Japan to Australia via Eastern Europe and stuff - Part 26 - Day 22 - Dubrovnik (I see more old people)...

I play a little “Sims 2” in bed after waking up where I finally intimidate some woman into admitting that she had murdered her 3 ex husbands and then made her husband leave… as you do.

I go a little easier on the coffee at breakfast – I have a cup and a half instead of the three I had yesterday. But getting the mug of coffee is very stand-offish (as usual). I try and get inventive and make “Banana with Honey Pancakes” – nutritional…

After doing a bit more of the “Super Happy Fun Laundry Time” action – I convince Ant to walk once more into town (just to get a bit of exercise).

We check out the restauranty bit of Lapad during the day (we were there a couple of nights ago trying to find somewhere to eat). There were a few touts offering tours along the street – but I had refined my anti-tout technique which seemed to be rather effective – just say “No thanks!” and they tend to avoid you.

The beach at Lapad is another “European” beach affair – with a total lack of sand. I pose for a photo of me sunbaking on the rocks as you do… There is yet another communist super happy fun slide on the beach which was rusting away. Why not at the same time as getting rid of all the Stalin statues – just get rid of the communist super happy fun slides on beaches as well?

We continue to walk along unexplored bits of Lapad – making our way into town. We walked past a rental video shop that is cruising for a suing by George Lucas – it was called “Star Wars II Video Shop”.

Again – Ant and I are taking our lives into our own hands whilst walking around in Dubrovnik – most of the drivers seem to aim at pedestrians when parking their cars.

We arrive at the old town about 11ish and instead of doing something touristy – we check out a bookshop which had a pretty big range of Engrish books at pretty reasonable prices (for a non-Engrish country). I end up buying a Chuck Palahniuk book and Ant gets a book about the former Yugoslavia. The bookshop also had a pretty big range of LPs and travel books – including the latest version of LP’s Eastern Europe. We did the whole comparing prices with the current version – and it feels like most places the price has gone up by 50% (and I thought Australian inflation was bad!). The new version of LP also had a better map of Dubrovnik (the current edition has a really bad lack of street names – which makes it really hard to use). Plus LP had taken some Buffet Restaurant (that Ant and I tried to go to a couple of days ago but it was shut) out of LP. LP’s current assessment of the food was “slightly better” than the previous edition – but they say that eating in Dubrovnik is mostly pizza, pizza, pasta and pizza.

If I hadn’t mentioned this already - Dubrovnik is in the province of “Dalmatia” – home of the Dalmatian. Most tourists shops seem to be selling crap with Disney’s 101 Dalmatians on it (probably illegally). Also – you can stock up on all of your soccer riot gear with a complete range of Croatian-wear (hats, flags, football tops, etc). Just perfect for your next Sydney FC vs Newcastle match or something.

After successfully killing 1 hour at the bookshop – we head over to the Lokrum Ferry at the other side of Old Town. Luckily enough – we get on a ferry straight away (they only come every hour). It was starting to get a little creepy – I had seen this bearded “Beret” man three times now – once during our first day to Old Town, second – during the city wall climb (yesterday) and today – he was on our boat to Lokrum. Beret man strikes again… my new nemesis for the trip (replacing the beige jacket man from the salt mines – wait – that guy is a nemesis for life. There was also that tout guy from the Dubrovnik bus station – god I hate him).

Anyway – Lokrum island is pretty much right next to Dubrovnik and the return trip only costs 40KN. After the 10 or so min trip – we reached the island – thinking that we would have to pay an entrance fee to get in… We rock up to a lady sitting at a desk (no shelter mind you) – and begin fiddling with our wallets when I notice that all ferry passengers are exempted from paying the entrance fee (it is already built into the ferry ticket or something).

Lokrum Island had that deserted post-apocalyptic feel to it. I was getting flashbacks to that recent Dawn of the Dead movie where (SPOILER) all the survivors make it to an island only to discover that it is full of more zombies.

Ant and I were trying to find a spot to eat our lunch – what better place than an FKK nudist beach! There was a big sign warning people not to take photos at the nudist beach (I got Ant to take a photo of me at the sign). A group of fellow travellers (including our stalker Beret man) sort of all hesitated – wondering if they should really go onto the FKK beach. I push on ahead (then everyone else slowly followed) only to realise that the FKK beach had the deserted zombie thing happening again (eg: no one there).

