Montenegro, Hercig Novi and return to Croatia

After the inconvenience of not being able to check out and pay the bill without first going to a cash machine we were glad to finally leave Kamaria and head back towards the border and Croatia.

After a short while we arrived on the outskirts of the fortified town of Hercig Novi and although the main road was dusty and scruffy it seemed bad manners not to pull off into the side streets and visit the old town. This was easier said than done because this is another town with a parking problem and we crawled in a queue of traffic as everyone was searching for a space. Finally we found one as close to the old town as we were likely to get so we accepted that this was the best we would be able to do. It said that it was a pay car park but there was no ticket machine or attendant so we were thoroughly confused. I made enquiries in a couple of shops and finally established that tickets were on sale at the newsagents so I bought two hours and nervously left the car. There were some conscientious parking wardens scrutinising windscreens and tickets and a yellow mini being towed away on a car transporter and I began to worry that I hadn’t understood the procedure and might come back to find the car removed and a long walk back to Mlini.

It was quite a long walk along the busy road and getting hotter under the late morning sun so were glad to reach the entrance to the Stari Grad old town and find some respite from the impatient traffic and the increasing heat. Inside the old gate and within the confines of the walls there were a succession of basking squares with an unhurried pace of life and we walked from one to the other to take in the sights. We were immediately glad that we had stopped off because this was really very nice and most probably a place easily missed by tourists heading for Kotor and Budva going one way and Dubrovnik going the other.

After the squares we climbed a stairway of worn shiny steps to get to the entrance of the fortress which stands at the top of the town overlooking the harbour below. Inside there were walls to walk and views to admire, nothing like Dubrovnik of course, but pleasant all the same and worth the small admission fee. It didn’t take long to complete the visit to the fortress so we walked back down and had a welcome cold drink in a bar in the main square next to the town’s old drinking fountain and the Serbian Orthodox Church in the centre.

After a short rest we walked the other way through twisting lanes and down steep steps towards the harbour but it was a long way, very hot and time was running out on our two hour parking ticket so we abandoned the walk at the half way stage and climbed back to the squares with their balconied buildings and tall shady trees and then retraced our steps back to the car which was exactly where we left it and no parking ticket tucked under the windscreen wipers either.

Getting out of Hercig Novi was no easier than getting in and we sat in a snarling traffic jam and followed the line of cars through the narrow one-way system and finding the right road included quite a lot of guesswork because although there was a sign for every hotel and grill bar the road signs had a curious absence of helpful information if you are looking for directions to the next town but eventually we threaded our way to the main road and prepared to leave Montenegro.

There was a wait again at the border as the immigration police thoroughly checked the documents of a convoy of camper vans from the Netherlands and as we waited we reflected on the Montenegro experience. We had liked it but not as much as we expected to, there was a clear sense of being somewhere different, even more so than Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2008 and to be honest we were glad to be going back to Croatia and we took a leisurely drive back to Mlini and the Villa Carmen.

We had a different room this time, not as good as the first but with a nice secluded balcony, which was cool and surrounded by greenery but required the precaution of plenty of insect repellent. After we had settled in we walked to Mlini for lunch at our favourite restaurant and then just let the rest of the day slide away as we swam in the soft blue water of the Adriatic and then sat at the edge of the water getting a swim suit full of tiny pebbles that we later transferred to the hotel room when we got changed.

Sitting on the terrace in the early evening we watched the colours of the sea and the sky go through their daily transformation and I was struck with how different it is here to Greece. In the Cyclades the sky is a consistent blue that explodes into a vivid sunset but here I have always found it more subtle with a greater variation and range of colour as the sky goes through several stages as it progresses through to the end of the day.

And the end of the day meant a final stroll into Mlini and another meal at the favourite restaurant which may not have been very adventurous or imaginative but we liked it there and we enjoyed an excellent final meal.

