Our Trip From Dubrovnik to Rovinj!

Well – today is our fly-home day!  It’s going to be a long one, no doubt.  We go thru Washington-Dulles and won’t be home until around 9pm.  So…we’ll go get the Man tomorrow morning.  I can’t wait to see his wiggle-butt!! 🙂

This is sort of…the second half of our cruise – from Dubrovnik – land of dragons! – to Split, the last of our ports-of-call.

Fair Warning – same as before.  I have taken a STUPID number of pictures and PICKING which to show and which to NOT show….is not my strong suit.  So…grab a cuppa and scroll on down to see what we’ve done on our first few days!! 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️

We arrived in Dubrovnik to the sight of the beautiful coastline – you port in near the “modern” part of the city.

Our tour guide was a local – she actually lives IN the ancient walled city – and she was wonderful.  Very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about her city and the Game of Thrones franchise that really put them “on the map”.

I’m not a Game of Thrones fan but I’d seen the walled city in photos and it was one I was really looking forward to seeing.  It did not disappoint!

We started near the water – and she had photos from the movie that she showed us as we saw the actual locations where those scenes were filmed.  The fans in the group were…agog seems like too much, but…VERY excited to see them! 😉

For example – this lagoon and stone jetty apparently factored heavily in many scenes…

It was a beautiful spot – movie or no!

This beach and stairs…

…is where Jon Snow took a knee…  (I’m sharing this for GoT fans!)

Movie scene…

Reality.

We climbed up to the castle….

…which played a huge role as well (with a little CGI help…).

The views were amazing!

Up on the parapet – there was a little defensive position (from it’s “real” life as a fortress!)…

…and there was a very cool view from there as well!

We left the castle and made our way to the walled city itself – entering thru the main gate.

The original opening mechanism is still there – see the chains and rocks??

This gate also played a role in the series!

The walled city was fascinating and beautiful.

There is a Monastery inside the city – and the monks feed the birds each day – by hand!

The also have the largest plot of land – with a stunning garden.  They were the original pharmacists in the city.

Here are just some photos so that you can see how gorgeous this place really is!

We got to go up and walk about half of the wall and it was pretty cool to see DOWN into the city.

For some reason, it surprised me that people live there now – I don’t know why.  It was interesting to see “every day life” happen in such an ancient place.

We saw the parapet where…uhm…the blond lady was looking for her…baby?

Something about pushing stones…Not sure I followed that story but…some of you will!

We got to the end of the tour and headed back to the ship – I can tell you that a stop in Dubrovnik is WELL worth the time if you ever get the chance.  It’s a very very cool place!

Our next stop was Split, Croatia.  A much different city than Dubrovnik.

Surprisingly – our excursion included another Olive Oil tasting!  I do NOT know how we did it – but we ended up tasting Olive Oil THREE different times!

We rode up into the mountains above Split.

This olive oil spot was quite different – much more commercial feeling – than the one in Montenegro.  But – they had a beutiful “village” that they’d built carefully to re-create an “antique” feeling – complete with bread baking, olive oil tasting, and a stunning garden!

From the Olive Oil spot – we headed to the ancient part of Split to the palace built by the Roman Emperor – Diocletian – in about 300BC.  That’s a LONG time ago and it’s astounding what they were able to accomplish – and that it remains today!

This is what it would have looked like in Dioceltian’s time –

At that point we were standing where the water WOULD have been!

We went in thru the underground entrance – where the boat is pulled up in that picture above….

And emerged into the palace itself – which was actually an entire complex of buildings!

You may be surprised to learn that we concluded our day in Split with….Gelato!  We deemed it – Best of Trip!

The final stop before we hit Venice to disembark was…Rovinj (pronounced Ro-Veen), Croatia.  The appeal for us with the excursion we selected was the Roman amphitheater in Pula (about an hour south of the Port) – smaller than the Coliseum in Rome – but still the sixth largest in the world!

Our guide told us that the…odors…in the theater – animals, sweat and…etc…could be pretty overwhelming. So – they’d place huge urns filled with lavender up in those square openings.  The breeze would waft over the lavender and…help with the smell. I feel – and Amy agreed – that there’d have had to have been acres and acres and ACRES worth of lavender to make that work.  Phew!

Under the amphitheater – we saw a very cool Roman map.   It is quite accurate – showing what they KNEW about at the time.  What was really interesting was the roads!  See the “segments” – I pointed them out with the purple arrows.  When you look – you can see them all over on the roads.  What do they signify?  Any guesses? Why are some longer and some shorter?  What COULD they mean!?

We walked around Pula for a bit after that – and came upon an interesting (nearly modern) – artifact.

This was one of four entrances into the underground bomb shelter system built during WWII.  The tunnel system was designed to shelter 50,000 people – the population of Pula at the time.

As you might imagine – gelato was on the menu!

Then it was back to the ship and on to…Venice…our Disembarkation point signaling the end of the cruise.

This has been a LOT of pictures so…I’ll close up here.  I’ve been posting along on my Stamps-N-Lingers FB page if you’d like to check out those posts!

I’ll share a peek at Venice – and a look at the gorgeous Cinque Terra, Italy – in the final installment in our “Travel Blog”! 🙂

TTFN

 

 

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P.S.  Did you make it this far??  Want to know the significance of those “segments” on the Roman roads?  If you guessed that they showed how far a man could travel on horseback in one day – then you’re right!  Some are longer and some are shorter – with the shorter segments signifying more difficult – hilly! – terrain and a harder ride.  How clever is that?!?

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