Again – their idea of an FKK beach was a bunch of huge rocks, rocks with more rocks and no sand (and no easy way to actually get into the water). Spartacus (the gay travel guide) said that the far end of this beach gets gay – but you couldn’t really tell because no one was here.

After lunch – we retraced our tracks back to where the ferry dropped us off – then took a path to this Monastery and Restaurant – which kept up the whole Resident Evil 4 motif of the island. I kept half expecting some guy with a chainsaw and a sack over his face to race out and decapitate us. There were a few more signs of life around the Monastery – just some workmen with chainsaws (thus the whole Resident Evil 4 thing).

There was a nearby (clapped out) Botanical Gardens which had specialised in Australian and American plants… which felt pretty weird. Apparently – during the war – this place was bombed by the Serbs (what an important military target – a botanical gardens!). There was a woman with a pram having a hard time in a very pram-unfriendly island.

We started to walk around the edge of the island – when Ant and I began discussing important world events and issues – like when are they going to release Hercules Returns on DVD?! During our whole walk – we must have passed at least 2 people. At least you could get some great Kodak moment shots of Dubrovnik from the island.

In the middle of the island – there was a big old fortress which we had both explored. You could even get better photos of Dubrovnik from here (if the trees weren’t in the way). Ant played this weird experiment with Pepsi Max and Ants (the small variety) – but it turned out that Ants don’t like Pepsi Max (probably that phenylalanine that they hate or something).

Keeping track of the time – we raced back from the fortress to the ferry terminal – and made it for the next trip back (no waiting around for an hour). It was quite funny waiting around for a boat because some couple who had got a private boat over to the island looked really pished off about paying the entrance fee to the island. They were giving all these pouting looks to the woman serving. Maybe they had gone broke hiring a private boat out to the island? Mr Beret was catching our boat. Also there was some Australian couple who was at the Monastery from yesterday… Dubrovnik can be a small small place.

After getting back to the old town – we try and find a Synagogue that was in LP – but after searching for 10 mins – we gave up (we had a bit of Synagogue overload back in Prague). Again – Beret man strikes again as he was eating a pizza near where we thought the synagogue would be…

Something my dad would visit for tax purposes is a visit to the third oldest pharmacy in Europe. But after checking it out – it must be the world’s emptiest pharmacy – completely devoid of customers or staff. I think it must make its money from the next door Pharmacy Museum – as they were charging something outrageous like $10AUD a pop… and stewpid tourists were doing it. So instead of that – Ant just took some pictures of me outside the pharmacy.

We head to the east side of old town (haven’t done this before) and we check out another alleged beach (with more rocks)… Beret man strikes again – this time he was sunbaking on the beach – and he was the only person to set foot into the water. There was also this really bad juggling dude – who looked like he needed heaps and heaps of practice before he could start doing the “Chainsaw/Machete” thing.

We walked back over to the “Old Town” bus interchange – wanting to catch a bus back home – but our 24 hour tickets had expired. We walk over to the ticket counter only to realise that the woman there decided to take some anonymous random break (even the locals were puzzled). We attempted to buy some tickets at a local newsstand – but they claimed “it’s only for LOCALS”… Neoyce!

We go to a nearby bakery to tide our hunger a bit – and then miraculously – the woman at the ticket counter reappears 15 mins later. We grab some more tickets and head back to the hotel where we rest for a little while. I rescue some guy locked up in someone’s basement where the family holding him were doing scientific experiments on him (this is the Sims 2 by the way).

For dinner – as we were feeling a bit sick of pizzas – I had spotted a non-pizza restaurant in Old Town that served (funnily enough) Bosnian cuisine called (funnily enough) the Taj Mahal Restaurant. Dinner was pretty nice – we had the speciality (the Taj Mahal) – and it was a veal/mushroom/cheese pastry thing with some really tasty potatoes with cheese and chives… I get the idea to open a chain of restaurants here at Dubrovnik – “Thank God it’s not Pizza!” – I’m sure I could make a lot of money…

Come to think of it – why stop at Dubrovnik – I could open up a chain of restaurants in Chile called “Thank God it’s not Completo!” - I’m onto something here peoples…

The big difference between here and Chile/Santiago is – at least Santiago had McDonalds (I haven’t seen one at all since we had left Budapest). I hate to say it – but McDonalds has more variety than the food here in Dubrovnik.