Croatia, Dubrovnik

The water taxi took about thirty minutes to make the short journey from Mlini to Dubrovnik and even though large cruisers anchored up outside the harbour spoiled the approach the old town fortifications looked spectacular as we sailed into the harbour and once off the boat we transported into an alternative world of narrow medieval streets, magnificent buildings constructed of white Dalmatian stone and a riot of red tiled roofs. We knew that we had all day to explore the city but we were impatient so purchased our tickets and climbed to the top of the walls for the two-kilometre walk around the magnificent tenth century guard’s walkway.

It was extremely hot and It took a couple of hours to complete the walk around the city stopping frequently to admire the breathtaking views of the cathedrals and churches, the battlement and towers and the busy streets bustling with activity at the base of the walls and through the city to the other side. The route took us first alongside the Adriatic and then at the Fort of St John into the old city port past fishing boats, yachts, pleasure craft and water taxis all floating gently on the placid sea within the protective walls of the harbour’s medieval defences. Then we were on the land side where there were there were the best views of the tiled roofs and on to the highest point at the Minceta Tower where there was a steep climb rewarded with an expansive panorama of the city and the vivid blue sea behind it.

The medieval city of Dubrovnik was founded in late antiquity and grew first under Byzantine and then later under Venetian rule before becoming an independent republic in 1358. It developed into a maritime and trading power that rivaled the Venetian Republic and reached its zenith in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It even managed to keep its political independence under Ottoman rule, which began in 1526 but it was sacked in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, and lost its status as a city-state two years later. It came under French rule and was ceded to Austria in 1815. A century later, it became part of Yugoslavia.

When we had completed the circumnavigation of the walls we returned to street level and walked first along the polished white paving stones of the main street occasionally taking detours into intriguing little side streets and alleys. We admired the reconstructed Rector’s House and the Cathedral, wandered through a street market and then to some of the quieter little streets underneath the walls for a different perspective. The old city dates from the thirteenth century, when the imposing fortifications began to be built and the elegance and charm of the historic centre is a perfect blend of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Not surprisingly the place had an Italianate feel with pizzerias and waiters pestering for business in that unique Italian sort of way but we didn’t mind this and just politely said no thank you in an English sort of way and walked on.

By the time we had walked underneath the walls of St John’s Tower and into the old harbour I was beginning to understand why in 1929 George Bernard Shaw described Dubrovnik as ‘Paradise on Earth’ and thankfully the post war reconstruction has restored the old town to its former splendour.

At the beginning of the bombardment, the city was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger and quickly after it was over UNESCO launched an action plan to save Dubrovnik and the reconstruction work began. To rebuild the roofs the original sixteenth century rafters had to be strengthened and almost half a million tiles had to be replaced. The original tiles had been made in the village of Kupari, about fifteen kilometres from the city, and dated from the time of the Dubrovnik republic but the workshops had closed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and specialists faced the task of finding a kind of tile which could as far as possible be made using the original materials and methods of construction. Eventually French and Croatian specialists managed to recreate the original technique and the famous roofline was perfectly restored.

The cost of the restoration was estimated at $20 for the old city within the walls and $30 million for the urban area as a whole. Much of the funding came from the new Croatian government and the Dubrovnik Reconstruction Office but also with aid from private Croatian sources and from UNESCO itself. Croatian and international teams of architects, sculptors, restorers and other experts managed to complete the bulk of the work within seven years and in December 1998 Dubrovnik was taken off of the danger list.

It was midday and hot so we returned to a waterside bar that we had used the previous year and thought about lunch. Last year we seriously over ordered here and ended up sending food back so this year we were mindful of that and ordered accordingly – just one plate of small fish and a salad. We were in a perfect spot next to the girls trying to sell thirty minute tours on glass bottomed boats and watching the guided tour parties trying to make decisions about who was going on and who wasn’t. Eventually we tired of watching the people parading back and forth, left the harbour and went back into the city.

