Japan to Australia via Eastern Europe and stuff - Part 25 - Day 21 - Dubrovnik (I see old people)...

Another day – another non-stop around the clock VT shooting coverage on CNN.

Breakfast at the Argosy Hotel was a bit of an odd affair. Although the view from the hotel restaurant was fantastic – ocean views ahoy – the food was a bit of a strange eastern European mix of bread, cheese and meats, cold scrambled eggs and greasy bacon with extra oil, and some breakfast cereals (what is it with Eastern Europe and chocolate flavoured muesli?!) and fruit. Plus instead of the usual “help yourself to coffee deal” at hotels – the Argosy Hotel had some system whereby the waiting staff would bring you over a whole 3L jug of coffee. Of course – this usually deteriorated into some psychic mind games – trying to convince the waitresses to bring you over a jug using the power of your mind and dirty looks – but always ended up with you just grabbing the jug off them instead. The former Yugoslavia is definitely the land that “Toast” forgot.

Another thing at breakfast was the insane amounts of old people staying at this hotel. The average age of guests here must be about 85 years old. We were warned about this in a trip advisor review. We see old people…

Of note – was the WMD Threat Assessment course being held at the hotel… We had a little look at their itinerary – it was chemical attacks today, and biological attacks tomorrow…

Although the Argosy Hotel is a 3 star – the rooms definitely feel up to the four star standard of Australia. Big, clean and comfortable with a flashy looking bathroom. You normally expect the lobby and front entrance to be the best looking part of the hotel – but in a bit of a twist – the Argosy’s lobby is a whole lot more early 80s grungier than the rooms.

Ant and I head out to the nearby beach – “Copacabana” Beach. The water in the sea is just so spectacularly blue and clear. You’d probably find it pretty hard going trying to find any sort of pollution in it. Although the water here at Copacabana beach is nicer and cleaner than its more famous name sake – the beach is a whole lot rockier and generally crappier than the Brazilian version… Plus the Croatian version had a crappy communistic waterslide to boot. Next to Copacabana was a strange rock with “FKK” marked on it. These strange beasts is what the locals call nudist beaches… although we didn’t really see anyone there.

We headed by foot through the “Auto Kamp Solituda”. Despite it sounding like a Nazi death camp – it was just a Croatian version of a caravan park – complete with no guests.

After about 15 mins or so – we arrive at the Lapad Bay area again (where nothing was open the previous night). This place is very Kodak-moment friendly – the glorious water, lots of yachts and nice semi-old buildings and mansions and such. The weather here is much warmer than elsewhere on our trip – t-shirts and jeans material.

Because Ant was interested in organising a ferry trip to a nearby island – we checked out the “empty as all hell” ferry area. I think we must have missed a boat – and everything was completely shut.

Right next door to the ferry terminal was a large supermarket called Konzum (gotta love that name!). It felt like a Croatian version of Walmart or something (maybe just a tad smaller). We picked up some supplies for lunch – some big nice bread roll thingys – Ant got some salami and some (plastic) cheese and I got some bananas as I luv banana sandwiches…

We stumble across a local tourist info centre where we discover that the ferry that we want leaves at 10am from the ferry terminal – so we both agree that we will do this in a couple of days time instead of the whole Montenegro thing.

We wander into the Old town area again – Dubrovnik isn’t really the biggest place on the planet – it just sort of looks big and spread out when you look at maps. It had only taken us about 25 or so minutes to walk from Lapad to the Old Town – and it was quite enjoyable getting out of the bus and seeing Dubrovnik by foot. The place was starting to warm to me (a little more than the tourist overload/no restaurants experience that was yesterday). Although seeing Dubrovnik by foot is a whole lot more dangerous than the relative safety of the bus. Croat drivers are fairly manic (another flashback to China again) – they drive all over the road and will pull off the road and just park randomly somewhere – even if it almost bowls over 20 pedestrians. They love to wave and toot at passing friends in cars – instead of keeping their eyes on the road. At least LP backs up my claims by mentioning that the locals “lack discipline” whilst driving.

When we reach the Old Town – we find a secluded, somewhat urine smelling park to have lunch at. Despite the urine – it was quite peaceful and relaxing to be able to have a slow lunch whilst looking out at the sea and the water coming in on the Fort.

