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Our final and longest stop was Dubrovnik, at the very southern tip of Croatia. To get there, we had to endure another 4 hour bus ride. This drive was quite beautiful, and it actually involved crossing the border into Bosnia-Herzegovina, a.k.a. BiH, and then back into Croatia (for some obscure reason to do with politics and the break-up of Yugoslavia, a tiny strip of what would otherwise be contiguous Croatian coastline was given to BiH … I guess that was done to make sure BiH isn’t entirely landlocked?) We flashed our passports at a border guard who looked more scared of us than we were of him, and we were across!

Our arrival at the Dubrovnik bus station was met with most enthusiastic welcomes by Lonely Planet nametag-wearing touts offering us rooms. The nicest old man walked with us for a few blocks on our way to the HI youth hostel, and even gave us a map and his hostel’s business card and offered to pick us up for free if we changed our minds. A few blocks later, he chased us down again to offer us a free ride to the HI youth hostel! We politely declined.

Well, we really should have taken him up on the offer of a ride! It took us more than an hour to find the HI hostel, despite having maps and the address and having called the hostel to ask them for directions. Thanks to eagle eye Ian, we finally spotted the hostel and we only knew it was the right place because the stonework on the building looked the same as in our HI brochure! We made it there just in time to check in before they closed up for the 4 hour afternoon siesta, and got a room with a nice view of Srdj Mountain. The hostel was nice and huge but mostly empty, and their kitchen had a bottle opener so we ended up staying there for our entire time in Dubrovnik.

There used to be a cablecar to the top of Srdj, which saved people the 2 hour steep hike, but during the siege in 1991 it was destroyed. We saw very little evidence of the damage caused by the siege to the city of Dubrovnik, other than the map in this photo, copies of which were posted at the main entrances to the old town, and a few buildings around town with obvious signs of recent or still ongoing reconstruction.

More about the city in part 2.

Technorati Tags: Dubrovnik, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, travel, Srdj