It was now almost unbearably hot and Kim had acquired a headache but we had seen mostly everything we wanted to see in Dubrovnik so we walked to the bus stop, I bought the wrong tickets in a shop, and then waited in the shade for the Mlini bus for the fifteen minute ride back along an elevated road with great views over the city, the harbour and the sea.

Croatia, The Siege of Dubrovnik

We had an excellent breakfast on the sunny terrace with local specialties, fresh bread and home made marmalade and jam and Doris sold us tickets for the water taxi to Dubrovnik, which I think was probably another part of the family business.

We had about an hour to wait between breakfast and the boat and we spent this in Mlini wandering about the back streets, through overgrown gardens, down mysterious passageways and along the seashore, it was a lovely place and we had made an excellent choice of holiday location.

The taxi left from the little harbour in the village and we waited in the already hot sunshine until it arrived at ten o’clock and then selected seats on the upper deck and sat and sweltered while we waited for it to leave. Eventually it left and followed the coast towards the city and then we saw something unexpected and nothing like we had seen before on previous visits to Croatia, a string of war damaged shelled out hotels at regular intervals all the way to Dubrovnik. This we learned later was the legacy of an invasion by Montenegro during the secessionist wars of the 1990s.

Montenegro played a disastrous part in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia because in 1991 its army, urged on by Slobodan Milosevic, advanced across the border into neighbouring Croatia, destroying villages, looting and stealing on the way and then shelling the ancient city of Dubrovnik. The city was attacked by the Serbian-Montenegrin army and besieged for six months during which time about two thousand shells rained down on the walled city, damaging seventy percent of its buildings and two-thirds of its famous red roofs. Dubrovnik’s ancient heritage was threatened with destruction and a plaque within the city now shows all of the major strikes on public buildings and churches, cobbled streets made of Dalmatian stone and irreplaceable statues and monuments.

Early in 1991 the political leaders of Montenegro and the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army, the, JNA, justified the attack and siege of Dubrovnik as a necessary move towards protecting the territorial integrity of Montenegro and Yugoslavia and preventing a potential conflict along ethnic lines, as well as stopping the so-called unconstitutional secession of Croatia. The Montenegrin Prime Minister rallied the country with the rabble rousing statement that the ‘Croatian authorities wanted to have a war and they will have it.’ He continued by saying that ‘if Croatia wants to secede then the internal borders must be revised,’ while interpreting the war in Croatia as an inevitable outcome of the totalitarian policies of Zagreb: ‘One million Serbs in Croatia are deprived of their rights and are forced to respond with arms.’ He assured the people of Montenegro that the time had come to ‘draw the demarcation lines vis-à-vis the Croats once and for all,’ and that ‘the new borders with Croatia would be more logical and just than those drawn by the old and poorly educated Bolshevik cartographers’

In the early hours of 1st October JNA soldiers and reservists began military operations in the southern Croatian region of Konavle. Just after five o’clock the people living in the village of Vitaljina and throughout the region of Konavle were woken up by heavy artillery fire coming from the JNA positions at Prevlaka Peninsula, Prijevor, Mojdez, and also from the JNA’s naval vessels anchored off the Croatian coast. The artillery fire was then followed by an infantry thrust into Croatian territory.

The invaders evicted people from their houses and engaged in massive looting, pillaging, and the destruction of private and historical property, actions which had no justification or any strategic military objective. The airport was attacked and equipment stolen and heavy looting occurred in Kupari, where the hotel complex Vrtovi Sunca was virtually cleaned out of all its furniture and equipment, pieces of which were later either sold on the black market in Montenegro or given as ‘gifts’ to various state-run institutions and organizations in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. After the looting of the hotels they were then destroyed by heavy shelling, an action designed to destroy the economy of the region and to prevent them being used for refugees and people bombed out of their homes.

