Aside from the fact it was one of the few places I'd actually heard of in Croatia, it was never on my list of places to go... As has been the case with most of the places I've been. Again, I turned up not really knowing what to expect or do. Although the bus journey there was long and tedious and hot and smelly and long and tedious, the coastline had been totally amazing and I was looking forward to seeing what "the pearl of the Adriatic" had to offer.
Another really cool quirky little hostel which was about 30 metres from the beach was waiting. After dumping all the gear in the room : walk time. It soon became evident that the beautiful old town was set behind some massive walls with only a number of entrances. This meant that several billion Japanese tourists all funnelled together through a narrow passage and seemed to find the experience an enjoyable one, stopping every few metres to get a photo of themselves in their natural habitat. My experience was slightly less enjoyable. No matter. I was still with a few people from Split so we battled our way through and found a little restaurant. All good!
The next day we discovered that a lot of scenes from Game of Thrones had been filmed here so we booked onto a walking tour that took in various locations. It was really crazy to see the places for real, and makes you appreciate just how much CGI is used...! The tour guide lady person thing was a costume designer for the show and gave lots of insight into 'behind the scenes'. Apparently each episode cost $6m to make and each scene was shot at least 30 times. If, during a scene someone sits down for instance, their dress would need to be ironed before redoing the scene. So a 40 second scene can take about 18 hours to shoot : that's before all the CGI and effects are added. Crazy crazy stuff. A lot of the extras are Croatian nationals who would work for 18 hours a day and get about €20 for their trouble. Hollywood : good job!
I asked her a bit about the history as we were walking around... Dubrovnik was a principality of its own for a very long time. The walls and fortress were all built during the 13/14/15/16 centuries and it was never actually attacked. Kind of testimony to the way it was built... That was, until Napoleon did his thing and took it over. It was then totally flattened during the Yugoslavian Conflicts. We were up in the fortress looking over the old town as she was describing how the bombing decimated the old town in 1991. It then struck me that she was old enough to have been maybe 10 when that would've happened. I chose not to delve too deeply into her personal experiences but I did take a moment to realise that I was looking at a city that looked hundreds or thousands of years old but was actually about 25. She was also of the mindset that the Balkan States will conspire to have a war every 50 years or so, so it remains to be seen how long the Dubrovnik I saw will be there. Powerful. I spent the evening sat on the beach contemplating a lot of what I was experiencing - had I seen this place on the news years and years ago? Strange feelings.
The next day we had the 'driving' part of the Game of Thrones tour where we got out of the city by about 20km and saw some pretty spectacular sights. The mountain up the back of the city offered an incredible view over the Adriatic and you could just about make out Italy, which was cool. There was also a botanical gardens which was started by a merchant at some point (totally forgotten the date) where he encouraged anyone visiting to bring a variety of seeds from their native countries. We didn't have long there, unfortunately but it's quite surreal to see mad Caribbean plants and flowers next to old English oak trees.
So that's about that. Quite a quick one really. I'm heading back north now but kind of wishing I wasn't. My friend has just got to Montenegro and his pictures are stunning. :-(.