Dobar dan (Hello) Croatia!

07.07.09

Waking up this morning to the fresh, clean town of Dubrovnik was such a relief after leaving the slightly dirty and scary city of Napoli last night. Dubrovnik was almost completely destroyed in the warring of the early 1990's. The red-roofed houses and shops that fill the town have all been built in the reconstruction effort; only a few of the original red-yellow roofed buildings remain among this "new" city. The only structure strong enough to withstand the destruction of the town were the city walls, which surround the Old City and provide a beautiful view of the land and sea. (Or so I hear, I have yet to be up on them...I'm waiting to go one of the mornings when they will hopefully be less crowded with tourists.)
My friends and I went for a run this morning along the harbor of the newer part of the city, where we're docked. We left the port and stuck close to the waterfront as it curled around the peninsula. Passing the small fishing boats of the locals docked along the shore, rocky beaches starting to fill with vacationers, and along the wooded path spotted with villas for rent and private homes. From the path we could see islands in the harbor covered to the breaking point with trees, the clear water around them making them seem surreal paradises in the heat that we were running through. The Adriatic Sea (around Croatia) is known for its pure water; in satellite pictures its water is the clearest blue anywhere in Earth's oceans. In the evening we returned to one of the beaches that we passed and the water was so crystal clear that we could see the rocks on the bottom perfectly. The crystalline buoyancy of the water was perfect to keep my body afloat in the gentle waves while I relaxed as the sky above was tinged with pink .
After our morning run we walked to the Old City from the port. Even the newer city that we were walking through was very clean and uncrowded, a nice relief from some of the places that we had been seeing. There were bright purple flowering bushes every few minutes which, combined with the white oleander and red trumpet flowers, complemented the Mediterranean palms and cacti very well. This part of the Croatian coast is known for its cliff diving and I can see why. The shoreline is amazing- the land ends with sharp cliffs that dive into the clear blue water and the verdant vegetation leading all the way to their edges made the walk through the city seem more like an adventure into a tropical paradise than a trek through an urban area. The Old Town was nice, but it seemed like it was made to be a tourist centre. Almost all of the signs are written in English, tourist shops and ice cream stores line the main street interspersed rarely with an art gallery or designer clothing store, and the large number of tourist attractions in such a small area made it seem more like a fake city in a very Disneyworld way. The main street, Stradun, was wide, carless, and filled with tourists. However, we did see most of the top sites of Dubrovnik in a few hours; the Franciscan monastery, the market squares, and a famous statue (that I didn't know anything about and still don't). I did like the parts of the Old Town that we found after leaving the main drag. Walking up a wide flight of stairs from one of the open markets, we arrived at the base of an old church where, slightly hidden by the hanging vines of a red trumpet flowering plant, was the "Green Room", a jewelry store that was laid out in a small garden. The trays of regional-stone necklaces, peacock shaped rings, and pearl earrings were interspersed with flwers and small trees. It was very unique. Later, we drank juice at a cafe set into the cliff face outside the city walls. It gave us a full view of the beautiful Adriatic and various islands (Croatia has over 1000 along its coastline) outside of Dubrovnik. Entertainment was provided by our fellow SAS students who were "cliff diving" from below the cafe into the water. They all thought it was super intense, but it was definitely not high at all, and therefore was very entertaining to see those city kids do an "extreme" sport. The back streets of the Old City were so peaceful, none of the mopeds and crowds of the bigger cities. Dubrovnik definitely has the safe, charming feel of a small, fishing town and its beaches are just what I need after sightseeing for such a long stretch of time.