Europe and the World watched most of the dreadful events of the Yugoslavian wars on television screens but took no action but for the west at least, the destruction of Dubrovnik overstepped the mark and brought pressure on the warring factions to stop. It was almost as though the World was prepared to watch ethnic cleansing, death and destruction in cities with unfamiliar names that meant little to them but when a UNESCO World Heritage Site was attacked and a city that was seen to belong to the World and not a single place, collectively they said ‘enough is enough’.

The ‘War for Peace’ turned out to be one of the most disagreeable episodes in recent Montenegrin history because Montenegro disgraced itself by putting itself in the service of the Yugoslav army and Slobodan Milosevic. After the war Montenegro became a virtual pariah state, and the later bombing of nearby Kosovo reinforced this isolation.

After the end of the war in 1995 Montenegro remained closely allied to Serbia but declared independence on 3rd June 2006. In March 2007 the Montenegrin President apologized for involvement in attacks on Dubrovnik, which caused several hundred civilian deaths and destroyed countless homes, and agreed to pay damages. Some estimates place the value of the damage at around €35 million. So far, Montenegro has paid up only €375,000 as compensation for looting the area’s cattle. Reparation is going to take a long time and in the mean time the bombed out hotels which disfigure the coastline remain as a dreadful reminder of the war.

Really, I should have found out about this before the holiday and I suddenly began to feel a bit uneasy about visiting Montenegro the next day for fear of offending our Croatian hosts.

Croatia, Cavtat

As usual the Easyjet flight was late taking off and also arriving so added to its statistic on late or delayed flights that Michael O’Leary delights in gloating over when he provides benchmark statistics in the Ryanair in-flight magazine each month. Easyjet are frustratingly relaxed about flight times and I think on the whole I prefer the Ryanair approach.

There wasn’t a great deal to see for the first part of the flight because of cloud but we saw the snow capped peaks of the Alps poking through the mist and shortly after crossing Venice the vapours cleared and we had a clear view of the coast of Croatia and the string of islands separated from the main land by a vivid blue Adriatic Sea. As the plane flew south we picked out familiar places, Trogir, Primosten, Split and islands that we recognised, Hvar and Korcula, but this time from an unfamiliar perspective because for the last two years these were places that we had only seen from ground level as we had driven south from Zadar. This time we could appreciate the islands with their halos of golden sand, the blue sea and the salt and pepper grey mountains that rise dramatically behind the narrow coastal strip. As the plane descended we flew low over the old town of Dubrovnik and picked out the iconic red roofs, the city walls and the boats in the harbour.

Within seconds the plane was touching down and after a short wait we were in welcome sunshine as we walked to the terminal building to be processed at the passport control desk. It was a nice modern airport, clean and airy and after we passed through we found the car hire desk where we were upgraded from a small to a medium car for no additional cost. We were planning to drive to Montenegro and the Government Foreign Office website warns that driving can be difficult there with poor roads and temperamental drivers so on this occasion I agreed to pay the additional €6 a day for the fully comprehensive insurance.

After we had completed the paperwork and signed up we maneuvered out of the impossibly tight parking space in the parking lot and drove the short distance to the resort of Cavtat. I paid careful attention to the road and Kim worked out the air conditioning controls and air flow combinations because it was very, very hot indeed. It only took a few minutes to arrive in the small town and find a car park and then, after a quick change of clothes into something more appropriate for 28º of sunshine rather than a chilly morning in Stansted we walked around the harbour and slipped immediately into holiday mode.

Cavtat was delightful and because Croatia insists on a compressed holiday season of two months in July and August, and except for being directly below the flight path of landing planes, it was quiet and peaceful. In the harbour there were a pot-pourri of working boats, pleasure cruisers and some very expensive sailing boats and yachts so we picked a restaurant with a good view and enjoyed a simple lunch and a first Croatian beer called Ožujsko. It was good.

After lunch we walked around the little town through narrow leafy lanes and cobbled streets flanked with traditional red-roofed brownstone houses climbing back from the blue of the waterfront up narrow stairways smothered in clouds of white, mauve and pink blossom and every now and then a private shaded courtyard to investigate. Along the front there were busy cafés and tourist shops and the waiters and the shopkeepers allowed us to browse slowly without pestering for custom as they do in other parts of Europe.

