We were able to spend a whole week in the most visited Croatian town- Dubrovnik. It is an amazing photogenic site with ancient walls that circumscribe the old town. Our first day we had to do the 2km walk on the walls before the tourists made it unbearable. It is October and far less busy then summer but Dubrovnik is still a huge attraction in Europe so the town seemed to be filled with people anyway. Yes, I took way too many pics, and I will show way too many pics here but you have permission to scroll through them quickly.
Dubrovnik seemed a lot more alive than some of the other towns we have seen. It is October but it was really busy. One day there was a food festival where 20 to 30 restaurants set up a super long table and put out all their specialties for some sort of contest. We saw the judges in their Croatian old school costumes come through and check them all out.
This was at the huge long street which was the main strolling area through the old city. We walked it a lot during our week in Dubrovnik. Here is a pic of the Dubrovnik Stradun at a less busy time from the ancient walls.
One day we took a bus tour to Kotor in Montenegro which is the Balkan country directly to the South of Dubrovnik. Or 30 minute customs stop was not bad because we are in offseason, but sometimes it can take 3 hours in summer. Another reason to travel in October :>) Our first stop was at a church in the middle of Kotor Bay, which was established to honor the Virgin Mary, and believed she helped sailors navigate and stay safe during their travels. We took a small boat out to the island and saw all the artifacts that sailors have given the church for helping them survive. The bay of Kotor is surrounded by mountains which gives it the feeling that it is a fjord and the villages on the side of the bay look like Austrian mountain lake villages.
The next stop on the tour was the town of Kotor where they gave us an hour long orientation and history tour before they gave us a couple hours of free time for lunch and wandering before we had to take the bus back to Dubrovnik. It was another town with an ancient wall surrounding it but it was another place in full tourist mode. The town was full of gift shops and restaurants but it really a picturesque spot under the high mountains. We didn’t have enough time to do the 4km steep city wall hike but it was fun checking out our first Montenegro town.
Most of our experiences on the Croatian coast have been 3 days stays. Dubrovnik was seven days so we had some days without obvious tourist activities to do. But it is still pretty warm in Southern Croatia so we were able to have a beach day and do nothing except read and swim and read and swim and…
This was our 4th week and final week in Croatia and we are happy with all the stops we got to see. It is really a beautiful country but it is no longer the budget travel location it was during the Yugoslavia days or just after the Yugoslavia wars. Even though our Airbnb’s had really reasonable prices, but the time we go to Dubrovnik, the food prices had gone up quite a bit and it was a bit challenging meeting our budget every day. Dubrovnik (and Croatia) has been discovered by the rest of Europe quite a while ago and it will definitely make the list of the most popular European attractions and I think Americans are now starting to hop on the Croatian bandwagon. But, we are ready to move on- next country is ITALY.
