of us had coats and I was wearing all white! Not a great combination. We decided to stay and have another glass of wine. We tried a lovely local red from Croatia called Stinta Plavic Mali. I wish we could do one of the Mysterium bottles sometime though. One of these years…
Once the rain settled a bit, we did make a run for it. The streets were so empty. We were slipping and sliding everywhere. We made it to the gate and hailed a taxi home.
One day left!
Up next: Dubrovnik Beach Day
JBITS Travel Log 