It was early afternoon and getting hotter so it was time to leave and continue our journey towards the nearby village of Mlini where we would be staying for a couple of nights. I got us tangled up in the one way system and took the long route out of town that twisted along the coast and then climbed through green hills with contrasting yellow broom and scarlet poppies back to the main road and headed north.

Croatia - Day 5, Ston

It was another perfect start to the day on Friday morning and we had our breakfast outside and were amused by the gardener who was watering the plants in an inefficient way that involved a fifty metre trek in between each inadequate fill of the watering can. After we had eaten, packed and checked out of the hotel we joined the rush hour traffic and crawled out of Dubrovnik towards the E65 main road. Our destination was north but first we went a couple of kilometres south to find a viewing platform with a last panoramic view of Dubrovnik. It was quite stunning and quite difficult to leave but we had quite a long journey ahead so dragged ourselves away and set off for the islands. Today we planned to fulfil our original objective of visiting the countryside, the coast and the islands.

It took about forty-five minutes to reach the turn off for the Pelješac peninsular which involved a long hold up through a series of road works where the main peninsular road is being upgraded at its junction with the E65 ready for all of the additional traffic once the new Bosnian diversion bridge is completed. The drive ran along an unspoilt coast, peppered with small harbour villages and oyster farms because this is a region famous for its crustaceans. After we passed the walled port of Mari-Ston the first town that we reached on the peninsular was Ston and we pulled in to a car park to pay a visit. I was in a rush to get to the medieval walls and passed what I thought was a discarded meat pie by the side of the road but Kim more correctly identified it as a tortoise and she stopped to investigate. She was worried that it was close to the road and so moved it to safety so I pointed out that it was probably about a hundred years old and been crossing this road forever and didn’t need this nanny state interference. There were a lot of road signs warning motorists about tortoises but we were a bit surprised to see one like this.

Ston is only a small town but it has great strategic importance because it is a natural bottleneck through which invaders on the way to the islands have to pass and here can be slowed down and stopped. The defensive walls were built originally to stop the Turks reaching Korčula and they served the same purpose again in 1991 to prevent the Serb and Montenegrin armies getting through to the peninsular. Circling the town, the walls climb up to the hilltop Pozvizd Fortress and then follow the line of the isthmus to meet up with the walls of Mali Ston. They are fortified with ten round and thirty rectangular towers and we climbed to the fortress tower that looked out protectively over Ston and could clearly see the remains of some damaged roofs that had been destroyed by Serbian shells.

The walls are six kilometres long and after Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England are claimed to be the second longest defensive wall anywhere in Europe. From the top we could see the important saltpans and the little town spread out in front of us. From the top we walked down the other side only to find our way blocked by building work so we had to climb back to the top and then negotiate a slippy little mud track back to the town. On the way we passed another tortoise that was protecting two eggs in a hole next to a stone wall and was attracting a lot of attention from passers by. It was quite a difficult descent and it was very hot now so we were very glad to get to the bottom and find a shady street with a nice bar called the Sorgo which looked as though it would provide a nice lunch but it was too early so we made do with a cold beer.

We were running short of fuel but the nearest filling station meant going back through the road works and I really didn’t have the patience for that so on the advice of the owner of the Sorgo calculated that there was enough fuel to get us to Korčula and so we took the main road into the peninsular. On leaving Ston we had a last fantastic final view of Croatia’s defensive wall with its impressive combination of fortresses and battlements built to keep people out but we were through and on our way.

It was about fifty kilometres up the Pelješac and the road kept to the east of a mountain range that forms the backbone of the peninsular and took us through the region that produces the famous Croatian red dingac wine. There were lots of vineyards and invitations to visit and taste but we were intending to catch the one o’clock ferry so we just kept driving. Eventually there was a gap in the mountains and the road crossed over to the west and in front of us we could see Korčula across a narrow stretch of water. We continued to the town of Orebić and joined the queue for the ferry with about twenty minutes to spare.

