|
Dubrovnik, Croatia — August 2006
Dubrovnik is ancient and gorgeous; a walled-in stone city on the beautiful Adriatic coast.
The old town in Dubrovnik is about a kilometer square, surrounded by huge stone walls, and perched right on the edge of the sea. Since it's a popular holiday destination for lots of rich Italians, French, Germans, etc, the city has a lot of money and everything is extremely well-kept and beautifully lit.
There are seemingly thousands of beautiful little corners like this throughout the tiny old town.
Just outside the city's walls, I noticed (and photographed very poorly) this beautiful old galleon or whatever the hell (at the back right there hidden mostly in darkness). I think it's a restaurant and tour boat.
Another beautiful spot within the city's walls.
Looking down at all the nightlife from near the top of the big wall.
If you climb high enough into the walls of the city, you eventually get away from the restaurants and shops and realize that normal people actually live in here! This is about as high up onto the edge of the wall as I could get, and then I turned back to take this picture through somebondy's laundry, over the entire old town, and you can see all the way to the rest of Dubrovnik outside of the walls on the other side.
Part of the walls of the old town.
The next day, I hiked alone up a big ol' mountain. I had no idea I was in for views like this.
At the very top of the mountain I found a deserted radar tower and a single wooden bench with a bunch of beer cans strewn about. I stood up on the bench to take this picture from the very highest point I could reach. You can see the bay between Dubrovnik and the rest of mainland Croatia, and the cute little neighborhood where I rented an apartment for the weekend is basically straight ahead, on this side of the water.
I took this while I was walking back down from the top. It felt so weird to be basically having a normal hike on an abandoned road in the woods on a mountain, like I've done a zillion times in New Jersey or Pennsylvania or wherever, and every now and again, the trees would part a little but and you'd see the Adriatic sea and an island. So weird!
I only stayed in Dubrovnik for a couple days, and then hitchhiked to Montenegro...
|
