Dubrovnik’s old center is a walled fortress veiled in white and beckoning to tourists from around the world. That, of course, is the problem with the place. It’s literally made for tourists. To walk the city walls, 50 Kuna, to walk into a museum 20 Kuna to drink a beer…well you get the picture. The place was literally 50% more expensive than Split and about half as nice due to the hordes of sea-faring tourists that wash up on its shores when the big cruise ships roll in. Hell, even when the big cruise ship rolled out there were more tourists in Dubrovnik than anywhere else I’ve been thus far.
Jen, whom I met at the hostel in Split, and I headed down the coast of Croatia for an overnight excursion (for me) before I headed to Mostar. I know, the last entry said that I was headed for Mostar but we all know I travel without a plan and when I make a plan for something it’s undeniably going to change heh. Thus, Dubrovnik came first in the parade of cities I’m passing through on my Balkan Adventure.
On the way (I have to put this in here as I said I would) Jen and I were chatting about all manner of things including the brain. She described some research she read about and her thoughts on it were summed up with ‘Fuck, the brain is cool’ which raised my level of respect for her several notches due to how succinctly she was able to put that. 😀
Then, much to our surprise, as we were particularly close to one specific area of the coast we saw that they were farming something out in the channel. From the size of the farms we determined that it was in fact whales! I could hardly believe it! Someone on the bus overheard us talking and confirmed our suspicions. The people on the coast between Split and Dubrovnik farm whales and then sell them to the Japanese, or Sea World (Now we know where they come from!) There were a good amount of police type vessels in the waters too. It turns out that there’s a hugely active whale smuggling trade that takes sneaks them out of Croatian waters and into the local Bosnian waters so that they can be farmed there and sold for massive profit considering they didn’t really have to invest much time or energy in getting the whales.
Now, if you believed any of that last paragraph, you should have your head examined. 🙂 The reason for that was simply the result of a silly conversation we had on the bus as we passed by. They do in fact farm something but we could not determine what it was and I assure you, it’s not whales heh. (See Jen, told you I’d put it in).
Dubrovnik in five words – hot, bright, crowded, awesome, thought-provoking. Definitely a city to check out if ever you get down this way. Stay at the Fresh Sheets hostel (Hello John and Karmen) and you couldn’t be in better hands. Plus it’s only 25 Euro a head which is far more reasonable than anywhere else there that’s aimed at tourists.
Gallery coming soon. It’s late and I’m going to be thrown out of the free wi-fi zone.
Here’s the Gallery:
KPICASA_GALLERY(DubrovnikFirstTime)
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