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Thursday was our last day in Dubrovnik, our last day in Croatia, & really our last proper day of holiday together :( But despite the sad thought of Nigel going home hanging over both our heads we still had a wonderful day. We were up pretty early in the morning to try & beat the crowds of cruise ship tourists onto the old town wall. The cruise ships dock in Dubrovnik every day around 9:00AM & hundred of leather sandal clad tourists flood into town, making the walk around the wall more like a shuffle. Plus it gets really hot as soon as the sun comes up so the best plan of attack is to do any serious walking around before 10:00AM or after 4:00PM.
So we climbed the long, LONG flight of stairs up to the wall that runs all the way around the "old town" of Dubrovnik, from which you can look down over the whole city & across to the ocean on the other side. You have to pay AU$14 per person to climb the wall, which seems like a bit of a rip off to me…I mean, I know they need to maintain the wall, but how much damage can each person possibly do?? Still, it's one of those "must do" experiences in Dubrovnik & the view is pretty spectacular. Whoever sells terracotta roof tiles in the town is making a whole lotta money because the ONLY thing that you can see when you look out across the rooftops. It's a beautiful contrast from the strong blue colour of the ocean.
Already panting & sweating by 10:00AM after our walk we boarded a little boat going over to Lokrum island, which is about 15 minutes away from Dubrovnik. Nobody lives on the island nowadays but it was once the site of an old monastery (which is still there today & has been converted into a restaurant) & is now a popular place for people to come & swim on the "beaches" during the day. I say "beaches" because I'm really not sure that Australians would classify rocky mini-cliff with ladders down the sides to get out of the water as beaches…hmm…but it's a great place to go & relax & get away from some of the hustle of the town. We also found a lovely little lake in the centre of the island, which you can also swim in, where we spent an hour or so lazing about.
We returned to Dubrovnik around lunchtime & roamed the streets looking for a new lunch venue. I promised Nigel we would eat meat today so we needed to venture away from our faithful vegetarian haunt. It's a little intense because pretty much all the restaurants have someone standing out on the street trying to grab passers by & bring them inside or thrusting menus in their face. That makes it kinda difficult to actually check out a menu without being harassed the whole time! I'm suspicious of anywhere that has to harass customers into eating there so I always go by the rule that if I can read a whole menu without someone coming up to me, while the waiters are busily serving a restaurant fairly full of people, then the restaurant must be worth going to for the right reasons. I think we made a pretty good choice :)
In the afternoon we made a quick stop off at the hostel to skype Lija (my brother's girlfriend) for her 21st birthday, then we retreated back to the beach near the old town. We hired ourselves a cute little bungalow thing, which is kinda like a four-poster bed on the beach. It's got curtains that you can pull across the top & sides so you can shade yourself no matter where the sun is coming from, & it was in this way that I, Olivia the albino, was able to spend an entire afternoon on the beach. We did swim, for all of about 5 minutes, but it was still pretty chilly & doesn't take long for your teeth to start chattering. So instead we retired to our bungalow to laze away the afternoon with cocktails in hand (all in honour of Lija's birthday of course! Hehe).
In the evening we went to the restaurant that's attached to the little beach area & looks out over the ocean for one of the best steaks I've ever had in my life & some damn good seafood risotto. It was a really delicious meal & a very special way to spend our last night on holiday together :) For desert we had the interestingly named "parafit"…now I'm not sure if they actually meant parfait (the spelling & grammar on the English menu was pretty funny) or whether parfait is some kind of desert I'm not familiar with, but what came out looked nothing like parfait as I know it! It was kinda like a hazelnut mousse cake thing with a dob of cream on top…whatever it was it was yummy! Ah the surprises you come across when you're travelling hehe
We stayed down on the beach until sunset then went back to the hostel to get packed up for our 4:00AM (yes, you read right!) departure the next morning…it was one of the best days I've had on my holiday so far :)
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