Croatia - Day 4, Naked Sunbathing

It was midday and hot so we found a table at a waterside bar and thought about lunch. We ordered two dishes; one of calamari and another of small fried fish for what we thought was going to be a light snack. However I think the kitchen must have over ordered today because we actually received two absurdly huge portions and despite doing our best to force it all down had to return quite a lot back at the end of the meal. We were in a perfect spot next to the men trying to sell thirty minute tours on glass bottomed boats and watching the guided tour parties trying to make decisions about who was going on and who wasn’t. Eventually we tired of watching the people parading back and forth, left the harbour and went back into the city.

We did some more wandering about but we were beginning to cover the same ground now so we left the walled city by the Pile Gate and with the unused portion of yesterday’s ticket for the visit to the walls visited the adjacent fortress of Lokanda Peskarija which included an awful lot of steps to climb but the reward was an excellent final view over the city and its famously restored red tiled roofs and I wondered just why anyone would want to destroy something so beautiful.

The trouble with climbing steps up is that you have to climb back down again and by now it was a very hot afternoon. We could see that the bus was approaching so we descended as quickly as we could and made it to the bus stop just as the driver closed the doors and moved away which meant that we had to wait another fifteen minutes for the next one for the short journey back to the hotel. We were at the front of the queue of course but this wasn’t especially helpful because the concept of a queue is something that Croatian people seem to understand even less than the French and when the bus pulled up an undisciplined rugby scrum formed and there was a lot of pushing and shoving to get on.

With the sun still shining we walked through the fringe of trees down to the stony beach where we found a spot to paddle in the sea that was reflecting the light from a perfect soft blue sky with soft clouds and just the occasional flick of grey. From here we could see the beach stretching out around the headland and as we walked further we came across the naturist beach and debated the subject of just what makes people with brains in denial and bodies desperately defying gravity, remove their clothes and proudly show everything off.

There is a question I’d really like the answer to? Why don’t super models sunbathe naked? These people’s bodies needed to be put through the hotel bedroom trouser press before coming out in the morning to get all of the creases out. The Germans were by far the worst of course; I have never seen so much pubic untidiness. Naked sunbathing is really quite nice and swimming in the sea with the water around the places where the sun doesn’t normally shine is a really pleasant experience, it’s just a shame that the people with bodies past their sell by dates like to do it most of all.

When I was a boy there used to be a top shelf magazine called ‘Health and Efficiency’ which showcased people, usually Germans, who were committed naturists. As adolescents with raging hormones, it was always a thrill to come across a discarded copy of this magazine; it wasn’t the pursuit of naturism that interested us of course because we were only really interested in seeing pictures of ladies bare breasts. You can still buy the magazine but it isn’t top shelf any more and I’ve had a look and you can get it on-line as well.

We abandoned the naturist section of the beach and returned for a second visit to the beach bar where there was a good view across to the islands and we watched little tourist boats going backwards and forwards carrying passengers from the new harbour just around the corner. After a couple of drinks in the sun we walked back to the hotel through the impressive swimming pool area stopping only to buy more Croatian merlot and then we rested for an hour before going out for the evening.

Next to the hotel was a small purpose built holiday complex of concrete tourist shops and restaurants which wasn’t very thrilling but it was too far to go back into the old town so we selected a friendly looking place and had an acceptable meal that actually turned out to be a bit expensive. It was our final night in Dubrovnik so we went back to the beach bar and spent a relaxing hour under the stars drinking wine, listening to the sea and looking forward to the nest stage of our journey to the island of Korčula.

