Dubrovnik Cathedral

Today, we had to change accommodations to be a bit closer to the actual old town of Dubrovnik and, therefore, closer to all the happenings of the city. It is getting seriously hot now in Europe, and as such, carrying our bags through the streets of Dubrovnik took all our energy. The city is littered with hundreds of steep and long sets of stairs that you have to traverse to get to most places. Our accommodation was at the top of one of the hills, but eventually, we did make it. We then had to rush to our kayaking tour so we could cool down in the water. We had booked a kayaking and snorkelling tour around the city to see it from the sea.

Eventually, we were off to the first snorkelling location. It was a little hidden beach within a Cove that you can only access via kayak. That being said, there were still plenty of people there in other tours. There wasn't much to see in the water, a part from a duck that was diving probably 10m underwater to hunt for fish in between rocks. He would be underwater for 30 seconds at a time. I would watch and see if he would catch anything. He did multiple times. Other than that, the fish weren't that spectacular, so Jack and I found a rock jump of maybe 7m and just jumped off that before it was time to go. To help out a father and daughter, Jack and I then swapped to the individual kayaks. This made the journey much harder, but we were much more capable than them to do it, so we obliged and swapped. We then circled around the island of Otok Lokrum, and the tour guide explained the history of Dubrovnik and the island itself. Apparently, the island is cursed, and he explained some of the stories of the people who owned the island and their mysterious deaths. In an ironic (or perhaps spooky) coincidence, the last owner of the island was Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austro-Hungary. In which his assassination in 1914 led to the first world war, and subsequent second world war. This, therefore, may be the most deadly curse ever to be placed. The story of the island is very interesting, and I was entrigued to go and have a look. However, we ran out of time in our journey. Once we made our way around the island (which took bout 2 hours of paddling), we headed back to the beach and thus finished our journey.

I wanted to tour the city walls of Dubrovnik, but it was quite expensive, so Jack decided against it. Luckily, our hotel host recommended the Dubrovnik pass, which was the same price as the walls but included many other attractions. The Canadians we had met in Hvar were also in Dubrovnik at the same time as us, and so one of them joined me for the journey. This was one of the highlights of my trip, we went in the afternoon so it wasn't as hot and the views of the old town were incredible. Walking all the way around was about 2km and had bars throughout it for pit stops and drinks. There were so many amazing viewing spots of the old town, the city of Dubrovnik, and the ocean and surrounding islands. It was the highlight of my time in Dubrovnik.

This was supposed to be one of my last nights with Jack before he went to Spain, so we decided we had to hit the town. He was still quite sick, but I forced him into a solid night. We had looked around for a decent place to have some drinks, but after overpaying at a few different bars, we figured we may as well find the clubs. After wandering through some shit and empty clubs for a while, we texted our hotel host for any recommendations, and he told us to try out Revelin. We got free entry because it was before midnight, and the place was absolutely going off. It was one of the biggest and coolest nightclubs I'd ever been to. It was in like an old underground subway thing. It was strange but very cool and meant there was plenty of space to dance and move around. By pure coincidence, the Canadian girl I had spent part of the day with was also at the club (or I have a stalker). So we spent a bit more of the night with them before Jack went home for bed. He was still quite sick, and clubbing isn't really his scene, but I was glad he came out for a bit, at least. Not long after Jack, we all decided it was time to head home and try and get a reasonable night's sleep, but I'm glad we got to experience the Dubrovnik nightlife before we left.もっと詳しく