Ha-KUNA Matata
We arrived in Dubrovnik, Croatia on the 7th of July and were immediately hit by a very heavy heat the minute we stepped
off the plane. Thank goodness there’s a beautiful sea breeze from the Adriatic! We exchanged some Euros for Kuna, the local currency and were on our way. A bus took us into Old Town, Dubrovnik’s medieval walled city center via a pretty dramatic mountainside view of the beautiful coast.
Things were looking great except for the fact that we had to lug our backpacks around with us for the whole day,
which was pretty difficult; however we found a great way to cool off and just watch the world go by at Onofrio’s fountain, a central reservoir from which fountains pour out of stone heads
- really the perfect way to get a cool drink after being beaten down by the hot sun. After a pretty long day we were ready to get off our aching feet and into a nice cool bed, so we made our way to the hostel I had booked. After a lot of confusion, we finally discovered that help, and relief from our heavy packs, had been a phonecall away the whole day!
Our host picked us up by car and drove us to our cute little hostel apartment.
Swimming in the Adriatic is pretty different from what we’re used to on the East Coast. There’s basically
no real “beach” to speak of unless you’d consider a shore of pebbles a nice substitute for sand, and many
“beaches” don’t even have that. For our first dip we climbed down a rocky beachfront to the tumultuous waves waiting to swirl us around. It was a little scary since we weren’t yet used to the
boisterous Adriatic sea which is full of large waves, crashing surf, and steep dropoffs. We definitely couldn’t touch, much less even see, the bottom of the sea where we were, but it wasn’t scary since we felt here somehow more bouyant. I wasn’t afraid of sinking at all; it felt impossible.
We walked around the city wall after our swim. The wall was built in the middle ages and surrounds Dubrovnik town still today. It’s a massive structure which has turrets and lookout points all around it. Eoin and I found a nice little lookout nook to chill out in for a while and then got back to the business of touring the wall. I got totally burnt from all that walking in the midday sun!
Swim #2 brought us to a pebbly beach which felt kind of sore beneath our feet. Once we got in the cool water
we felt refreshed and clean again; all that sweat from the long walk around the wall just came right off. What a great way to end the day!