A Long Day to Dubrovnik

 note: I won't have the time or the ambition to write this much most days on this tripon  

May 26, 2025

 

It's a long, long way to anywhere from the west coast of Canada. 

We are three residents of Pender Island, British Columbia, headed for a bike and boat trip with Sail Croatia. How did we end up here? Carol has a friend who organized a group booking. I met Carol in a walking group I joined last October, and invited myself along. Bettyanne heard about it and also joined. Both Bettyanne and I had been dreaming of Croatia for years, and it landed in our laps!

Carol and I started our day with SeaAir, on a 6-seater twin Otter that flies directly from Pender Island to YVR. It's the way to go! 20 minute flight, longer if you have to let someone off on Saturna Island, which we did. Then a quick shuttle to the main terminal. You could take the ferry, then the bus, then the skytrain. It's not hard to do, but it takes several hours, and usually means an overnight in Vancouver. 

Carol's maiden float plane flight. She's not at all nervous!

 Bettyanne was not booked on the same flight as Carol and I, and had time to do the slow route. 

 

The slow boat to Tsawwassen

We all met up at the atrium by Gate 67 in YVR, a peaceful place to hang out for a few hours.

 

Nothing to say about the flight, except that I'm pretty sure legroom has shrunk since 2023. I was super prepared for this flight, with noise-cancelling bluetooth earbuds so I could actually hear the movie, but they refused to pair with the device that plugs into the aircraft's sound system. Grrr. Must look that up so I can make it work. I watched all 215 minutes of the Brutalist, essentially without dialogue. Harumph. I did manage to catch a few naps, though, thanks to not being able to binge on movies.

Frankfurt Airport!! Jeeeezzzz! Landing in the B section, the departure boards only showed departures from B section. No use whatsoever for anyone connecting to a different section of the airport, which would be pretty much everyone. We walked in what seemed to be the only direction to walk and after some escalators up and escalators down, eventually found a board that showed our flight, departing from section A. After that the signs for connections ceased to exist. We asked someone, who told us we need to go to the exit. Okay. Up some escalators, down some escalators, left, right, past some security gates, on and on, until we finally got to customs. Asked again if we're where we should be. Yes, we're in the right place. The customs guy needed to see my return ticket home. Because Canadians are always trying to sneak into Germany to claim refugee status, right? I fumbled around for a while and found it. Carol was after me, and when he realized he'd also have to wait for her to fumble around to find her ticket home, he flagged her through. Shortly after customs we found our gate, went through security. Every country is different when it comes to security requirements. "Put everything in the box," the guy said, meaning the bin. "Do you want my laptop out?" "No!" "Liquids?" "No, just put everything in the box." So, after being scrutinized and determined not to be a wannabe illegal immigrant, no one cared what I was bringing through. Hmm.

Flying down the coast of Croatia was magnificent. We arrived to a pleasantly warm, breezy afternoon, hopped a shuttle that dropped us at the Ploče Gate, the opposite end of Old Dubrovnik from the Pile Gate where our separate abodes were located. We discovered immediately that Old Dubrovnik is tiny! Five minutes, maybe 10 if you're pokey, to get from one end to the other down the main drag, known as the Stradum, a wide pedestrian boulevard paved with pale stone made shiny by thousands of people walking on it for hundreds of years. Blinding! I had to walk in the shade.

First view of Old Dubrovnik from the shuttle bus.

The Stradum, the main street in the pedestrian-only old city. It's not wet, just worn to shininess!

 

 

Carol and I found our respective streets ("streets") and walked up to our respective places, a couple of blocks from each other.

Carol's street. Zoom in to see the start of the stairs, which curve up, way up, to where she's staying.

I had chosen a room in what was once a Franciscan monastery. The booking site warned that there are approximately 30 steps to the front gate of the property and around 50 steps within the complex. I have walked the 60 steps up to Ezra & Katarina's apartment in Berlin many times, so I knew what I was getting into. Except that those 50 steps within the complex were actually 82. The total is equivalent to a 6 storey building, and I was laden with some 12 kg of luggage. And I'd been up and travelling for close to 20 hours by the time I arrived. It was hard. I thought, gee, maybe this is it! I'll die in this beautiful place! I didn't. And the place is worth a near-death experience.

 

Roof-top room that sits adjacent to the inside of the old wall.

 

The view out the window -- the city wall!

 

Monastery garden -- this part mostly potatoes and fruit trees. Those dormer windows are of rooms across the hall from mine.

 

 

More monastery garden, on a lower level, mostly tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini.

 

After settling in (changing out of sweaty clothes), Carol and I met up to explore the city. What a place! I don't know what it is about medieval towns -- the narrow lanes, the stone steps worn down with centuries of traffic, the sense that history happened here, lives have been lived here for millenia --  that sends me into paroxysms of ecstasy, but oh man, I love them! Yes, there are a gazillion tourists, but step away from the main thoroughfares with their rows of cafés and tchotchke shops, and we find ordinary people living their lives, children kicking balls into nets, laundry hanging over the lane, as has been the case forever.

Dual-purpose space: playground with laundry

We climbed the Jesuit Steps to a gravel plaza that appeared to have once been paved with stone like the rest of the squares in town. Looking at a map later, we realized this spot had suffered a direct hit during the Siege of Dubrovnik in the Croatian War of Independence (more commonly referred to as the Serbo-Croatian war) in 1991-1992. Looking down from this height, it's apparent which buildings' roofs have been replaced, being a brighter orange than the older, faded terracotta tiles. There are few of the older roofs left, as most of the town was struck by missiles and mortar fire. The recovery has been remarkable, but you can find signs of the conflict if you look for them.

 

Carol and Anne about to climb the Jesuit Steps. (Nothing compared to the Franciscan steps!)

Realizing we were close to the seaward wall of the town, we looked for and found the hole that leads to the Buza Bar, a must-go place perched on the cliff outside the wall. I got sneered at when I asked for a non-alcoholic beer, so I joined Carol for an Aperol Spritz, a local specialty. 

 

 

Are we happy? Yes! Because we snagged a prime spot...

...with this view!

 

Entertainment was a couple of guys with a death wish

Next up was figuring out how to meet up with Bettyanne, whose flight was expected to land around 7pm. I'd used WhatsApp to message her about how to meet us, but she wasn't responding. We decided to eat before meeting her, because we were running out of steam. We'd been up for how many hours by that time? More than 24, for sure, with a few catnaps thrown in. It was a good decision, because finally we heard from her with a couple of pieces of bad news: 1, her eSim card wasn't working, and 2, she'd missed her flight. What?? 

We were both feeling sick in our stomachs at that, and it wasn't the squid-ink risotto, which was quite good even if it made us look like we'd been eating that licorice ice cream my mother would never let me choose. No, we were sick with disappointment on Bettyanne's behalf. But she appears to be eternally optimistic, said she was looking forward to her night in a luxurious bed in a nice airport hotel in Frankfurt.  

Squid-ink risotto. Let's just say it was interesting.

We packed it in after dinner. What a great day, like a week packed into a day. When I prepare for travel, the anticipation is always accompanied by a pit of anxiety, and while I'm midair, I can wonder if travel is really worth it. A day like today answers that question with a resounding YES!

Update coming tomorrow about Bettyanne's flight trouble. Spoiler: she made it, a day late, but happy nevertheless.