Dubrovnik

Last weekend I went with Jill and Ryan to Dubrovnik, Croatia. The bus ride was beautiful, especially the last 30 minutes when we could see the sea and all of the med. houses with red roofs and stecko.

The weekend was interesting and bittersweet. Not knowing the distance and exact location of our hostel we walked to our hostel from the new bus station, which was ~2.5 hours and more than 400 stairs later (I'm not joking!) On the upside, being near the top of the mountain did have its perks, i.e., the view of the city from our hostel was breath-taking.

However, I overworked myself at the Centar that week and was VERY sick (I had some kind of flu) during most of the weekend. Thus, walking more than 400 stairs every time I wanted to go to the beach, the hostel or get some food was ... bad news.

Once at the bottom of the mountain, we were able to see the Old Town, which had exquisite architecture. There were more ancient buildings than in Split. Jill and I walked on top of a wall that surrounded the Old Town for 2.5 hrs on Saturday and captured some amazing shots. The Harbour was a lot nicer than Split. With that said, I would go back to Split over Dubrovnik in a heartbeat! It definitely felt like a tourist hot spot, especially on Sat and Sunday when the Old Town felt like the mall on Boxing Day. Although it was cool to swim among the fish in the sea, the rocky beach was not fun! lol Jill joked that she never could understand why people were coming out of the sea with sour faces until she followed them.

With that said, we did pick a great weekend to Dubrovnik: seasonal festival was taking place. We got to see the fireworks on their opening night and I FINALLY got to see my FIRST ever opera. Although we JUST caught the tail end of it, my eyes were already starting to get watery from emotion. Oh, I can't wait to actually see a complete one!

The trip allowed Jill, Ryan and I to bond. After being more sick that I have in YEARS, I was going to stay in for the second night in a row. It was so painful because I LOVE festivals. I love seeing all the exhibits and performers, the artistic displays and smell the different spices in the air. But I barely made it up to the hostel in the afternoon and was scared, that was until I spoke with Jill and Ryan.

They were incredible friends that night! Jill said that I had to try and go, even if that meant walking down the stairs and then coming right back up again. They even said they would come back with me. I am so grateful to them. It turned out that my stomach was much better after ignoring it for a couple of hours, and we had a FABULOUS night! We bonded in an Irish pub and even got Ryan to sing a duet with Jill to a Taylor Swift song (although he liked mimicking girls in the summer so it shouldn't have been as exciting as it was for me).

On Sunday... we had the WORST luck. We missed our transit into the New Town in Dubrovnik. Then the bus home was sold out. (We weren't told to book our bus seats in advance and we never had a problem on any of our other excursions). Then we missed our third bus, got bad advice from a local employee at the station to take a cab and chase the bus, spent hundreds of dollars and ended up being stranded in a town halfway between Dubrovnik and GVU. (Oh, and the cab driver would only pass slow cars when the road became windy and there was a yellow, solid line on the road). While waiting for our neighbour who SAVED THE DAY and picked us up that night, we watched as the whole town came to the stadium beside the bus stop to watch a soccer game. It was cool to see the whole community come together to cheer on their local teams! Although the weekend was full of twists and turns, it mad for a GREAT story!