Day 5: Where We Roam The Ancient Streets Of Dubrovnik, Croatia, But Do Not See Any Dragons
We’ve always heard great things about Dubrovnik, and at last we could find out if all those things were true.
We were booked on a tour on a special bus meant for easy viewing of all the sites. Last night, there was a new ticket in Andy’s name in our room that showed a change to the time and meeting point. There didn’t seem to be such a ticket for me. Everybody else in our group confirmed the new ticket. Uh oh.
We were out on the pier earlier than the designated time, because we needed to talk to someone about my missing ticket. The NCL person at the pier thought I was asking to join the group; eventually she figured out the problem was the missing new ticket.
Except it wasn’t really missing – it was stapled to Andy’s ticket. I don’t know why they did that. It would have been a bit easier if there had been two separate tickets on the desk in our room.
On this excursion, the driver didn’t do anything except drive. There was no tour guide. The driver handed us ear plugs. We plugged ourselves into the bus. We listened to a recording for the next two hours as he drove us along the scenic route to Dubrovnik.
When we arrived in Dubrovnik, it was obvious many other people had the same idea. It’s early in the travel season, and yet it was already super crowded.
If you’ve read my blog before, you know there’s always at least one bathroom story involved. For anybody new to my blog: there’s always at least one bathroom story involved.
There was a public bathroom a couple of blocks away. Of course there was a line, and I joined it. Then the Bathroom Lady called out to me, “LADY LADY COME COME”, so I followed her off the line – through the exit turnstile and past the 1 euro coin machine. So I stood in the next line for the women’s room.
“LADY LADY COME COME”, she called, and grabbed my arm sent me into the men’s room. The stalls, of course, had doors from floor to ceiling; no problem. I came out and there were a couple of guys at the urinals (what urinals? what guys? I didn’t see anything…), so I quickly washed my hands and dashed out of there.
This is not the first time a Bathroom Lady steered me into the men’s room to help me get through the line. And not the first time the guys in the men’s room didn’t pay any attention to me.
We had lunch at a restaurant right by the fortress.
The food was fabulous, our server was great, and it was a beautiful afternoon. Another adventure climbing down and up two flights of stairs for the bathroom, and it was time to roam.
{Note: much, much later in the evening, we realized our server dumped a bunch of bogus food orders on our bill and added an extra 20 euros. So much for our wonderful server}
We followed the crowd into the fortress and the center of Dubrovnik old town.
“Game of Thrones” was filmed in Dubrovnik – I could definitely see why. Many of the shops had “officially licensed Game of Thrones merchandise” that seemed to be mostly refrigerator magnets. Otherwise, no sign of dragons.
There were super narrow side streets that had steps as well. Andy and Tom decided to climb one of those instead.
We took the shuttle bus back to the ship – the price of the shuttle was included in our ticket. If we hadn’t had a ticket, it was $20 each way. Another nickel-and-dime cost.
Tomorrow: Corfu, Greece
Maryland Meshugas 