I spent the last week in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and will write a couple of essays over various things, but this is the travel and advice essay. My 10 thoughts:
1. Maybe it was cheap in Dubrovnik back in the 1980s or maybe the five years after the war.....but there's nothing really 'cheap' over the 'walled-city' today. Part of this is related to the cruise-ships docking there (they actually limited it to around four per day now) and the Game of Thrones folks.
2. Russians. There's simply a lot of Russians that mingle in the crowds. I would take a guess on any summer day, there has to be at least 2,000 Russians in the town.
3. Over-tourism problem? Well....yeah. Once you enter the boundary of the old city.....it's a mess from 9 AM to around 10 PM at night. Maybe it's less in October.....but it's madness in June, July and August.
4. Crime and homelessness? Mostly non-existent. One could actively see the cops on patrol. In the tourist season, there are tons of jobs.....of which I'd guess the unemployment rate in the region is less than 2-percent.
5. Just about every Croat I encountered in town....spoke English. I would suggest that they are exceptionally friendly, and helpful.
6. The heat? A typical summer day will run in the 90 to 95 degree level. With humidity added in, you will sweat through two to three t-shirts per-day. Oddly, if you travel inland 50 miles, it's not that hot.
7. Slut-level. I stayed at one of the top five hotels in Dubrovnik (5-star status). Morning breakfast would come each day, and in a normal hotel....there's attire rules. Well, at this place....with 350 rooms.....there was no attire rule for breakfast. So you had an awful lot of skin on display at 9 AM. I wouldn't mind if this were mostly all 18-to-30 year old women. But when you got some 50-year old gal displaying 92-percent of her body, and there's forty extra pounds somewhere in the mix....it's a bit much for morning breakfast. Oddly enough, this is a hotel that is frequented by Muslim guys from Iran, Kuwait, etc......with their traditional wives.
8. Game of Thrones. It's safe to say that most Americans who tour Dubrovnik.....are there to see scenes from the show. So you will be sitting at a cafe, and four young ladies are across from you and in deep conversation about such-and-such character, and this scene from this square. It's pretty weird that people are consumed this much by a tv series.
9. Hilly. Well, virtually every single inch of Dubrovnik is built on hills and you find yourself climbing up and down. So just walking one single block, you might encounter 100 stone steps up, and then walk another hundred down.
10. The max you should spend in Dubrovnik? You can see the 'old-city' in eight hours flat. The tours in the local area are mostly worthless. And if you were there for sun and beach activity.....you could do it far cheaper 50 miles northwest of Dubrovnik. Locals will even tell you that better beaches exist, and cheaper rates can readily be found in NW Croatia.
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