We've been really lucky so far in our travels - the summer was rainy wherever we went, but in retrospect I don't think we would have changed anything. Until Croatia. We'd heard great things about Croatia. Many named it as their favorite place to visit, commonly referred to as the "Tuscany before everyone knew about it." Well, to us I that meant great food, wine and culture. Sign us up! - we had a long Easter holiday and decided we'd spend it in Dubrovnik. Six full days, five nights and a lot of Kuna (Croatian money) later we had to laugh or we would cry.
Probably the biggest factor in our forgettable vacation was the weather. The whole of Europe was hit with torrential rain during the weekend. If you watched the Pope at the Vatican on Easter Sunday it was just a sea of umbrellas. Dubrovnik borders Italy, and we had the same weather. There were a couple days that were dry and we made the most of those - walking the city wall and eating outside. Unfortunately, that's really all there was to do in Dubrovnik. The town is really small and the main activity is lounging in/near the crystal clear Adriatic or taking a ferry to a nearby island and lounging in/near the crystal clear Adriatic. I'm sure this is all quite enjoyable when it's warm and sunny out, but not so much when it's 45-50F and raining. So, the second big factor in the trip was the length of time we spent in Dubrovnik. As I mentioned it was a nice little town, but two days would have been enough - especially because we were fatigued of the food after day 1. Every restaurant had the same menu - squid, white fish, mussels and french fries. The food quality was fine but the lack of variety was uncanny. I actually ordered french fries and a green salad for lunch one day. We spiced things up with pizza one night and spent 90 minutes walking in the rain looking for a Mexican restaurant. To make matters worse, the restaurants were pretty expensive - although we did get one meal for free. We stayed at the Hilton (which is supposed to be one of the best hotels in the town) and I was going to have some yogurt with granola. Luckily Tiff noticed that my granola was moving and turns out it was infested with insects. I handed the bowl to one of the workers and to make up for the incident the manager offered us a free dinner at the restaurant (which is supposed to be one of the best in the town). Now, it is odd that as compensation for a food hygiene issue they gave us more food, but the chocolate dessert was really good. I shouldn't be too harsh on the hotel. It was actually pretty nice and they upgraded us to an executive level room with access to the club lounge. My guess is they felt sorry for the fool who booked 5 nights in March. I've never been a big believer in splurging for a nice room, but when you're there for a nearly a week and it's raining out it was good to have a view of the sea and access to a room with free drinks and snacks. The gym and sauna were also pretty good and we spent more time there than planned.
Probably the biggest factor in our forgettable vacation was the weather. The whole of Europe was hit with torrential rain during the weekend. If you watched the Pope at the Vatican on Easter Sunday it was just a sea of umbrellas. Dubrovnik borders Italy, and we had the same weather. There were a couple days that were dry and we made the most of those - walking the city wall and eating outside. Unfortunately, that's really all there was to do in Dubrovnik. The town is really small and the main activity is lounging in/near the crystal clear Adriatic or taking a ferry to a nearby island and lounging in/near the crystal clear Adriatic. I'm sure this is all quite enjoyable when it's warm and sunny out, but not so much when it's 45-50F and raining. So, the second big factor in the trip was the length of time we spent in Dubrovnik. As I mentioned it was a nice little town, but two days would have been enough - especially because we were fatigued of the food after day 1. Every restaurant had the same menu - squid, white fish, mussels and french fries. The food quality was fine but the lack of variety was uncanny. I actually ordered french fries and a green salad for lunch one day. We spiced things up with pizza one night and spent 90 minutes walking in the rain looking for a Mexican restaurant. To make matters worse, the restaurants were pretty expensive - although we did get one meal for free. We stayed at the Hilton (which is supposed to be one of the best hotels in the town) and I was going to have some yogurt with granola. Luckily Tiff noticed that my granola was moving and turns out it was infested with insects. I handed the bowl to one of the workers and to make up for the incident the manager offered us a free dinner at the restaurant (which is supposed to be one of the best in the town). Now, it is odd that as compensation for a food hygiene issue they gave us more food, but the chocolate dessert was really good. I shouldn't be too harsh on the hotel. It was actually pretty nice and they upgraded us to an executive level room with access to the club lounge. My guess is they felt sorry for the fool who booked 5 nights in March. I've never been a big believer in splurging for a nice room, but when you're there for a nearly a week and it's raining out it was good to have a view of the sea and access to a room with free drinks and snacks. The gym and sauna were also pretty good and we spent more time there than planned.
View from our room.
Dubrovnik does have an interesting history. You can read more about it here, but basically Yugoslavia broke up as a Republic of different countries and Serbia and Montenegro heavily bombed Dubrovnik which was deemed a protected area. Backlash from this bombing led to a quick establishment of Croatia as an independent country. The photo below is a map of the old city illustrating all the damage that was done. You can see in some of the photos that work is still in progress to rebuild the old city.
Tiff on the city wall.
Unfortunately, Easter came early this year and it happened to be the first weekend of March Madness. I did talk Tiffany into hanging out at an Irish Pub that had the games on - Katie O'Connor's for a couple of hours to watch her American Eagles give Tennessee a good match. I then purchased €20 Internet access so I could watch GU lose to freakin' Davidson in an epic collapse. At least with the Internet we were able to plan our next holiday in May when we're headed to Portugal. I think we're done with eastern European countries for now - we're spoiled by Paris and Italy.
Here I am at Katie O'Connor's.
Easter means a Cadbury Egg for Tiff.
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