All My Roads Lead to Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik, in Croatia, just keeps pulling me back in. For starters it’s beautiful; for another thing there are a few different ways to experience it.

In the past I’ve always stayed in or near the old town (Grad). The walled old city is so spectacularly beautiful that to wake up in the morning and look out the window at all that history is magical. I’ve stayed at the Hilton, which has a great location and lovely old building; at the Excelsior which has waterfront and great views of the sun setting over the old town; and in a private apartment inside the walls with a terrace where we could hear the conversation of people walking the walls.

Dubrovnik - follow your bliss

These private apartments are easy to find as many savvy residents leave town for the summer and earn some money from rentals while escaping the crowds.

Far from the maddening (ice cream) crowd

But there are downsides to being this close to the old town: crowds, heat and expense. Especially in summer. In July and August, fighting your way down the main street, Stradun, through meandering ice-cream licking tourists – many of them there for a day off cruise ships and not even sure what country they are in – while the sun bounces fiercely off the white marble that is everywhere (buildings, pavings) and waiters try to entice you to sit and drink the most expensive coffee in Croatia, can be a little tiring.

Radisson Blu

So this time I got out of town, to a village called Orasac and the new Radisson Blu hotel. Many Dubrovnik hotels are a bit away from the old town, a lot on the Lapad Peninsula. But I figure if you’re going to be out of town, head not for the suburbs of Dubrovnik but for one of the villages. You’re still close enough to make regular easy trips into the city, but far enough to be insulated from the madness.

The bonus is a beach on your doorstep, and in the heat and humidity of Croatian summer, regular dips in the Adriatic become your favourite thing.

Orasac

Orasac sits on a little bay and the hotel, Dubrovnik Sun Gardens, is beside the beach with the village perched on the hill behind. I walked up the many, many steps to the village one day to have coffee with people I met on the beach and trust me, this terrain is steep! Do not make the climb at midday as I did – madness.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to visit one of Orasac’s main attractions: an old-fashioned olive oil press still horse-driven! Apparently, they also make great homemade cheeses and prsut – the local ham. But, I’m a vegetarian anyway – luckily I eat fish though because ham and seafood are specialties of the region.

Eating at Gverovic Orsan

Staggering back down the hill, I fell into the sea. I’ve never actually stayed at this type of resort before – an upmarket mixture of hotel and residence apartments with a street of shops, restaurants, a spa, pools with bars, the beach – for a whole week I could happily have not left, not seen a car, not had to think. Just gazed at the view of the beautiful Elafati Islands from my balcony.

Perhaps hopped on a boat out to the island of Lopud and the beach of Sunj (pronounced Shoon) which I’m told is one of the most beautiful in Croatia, with shallow water out for a long way making it a total kids’ paradise and a couple of simple beach cafes making it a parental godsend.

But I did leave. One night a Croatian friend took me to Gverovic Orsan, a great little restaurant in the next town, Mali Zaton. Right on the water, they cook fish: fresh fish, only fish. No menu, just what was caught that day. A few tables line the water in front of what used to be the owner’s grandfather’s fishing hut. For the last two generations it’s been a restaurant. And so friendly; the owner sat with us for a while chatting. A group of men paddled in from their yacht and sat at the next table. A family brought their dog to sit at their feet while they ate.

Exploring Dubrovnik’s old town

The next day I caught the shuttle boat into Dubrovnik old town. Approaching by sea gave way to flights of fantasy about being a Venetian sailor in centuries gone by. These walls have stood and looked just like this literally for centuries! With red roofs peeping over the top, the old fort to one side (now used for theatre: Hamlet this summer I believe) and the bare hills rearing up behind for a majestic backdrop.

As well as my moment of fantasy time-travel, the advantage of arriving by boat was avoiding the summer traffic which can get pretty jammed in the narrow streets, and arriving on a dock right next to a gate in the walls – a few steps and I was in the thick of the meshing of history and modern life. These days the city has pretty well turned itself over to cafes, souvenir shops and boutiques, but there is still a supermarket and a great bookshop Algoritam with a good English-language section so I haunted these two in my hunt for things to take back to my beach retreat.

Opening of the Dubrovnik festival

The other visit I made to the old town was for the opening of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, which brings jazz, theatre, music to about 70 venues all around the city every year (in 2010 the festival runs July 10 – August 25). I was lucky enough to be with someone who had tickets to the actual opening ceremony and performance.

We squeezed into the area in front of the gorgeous St Blaise’s Church and listened to the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and German soprano Nadja Michael, watched a performance by the local folklore ensemble Lindjo, and then watched the raising of the Libertas festival flag while the choir of the Croatian National Theatre sang the local hymn of Dubrovnik. Totally fabulous – to hear such music in that historic place was amazing.

Then we all walked through the town – following closely the President of Croatia and his bodyguards – and up to the local museum where we stood on a roof terrace eating local seafood while being mesmerised by fireworks. The whole town had turned out to watch and there were people everywhere. Every corner you turned in the old city brought you to another square full of chair and tables, jazz bands, pop concerts, fashionistas in from their yachts to sip cocktails.

What to do when it rains? Go to the spa

The next morning I woke to hear booms outside my window and in my half sleep I thought I was still at the festival opening – but where was my cocktail dress? Luckily only a dream and a thunderstorm, mind you a pretty spectacular one, probably because the sound and fury bounces off the steep mountains that back the Croatian coast.

Anyway, the heavy grey clouds meant I couldn’t follow my usual day plan of breakfast, beach, swim, reading on a sun lounger, swim, lunch, lounging under an umbrella, swim, coffee – well, you get the idea. But what to do under a cloudy sky? Then the beacon lit up in the gloom: the spa.

Now my biggest decision was hot rocks massage or private bath. I went for the bath and felt like a total princess soaking in an aromatic oil and water filled tub in the middle of a white room with a window to a courtyard. The whole fantasy was only enhanced by the fact that the spa building is surrounded by a moat, with chairs and couches to lounge on, post-treatment, and stare at the sea and the islands. It’s a wonder they ever got me out of the place.

Realising that too much idle bliss can be too much of a good thing (can that be true, really?), one day I took myself off for a (long) day tour of Montenegro, south along the Adriatic. Exhausting but totally worthwhile. Montenegro is a country just finding itself after a century of upheaval. In the last hundred years, it’s gone from Kingdom – King Nikolas was exiled to France at the end of WWI – to part of communist Yugoslavia, to war-torn in the 1990s, to independent once more in 2006.

Now it feels a bit like a teenager – a little rebellious and wanting attention. With all that beauty, it’s going to get attention. Mountains, fjord, history, beaches – it’s got a lot to offer and tourists are discovering this in the thousands. Especially the well-heeled Russians. Budva, the main tourist resort town, felt a little like the St Tropez of the east. I was glad I went but I was mighty happy to get to my own little peaceful paradise on the other side of the border.

Back in Orasac, I fell into the sea, floating on the extra salt that makes the Adriatic so relaxing. I thought about my flight home. I looked at the islands some more. Thought about home. Half an hour later I had changed my flight to two days later. Really! That’s how addictive this place is. And surely life is about following your bliss, right?

-Philippa Burne

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