From Bryon’s blog:
Beautiful Dubrovnik
Today, we visited Dubrovnik, Croatia. Rick Steves says that you can see Dubrovnik in a day. He is correct. We started our day by visiting the 24-hour bakery near our sobe, then took a bus to the Old Town. We walked along the walls surrounding the Old Town. From the wall, one can get a great view of the Old Town and surrounding area. Afterward, we walked along the main street (Stradun) and around the Old Town before stopping for some refreshments at the slightly overpriced but pleasant Cold Drinks Buza II. Finally, we headed up the Cable Car to Mt. Srd. The top of the cable car offers a great view of Old Town (and a terrible view of Port Gruz). We hiked around for a while at the top, but perhaps we shouldn’t have since, to paraphrase Rick Steves, while the area is officially clear of land mines, it was a war zone.
There were at least five cruise ships in Dubrovnik today: 2 tendering directly into Old Town (Costa and Seabourn) and 3 shuttling from Port Gruz (MSC, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean).
Would I visit again? Yes, on a cruise. Dubrovnik has no train station and flights to its small airport can be redirected to Split (4 hours away by bus) if there are strong winds. In addition, flights in and out of Dubrovnik can be expensive. From a cost and convenience perspective, a cruise ship seems like the best way to get to Dubrovnik.
In case any random travelers happen onto this blog, I’m including a tips for travelers section below.
Tips for Travelers:
- A bus ride costs 15 kuna per ride if ticket is purchased from driver. The driver can provide change. To validate your ticket, the orange arrow should be facing toward the validator machine and the picture next to the arrow should be facing the ground. This may seem counter-intuitive because it is.
- As far as I can tell, the buses only run one direction in a loop. Bus stops are indicated by a yellow area in the road (usually with the word BUS).
- There are a lot of ATMs and ice cream vendors (only 10 kuna for a cone!) on the Stradun.