Croatia - Day 4, Pearl of the Adriatic

We were relieved to find that despite a gloomy weather forecast on Croatian breakfast TV the sun was shining again because there was much more of Dubrovnik yet to see so after an excellent buffet breakfast at the hotel we caught the bus once again into the city. The streets were busy this morning and the bus quickly filled up as it crawled through the early morning traffic competing with local people going to work and a procession of taxis ferrying people from the cruise ships in the harbour making their way like us to the old town. Even though it was early it was already busy and we had to negotiate crowds of people as we entered the city walls for the second time.

The medieval city of Dubrovnik was founded in late antiquity and grew first under Byzantine and then later under Venetian rule before becoming an independent republic in 1358. It developed into a maritime and trading power that rivalled the Venetian Republic and reached its zenith in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It even managed to keep its political independence under Ottoman rule, which began in 1526 but it was sacked in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, and lost its status as a city-state two years later. It came under French rule and was ceded to Austria in 1815. A century later, it became part of Yugoslavia.

First we walked along the polished white paving stones of the main street occasionally taking detours into intriguing little side streets and alleys. We admired the reconstructed Rector’s House and the Cathedral, wandered through a street market and then to some of the quieter little streets underneath the walls that we had walked yesterday. The old city dates from the thirteenth century, when the imposing fortifications began to be built and the elegance and charm of the historic centre is a perfect blend of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Not surprisingly the place had an Italianate feel with pizzerias and waiters pestering for business in that unique Italian sort of way but we didn’t mind this and just politely said no thank you in an English sort of way and walked on.

About mid morning we visited the Rector’s House museum which had a few rooms with interesting exhibits, a dungeon and a shop and although we thought we had bought a multi-visit ticket we were disappointed to find that we hadn’t when we tried later to use it to enter the maritime museum, and despite my perfectly reasonable request, there was no chance to upgrade it after the initial purchase and error. So we didn’t see the maritime museum!

By the time we had walked underneath the walls of St John’s Tower and into the old harbour I was beginning to understand why in 1929 George Bernard Shaw described Dubrovnik as ‘Paradise on Earth’ and I was sure already that it was a place that deserved to go into my top ten of must see places. This nearly wasn’t possible of course because during the war of independence Dubrovnik was attacked by the Serbian-Montenegrin army and besieged for six months during which time about two thousand shells rained down on the walled city, damaging seventy percent of its buildings and two-thirds of its famous red roofs. Dubrovnik’s ancient heritage was threatened with destruction and we stopped to look at a plaque within the central streets that showed all of the major strikes on public buildings and churches, cobbled streets made of Dalmatian stone and irreplaceable statues and monuments.

Europe and the World watched most of the dreadful events of the Yugoslavian wars on television screens but took no action but for the west at least the destruction of Dubrovnik overstepped the mark and brought pressure on the warring factions to stop. It was almost as though the World was prepared to watch ethnic cleansing, death and destruction in cities that meant little to them but when a UNESCO World Heritage Site was attacked and a city that was seen to belong to the World and not a single place, collectively they said ‘enough is enough’.

At the beginning of the bombardment, the city was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger and quickly after it was over UNESCO launched an action plan to save Dubrovnik and the reconstruction work began. To rebuild the roofs the original sixteenth century rafters had to be strengthened and almost half a million tiles had to be replaced. The original tiles had been made in the village of Kupari, about fifteen kilometres from the city, and dated from the time of the Dubrovnik republic but the workshops had closed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and specialists faced the task of finding a kind of tile which could as far as possible be made using the original materials and methods of construction. Eventually French and Croatian specialists managed to recreate the original technique and the famous roofline was perfectly restored.

The cost of the restoration was estimated at $20 for the old city within the walls and $30 million for the urban area as a whole. Much of the funding came from the new Croatian government and the Dubrovnik Reconstruction Office but also with aid from private Croatian sources and from UNESCO itself. Croatian and international teams of architects, sculptors, restorers and other experts managed to complete the bulk of the work within seven years and in December 1998 Dubrovnik was taken off of the danger list.

