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Walking The City Walls

September 17, 2007

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It is impossible to walk the medieval wall of Old Town Dubrovnik and not fall totally in love with this place, as it is a photographers dream with breathtaking views where ever you look. I think most people do it in two hours or so, but we loved it so much that we were on it for five hours and were the first ones there when it opened at precisely eight in the morning. We picked a non cruise boat day, so it was not crowded for most of our walk and indeed we had much of it all to ourselves to take time to savor it fully.

It is really a long way to do the whole thing in August and there are lots of steep stairs, but the weather started out perfect, cooler and over cast as we meandered along this lofty perch. We took our time taking lots of pictures and just enjoying it and stopped several times for long breaks. There is a constant changing sea of terra cotta tiled roofs on the inside and a constant changing view of the gorgeous Adriatic on the outside.

The walls are almost two kilometers in length and they were built between the 8th and 16th century, primarily for defense and are the most beautiful and best preserved in the world. The wall helps you fully see and understand Dubrovnik.

You really just go from one “wow” moment to another. Some tiny highlights that we also enjoyed were some grapes growing at someone’s home on this rampart, a cat on a nearby colorful rail on one of the homes, a little store for home-made items of lace and such and looking down at the famous Buza Cafe, a must stop for every visitor to Dubrovnic. Buza actually means “hole in the wall” and it is a famous bar (there are actually two now) that are built right on the edge of the wall on the stone and many people miss this wonderful spot to see the sunset or swim and while away the night as the boats pass by close by and waves crash.

Many people also do not know that you can use your tickets all day, so you can come and go and do lunch in town or see it again at sunset if you like. We had a luxurious rest at a little place under an umbrella for an ice cream break while taking  in the scenery and then later we stopped at a air-conditioned place that was very cave like and a very welcome respite from the heat.

Our first two or three hours were great, but the walls get too hot in the heat of the day in summer as they are white and attract the heat and there is little shade on the section we were in then. Still, it was so beautiful, we could not stop ourselves from continuing and we had little choice any way as there
was no exit during that stretch.

The walk down on narrow, very steep stairs is almost as precarious as some of the stairs going up, but we all managed to make it fine. We really loved the wall, but we were also glad to get off it at that point as it turned out to be a very hot and sunny day. We got a second wind after our stop at that cave like spot, but the heat soon caught up to us again and I was feeling a little ill, so we looked for a restaurant with air-conditioning which seemed to be a hard thing to find.

We did finally find a perfect little spot and we had the room to ourselves as most people prefer to eat outside as we do too usually, but I was so over heated that I needed air-condition even with a soaked head at the fountain. We had stayed out in the sun and heat longer than we should have, but the AC, good food and very sweet people soon revived us. Even with the heat and sun, walking the wall was a highlight for us, so much so that we will do it one more time before leaving to relive the fun, see it at sunset and get Mozart’s violin video!

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Jessica Skelton

Amazing photos and description! Another thing to add to my bucket list!

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