After lunch – we paid the 50KN entrance fee to do the 2km city wall loop ($12AUD or thereabouts). According to LP – these walls are Dubrovnik’s biggest claim to fame. It encloses the whole city and you get great views of not only the old town, but the sea and the rest of Dubrovnik (well – the bits near the old town). There were a couple of Croatian “Biggest Losers” doing the 2km walk around – and they looked a little hot and bothered to put it mildly. Ant showed me how to spot what the “old old” bits of the city were – anything with darkish coloured roof tiles was old – while the rest was new (which was quite a bit). You could also spot the huge cruise ships anchored off shore – with little boats bringing the tourists from the ship to the shore. This explains why the city is busy during the day and dead at night… Most of the tourists are on cruise ships and they don’t stay in the city. Anyhow - the city wall is well recommended – and pretty much a must do whilst here.

We checked out the Dominican Monastery – which confirmed our theory that there has been about 50% inflation here since LP was written. Our version of LP is dated Feb 2005 – and the Monastery costs 10KN in LP – whereas it costed as 20KN. The City wall was 30KN in LP – and now it is about 50KN.

Although it was pretty – the Monastery sure as hell doesn’t beat the Monastery in Arequipa. I got Ant to take these “devil” shots of me at the cathedral alter doing poses (cultural sensitivity to the max) – not realising that my cohorts were being captured on CCTV. Luckily – in another room – we saw the store attendant who was “manning” the CCTV – but he seemed more interested in his sudoku or something. We had both agreed that it wasn’t really worth the money and the LP sort of went into overboard in giving it praise.

We get an ice cream from a shop down the Old Town main street USA bit – where the guy serving ice cream calls everyone “mate”. There was some Australian connection with the guy – I can’t remember what – but it was a little disturbing.

We catch the 1A bus to go back to Konzum to get some more supplies. People here just don’t queue for buses… It is a bit of a mad rush to get on – and every man, dog and child tries to cut you off. But I’m well suited to pushing in front of others – I got heaps of practice in China.

We get some supplies at Konzum – then catch a 1A back to the “bus interchange” of Dubrovnik – where we had to wait a world record of 15 mins for the next bus to our hotel (which was totally packed).

Back at the hotel – we both decide (somewhat naively) to go swimming at the hotel pool – only to realise that it was overrun by these elderly Irish tourists and that the pool was not heated and it was cold… artic cold.

Ant sunbakes – while (in an attempt to keep my pasty white complexion intact) – I chill out at the hotel. There were some stewpid tourists ads for Croatia that felt a little geographically impaired… “Croatia – the way the Mediterranean once was…” Hello… we are at the Adriatic sea peoples… Anyhow – wanky touristy ads on CNN is our pet hate on this holiday. They all feel like they are made by the stewpid advertising company that makes those “Malaysia Truly Asia” ads… or “Incredible India” or “Greece – explore your senses”… And what is the deal with the “Greece” ads plastered all over Dubrovnik – why go to Greece when you are already at Dubrovnik (which appears to be pretty interchangeable for Greece apart from the food)…?!

For dinner – we check out the cheap Pizza restaurant nearby our hotel. There is this sort of freaky looking shopping “mall” that is right next to our hotel. It sort of has the same architecture (probably built at the same time) but it all looks like privately run businesses which aren’t affiliated with the hotel (because a hotel restaurant wouldn’t charge pizzas this cheap). When we arrive and find a table – the somewhat manic waiter is screaming at another customer “We are BETTER than PIZZA HUT!!!”… Well – I guess it is more louder than Pizza Hut?!

We order two pizzas, a couple of 500ml beers (no we aren’t complete alco’s – it’s just the serving size here in Eastern Europe) and some ice cream for 110KN. We get chatting with the manic waiter guy (as you do) and it turns out he used to be a steward on a coal ship from Newcastle, Australia… He also mentioned that he had been to South America and really like Chile (and amazingly Valparaiso!!!). The conversation sort of got a bit weird when he started to recommend that we go to the “Crazy Horse” in Singapore. Are “Crazy Horses” like the McDonald’s of strip clubs – they are everywhere?!!