Although it was warm, it wasn’t nice enough for the beach on my first day in Dubrovnik, so I settled into tourist mode and caught the bus from my leafy suburb of Lapad into Old Town.
Old Town (is that a song?) is the tourist mecca of Dubrovnik, with modern shops, cafes, churches and galleries enclosed within a stone wall surrounding the perimeter of the city. I spent most of the morning wandering the narrow alleyways and climbed the city walls (more steps) which overlooked the harbour and surrounding islands – an amazing view. There were various forts built into the walls that had survived the earthquake of 1666 and the bombings of 1991, but I didn’t think climbing another 10m would increase the quality of the view, so I didn’t go (much to the horror of the American tourist couples when I explained why I wasn’t going up).
It was a beautiful city, but the real highlight was finding a bookstore that sold books in english. I am sure you can imagine how excited I was. I had been reading so much in Europe that buying books was costing me only slightly less than my accomodation. Which totally wasn’t in the budget. And because I didn’t want to leave novels that someone had painstakingly spent years writing to some dodgy backpacker who would absentmindedly flick through them before leaving them on a bus seat in Prague – I was sending them all back to Australia. Which also wasn’t in the budget.
But nevertheless I hapily stocked up and sent off another package home!
God I am going to be so broke.
-Sarah
Sarah