Dubrovnik: The Other Dubbo

Disclaimer: The following is likely to contain gross generalisations, or ‘stereotypes’. If you don’t approve of stereotyping, think of this as “cultural norms in a practical setting”. If you are a fan of stereotyping, white people love dogs, yoga and political correctness.

La Baguette Winner (French is getting better!) wanted to go away for a long weekend. It was decided that a beachside getaway in Croatia would do nicely, and TripAdvisor said that Dubrovnik was the place to be. Thus, we decided to go to Dubrovnik.

Cheap flights were secured through Transavia, which is apparently a real airline. Upon Googling (for safety reasons), we discovered that Transavia has never had a fatal accident, although Wikipedia did provide the following interesting nugget: “In September 2012, a Transavia pilot was locked outside the cockpit after his co-pilot had fallen asleep.” Totally normal.

One reason the flight was cheap was that it left at 6am. Annoyingly, Europe is not just one country, and they have the annoying ‘get there 2 hours early for international flights’ rule. So we got up at 3:30am (or rather, we squeezed in a midnight nap).

We arrived in Dubrovnik at 8am, and immediately slept until 11am. Our hotel was in Zaton Mali, a tiny village about 20 minutes by bus from Dubrovnik. The ATM was in the next village (Zaton Veliki), which meant we had a little walk on our hands. Fortunately, the very casual stroll was along the extraordinary sheltered harbour, replete with beautiful scenery and clear, blue ocean.

Once we had money, we hopped on the bus into Dubrovnik to check out the Old Town. It was hot, and crowded. Still bleary-eyed and drowsy, we did not last long under these conditions. Old Town is lovely, but it is best when not utterly crowded. After lunch, we took ourselves back to Zaton Mali for another nap.

As it turned out, there actually wasn’t all that much to do in Dubrovnik. Given that the point of this long weekend was to relax and unwind – after all, I’ve been (not) working so hard lately – this was perfect. That night we had dinner in the hotel bar, a couple of Croatian beers, and dozed in our room whilst watching the World Cup.

The next day, we had two activities planned: go to the beach; walk the walls of the Old Town. For the beach, we simply moseyed back over the Zaton Veliki, bought a couple of pastries from a beachside food truck, and found a spot on the stony beach. [We never found a sandy beach. The beaches in Dubrovnik tend to be nestled among rocks, with stones ranging from pebbles to fist-sized.] Neither of the pastries was a revelation – especially since we live in Paris – but likewise neither was a national disgrace. The truck was there everyday, and some of the pastries looked familiar a few days apart…

Pause for generalisations: Paris is a very slender town. The French are known for being thin, as you can read about here and here. Croatians, by contrast, are not so thin. To be fair, I am basing this on three and a half days in one city (so perhaps I should say “Dubrovniks”), but it was rather noticeable. They were not, however, shy about this. Many a pot-bellied man, woman and child would while away the day by the sea in their little Speedos and bikinis, without a care for their roly poly bits. I’m not really interested in declaring this either a good or bad thing, or in guessing why it’s the case. [If I had to guess, it’s probably because it was too damn hot to do any exercise. And the meals we were given were pretty large.] Just sayin’.

Much later that day, we caught another bus back into town to check out the walls of Old Town. Old Town is basically a giant castle, big enough to now hold a few hundred souvenir shops, bars and restaurants. It’s built on an outcrop, meaning that climbing the walls provides a pretty spectacular 270-degree view of the ocean. Apparently the walls are 2km around, which is why we chose to walk them at 5:30pm, when there were fewer tourists and it was (theoretically) a bit cooler. I don’t actually have a huge amount to say about the walls. They themselves are not terribly interesting. Rather, they provide the aforementioned beautiful view, and you get a better sense of what Old Town is (because when you are in there, it’s just people and shops and cobble stones). So, apologies for that. Here are some photos though:

Is that Ryan Gosling?

I may have had too much sun...

We finished the day with pizza and chips in an Old Town restaurant, and watched that evening’s football, like proper yobs. Upon leaving Old Town, it became immediately clear that we had no idea where to catch the bus home. The day before, we had inadvertently caught the wrong bus, but were shown where to connect with the correct one. This had taken place in a different part of Dubrovnik. We knew where we had exited the bus into town, so we returned to that point, only over the road. Our bus was not featured on this stop’s timetable. We walked around blindly for 20 or so minutes (pleasant evening sufficiently dampened), before hailing a taxi.

Here’s a further generalisation: The Croats have this delightful way of being helpful and answering questions, while also making you feel sorry you ever asked. I don’t know how they do it! We found this at our hotel, some restaurants and on the bus. It’s like they are happy to tolerate your custom, but wish that both parties could just communicate silently, and from different locations. Of course, the French do this too, but I always assume that something is lost in translation. The Croats were far more willing to speak English (and were typically very good), but preferred to keep us on our toes with just a dusting of disdain. I guess this was sort of fair, as we realised that we hadn’t even bothered to learn the basic greetings of the native tongue.

The rest of our long weekend consisted mainly of sunbathing, food and beer. It was grand. We managed to figure out how to get a bus to the airport, and made the trip home (this time with Easyjet). In summary, a marvelous time was had by all.