Adriatic Trip Day 17: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Today we arrived at Dubrovnik, our first stop in Croatia. Dubrovnik is an old and picturesque city that was heavily damaged in the Balkan wars of the early 1990s. Fortunately, Dubrovnik has been reconstructed, preserving much of the city’s previous character.

There were several activity options for today, including a cooking class, a hike into the hills above the city, and a coastal tour that included sampling oysters. We opted to take a walking tour of the Old Town and city walls. The tour introduced us to some of Dubrovnik’s history, and then we climbed up to the top of the city wall, one of the few intact city walls in Europe. It was a hot and sunny day, and we sought out shade in the few places it was available. Unfortunately, a few of the tour members had mobility difficulties, and it took some time to make it all the way around, especially since there were over 1000 steps on the route. Our local guide gave us quite a bit of information about the city on the way, and after we were finished, took us into a Franciscan monastery, which was one of the very early pharmacies in Europe.

We returned to the Orion for lunch, and then took advantage of some of our free time to head back into Dubrovnik for some exploration on our own and for dinner. We went to find the Jesuit Steps that were featured in “Game of Thrones,” but they weren’t all that significant to us since we haven’t watched that show. We found a small sidewalk cafe for dinner, which was reminiscent of dinners I had enjoyed when traveling to Belgrade a few decades ago.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to Italy, Greece, Albania, and Croatia. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.