Day 2 – The historic wall of Dubrovnik
2nd Jan 2023
Early in the day, we step out to the grocery store (the main chain is called Konsum market here) to get some supplies. Usually on our travels, we stay at hotels with breakfast included, but this was a departure from normal, as we booked fairly late and only the exorbitantly priced hotels were available – so we took the apartment, but as it turns out, it was a great choice.
The most famous attraction of Dubrovnik is walking on the fortified old city wall: a bit under 2 kms, many of the other attractions can be reached from it. After a sort of brunch, we roll downstairs from our apartment, land at the foot of the wall, buy tickets, and climb up to it. I take a couple of passing photos on the Stradun, and of Big Onofrio’s fountain – which is another attraction, as it was the old city’s main water supply.
Big Onofrio’s fountain
From this online site:
Built from 1438 to 1440, the Big Onofrio’s Fountain is a sixteen-sided container with a cupola, and was one of the ending points of the aqueduct system. Each of the sixteen sides has a unique “maskeron” design (stone-carved masked face) with the faucet projecting out of the mouth of each. Unfortunately the maskerons have been damaged during one of the recent repairs done to the fountain. The fountain’s cupola was made by Petar Martinov from Milan. However, the fountain was also partly damaged by the earthquake in 1667 hence the current look is missing a dragon statue that had once been on top of the cupola.
The wall follows the ups and downs of the terrain, so there is quite some climbing up and down stairs along the 2 km walk. There are also numerous fortresses embedded into the wall, the most famous of them off the top of my head are St. John’s and the Round Fort Minčeta. The views throughout are fantastic as advertised, a photographer’s paradise. As an added bonus, we had excellent sunny weather, temperatures around 17◦ C on most days. It was wind-still, nice and warm in the sun, that even I soon discarded my light sweater and walked in my t-shirt.
The wall has a one-way walking route and people follow it without fuss. Also as I read in blogs, winter is an excellent time to walk the wall and take photographs without having to photoshop people out of it.
I stop for a million photos: orange and lemon trees, Adriaticats walking or snoozing on the buildings around the wall, the view of the blue blue sea, red roofed buildings, Mount Srd across the city, big and small islands, one or two boats lazing in the waters, the old port seen from the wall… and the list goes on.
We soak up the mild winter sun. High-five each other on how we’ve out-smarted the summer crowds and the 40◦ C temperatures! Can’t imagine baking in that on the open wall, even though I used to hike so much in the Western Ghats around Pune in similar temperatures!
Lei and Kim
At one of these photo stops, two eastern Asian-looking young men wait for me politely. We bump into them again some 20 meters down the path. One of them says with a smile, “you seem to be a photographer”. I strike up a conversation with them, and B joins us. Turns out, one is a Chinese student called Lei, studying Computer Science in the University at Delft in the Netherlands! And the other is a Korean called Kim, on a 2-month European travel sabbatical from his study of pathology back home.
Fort St. John & Fort Minčeta
We pass Fort St. John on the wall and notice that it is the home of the Maritime Museum (later we find that it also houses the Aquarium on the ground floor). I make a note to go visit both the museum and aquarium one of the other days.
Suddenly it is almost time to get off the wall: in winter, the closing time is 3 pm, and people already on can exit by 3:30. We rush up the hundred steps to the top of the round fort Minčeta for some more impressive views. The walk ends after some steep downhill steps. If there was a non-optimal thing about this day, it was that the sun was inconveniently placed over the sea from most views. One had to be very creative to avoid glare in all sea-facing pics. Neither did this help in bringing out the translucent blue green of the Adriatic in the pics.
In most of the views from the wall, you see a biggish island in the near distance. I found that this was the famous Lokrum Island, made even more famous by being one of the locations for the shooting of the American fantasy TV series Game of Thrones.
We have not seen the series, and are not fanatic about any of the activities in Dubrovnik that are related to it (such as the Game of Thrones walk, etc.). But I do want to see Lokrum Island. It has an ancient but supposedly well-maintained botanical garden, among other things, that I am very much interested in. One of the disadvantages of being there in winter is that the ferry service from Dubrovnik to all the nearby islands shuts down in early November and only starts again in April, as do all the attractions on the islands themselves. Ah well.
Burger Tiger
A burger bar with the imaginative name of “Burger Tiger”, and a ferocious logo in red and white, on one of the many side alleys from Stradun. We had set our sights on it last night, as the menu boasted not one but a variety of vegetarian burgers. We go there today for dinner. Sadly, we learn that my first preference, the aubergine-based burger is not available. The guy says something about the crowds of the winter festival eating up all the aubergines (I suspect a joke that is a bit lost in translation). He recommends another veggie burger option. I very much fear it is going to be one of those meat-substitute soya-based things, and it was, even though the guy denied it. The fries were good, as was B’s deluxe meat burger.
