I am exhausted just re-lving this day in my head, but I am confident in saying that we experienced a great amount of this city in a day. Now that's not to say we would not come back here, Dubrovnik is so incredibly awesome it would take several days to truly experience all it has to offer, but given our time, we definitely made the most of it.

We met with our group at breakfast at our hotel, and even though there were busses to take you into Old Town, we opted to walk. Once we got within the walls, Ivance gave us a great walking tour which was just a short little introduction to the city and its history and then we were left on our own to explore however we wanted.

Our first goal was to walk up on the city walls. The walls wrap around all of Old Town, and you can walk the entire perimeter. It was so cool to see the city from all angles and from this view, as well as the gorgeous water and views of Lokrum Island. It was pretty warm that day, with no cloud coverage, alhtought it was a BEAUTIFUL day. We got very hot walking around and holy cow, the stairs. There were so many stairs. Which to a person training for a marathon, stairs are my worst enemy. And I decided that was a great day to wear jeans for whatever reason. I had just run my longest 20 mile run 5 days prior and my legs were still recovering. BUT even so, it was worth it.

It took just short of about 2 hours to walk around, as we stopped for many photos of course. We were of course hungry and very thirsty. And thanks to Ivance, we found a great vegan place in Old Town with AMAZING food. We took our time just resting and enjoyed our meal.

We then decided to take the ferry over to Lokrum Island. Here there were cool sites including where even more scenes from Game of Thrones were filmed, and included the actual Iron Throne used on the set of the show. The one we sat on the first night we arrived was just a replica in a gift shop, but this one was the one used in filming and was donated to the Island by HBO. Both of us of course took several pics on it.

A lot of Game of Thrones was filmed in Iceland as well. But when we were there in 2018, we hadn't seen the show yet. So when our guide pointed out filming locations of the show we were like, "ok, that's cool I guess." So what a treat to have acutally seen and been a fan of the show and then to see the amazing filming locations in Dubrovnik.

The island also had TONS and TONS of peacocks! They were everywhere! Not afraid of people one bit and so beautiful.

We had a little map of the island that showed some notable spots to check out, and there was this cool rock arch formation with a view out onto the water, so we ventured along the path to go find it. There were signs and everything so we knew we were headed in the right direction, but as we got to the water we were getting more and more confused and could not find the dang thing. We were walking along some rocks trying to see where it was, when I looked down to see several people taking pictures of something in my direction. And wouldn't you know it, we were standing on top of the freaking thing! HA!! We were just happy to find it as we did have a deadline to catch the ferry back to the mainland. Walking around the island was quite fun, many cool photo ops with the beautiful water and sites.

When we got back to Old Town Dubrovnik, we first waited in line (a rather long line) for some gelato at Peppino's, a shop that boasted they were the best gelato in Dubrovnik. I gotta say, it was pretty good. Well worth the wait in the line. Stuart and Faisel from our group ended up finding us after we got off the ferry, so they waited with us and enjoyed the gelato as well.

We then took some time exploring Old Town from WITHIN the walls. Also seeing some more Game of Thrones filming sites (including the famous "shame" stairs, if you've seen the show, then you know what I am talking about). Exploring places like this is truly like stepping into another century. So much fun to experience. Then we ended the day by taking the cable car up the mountain to enjoy the sunset.

This was absolutely a highlight of our day. Stuart and Faisel had already taken the car up, so were lucky enough to secure a great table with a view of Dubrovnik and saved us some seats. We had another amazing dinner and enjoyed drinks while watching the sunset from the moutnain over beautiful Old Town Dubrovnik. This is truly the stuff out of movies. We were up there literally saying like how we could not believe we were even there seeing what we were seeing. So beautiful.

Once we finished eating, the four of us took the cable car back down, but weren't quite ready to call it a night, so we found an open Irish pub and had a few drinks while listening to live music. We could already tell we would have a great time with our group, especially these two guys. And was a super cool way to end our first "official" night of our tour.

So, a very action packed day. A walk around Old Town, a walk within Old Town, a ferry ride to an and from an island, not to mention exploring said island, a trip up a mountain, a sunset over the city, and a night of live music and drinks. Phew! 23,000 steps that day and it was just day one!

The next day we headed off to Split, another coastal town in Croatia. That and our day at Krka National Park will be in my next entry. Until then, enjoy the pics from the photo album: "A Full Day in Dubrovnik."