Croatia - Day 3, Dubrovnik

After we left Bosnia there was still fifty kilometres to go and the worrying thing was that we were leaving the clear blue skies behind and travelling south east directly towards nasty black rain clouds. I complained about this (several times) and was chastised for negative thinking but it really didn’t look very promising at all and my mood was in freefall. Despite the weather the scenery was good with tall grey mountains covered in lush green trees to the left, scarlet poppies by the roadside, blue sea to the right and a very good view over the green islands.

We had been driving non stop for nearly four hours now and I was beginning to get a bit irritable and my mood wasn’t helped when just as we approached the outskirts of Dubrovnik there were rain spots on the windscreen and still in the rear view mirror I could see the blue skies that we had left behind us. To be honest this had not been a great journey! Dubrovnik turned out to be much bigger than I was anticipating and this meant that inevitably there was difficulty finding the hotel. We were staying a few kilometres outside the city centre on a peninsula full of modern tourist hotels and do you think we could find ours? No of course not! We drove around in circles looking for signs or inspiration and my mood was deteriorating and my nerves fraying with every passing moment. Eventually we found it of course and as we pulled into the car park I wondered whether I should enrol for hotel location anger management lessons when we got back home.

The room wasn’t quite ready so a tension reliever was called for and was supplied with a relaxing glass of Karlovačko from the hotel bar. We sat outside and as if by magic the irritating clouds completely disappeared and in a matter of minutes left behind a clear blue sky. There had clearly been a lot of rain this morning and the improvement in the weather instantly brought guests scurrying from their rooms. They emerged blinking and adjusting to the sunlight, reaching for sunscreen and making for the swimming pool. They were obviously relieved to see the sun and so was I.

The Tirana is a modern package holiday hotel that had been built in the Yugoslavian holiday boom of the 1970s in a functional sort of eastern Europe concrete sort of way and refurbished just a couple of years ago. We had a nice room with a shady balcony and although it is not the sort of hotel that I would say is my first preference it was clean and comfortable and the service was excellent.

One thing that we really wanted to do was see Dubrovnik in sunshine and as the weather seemed to be a bit unpredictable we decided to go and do it straight away. There was a bus stop at the end of the hotel drive so we walked there, caught the bus and went to the city. The old town looked spectacular as we walked through the sixteenth century Pile Gate and were transported into an alternative world of narrow medieval streets, magnificent buildings constructed of white Dalmatian stone and a riot of red tiled roofs. We knew that we had all day tomorrow to explore the city but we were impatient so purchased our tickets and climbed to the top of the walls for the two-kilometre walk around the splendid tenth century guard’s walkway.

It took a couple of hours to complete the walk around the city stopping frequently to admire the breathtaking views of the cathedrals and churches, the battlement and towers and the busy streets bustling with activity at the base of the walls and through the city to the other side. The route took us first alongside the Adriatic and then at the Fort of St John into the old city port past fishing boats, yachts, pleasure craft and water taxis all floating gently on the gentle sea within the protective walls of the harbour’s medieval defences. Then we were on the land side where there were there were the best views of the tiled roofs and on to the highest point at the Minceta Tower where there was a steep climb rewarded with an expansive panorama of the city and the vivid blue sea behind it.

After the walls we agreed not to spoil tomorrow by doing everything in a rush today so instead we found a restaurant with a pleasant garden and as we had missed lunch due to the long drive enjoyed an early evening meal before catching the bus back to the hotel where we relaxed, drank a bottle of Croatian merlot and prepared to go for a final walk.

It was getting dark when we left the hotel and followed the path to the stony beach where there was a bar where we finished the day listening to the gentle lapping of the sea rearranging the pebbles on the beach and watching the occasional Mediterranean cruiser slipping out of the modern port en route for its next destination. Eventually we tired of the tedious conversation at the next table where a group of elderly travellers were competing with each other with tales of wondrous holidays and grand family events so we climbed the path back to the hotel and after taking a last look at a clear ink black sky finished the day in an optimistic weather mood.