Croatian Coast

So we left the fantasy-like city of Kotor and headed to the real fake fantasy city of King's Landing AKA Dubrovnik.

It has long been a tourist city, but reached new highs as an overpriced destination over the last five Game of Thrones seasons. But regardless what a gorgeous city! Even if they wanted to charge us $15 USD each to walk on their precious city walls. We still were able to sneak up on the walls...at least until the fare inspector stopped us in our tracks. A city wall fare inspector? Yes.
 

JJ illegally on the wall

But there were plenty of free things to do in Dubrovnik like walk around the beautiful walled city's ground where they haven't yet charged to enter.

Or to climb Srd Mountain, the mountain with lots of goats, some ruins, and no vowels that rises behind the city.

Or my favorite free thing: to find one of those doors that leads out of the city wall and out onto the sea. And to just sit for a while.

Two days was all we needed for Dubrovnik. We didn't really want to be squeezed for any more than that. So we caught a morning bus that took us further up the coast to the Croatia's main coastal city of Split.

Surprisingly (considering how much we had heard about Split) there wasn't a whole lot to do in there. It's another beautiful city, but it's best attraction is an ancient Roman Palace that has largely been converted into a shopping mall.

So we mostly just wandered around town. We had a lovely trek up Marjan Hill that overlooks the city.

And walked around the city center.

And on our last day we went wandering out to try and find out what that hell that tall skinny structure out towards the sea was.

It turned out to be a lighthouse - a very odd modern/1950s looking lighthouse. And at it's base was a very nice memorial and view of the Adriatic Sea.

Down below the memorial we found my favorite spot in Split: a secluded concrete stairway that lead down to a man-made cove with a bench right at the water.

Now that I'm typing this out I realize that we did basically the same things in Split as we had in Dubrovnik: lots of walks around town, a hike up above it, and then some down time out by the water. I guess not a bad routine to fall into.

-
Dubrovnik photos
Split photos

Kotor: a real place

Kotor looks as much like a city out of a fantasy movie as it sounds. It sits on the corner of a bay that is inside another bay (okay technically it is the same bay [Kotor Bay], but look at this map and tell me that's not a double bay...or even a triple bay), and is such a dramatically beautiful place. We were blown away when we first saw it. The bay felt more like an alpine lake, with the dark mountains rising sharply up from the crazy blue water. These pictures disappoints but here they are anyways:

Oh and the light here was crazy - it all looked so fake. The brights were so bright, the white extra heavenly, and the shadows felt super deep...if that makes any sense. We didn't consume any drugs but if we did we would surely have been freaking out...I was already on the verge of freaking out as it was. Just look at this red strip of a sunset that we saw on the mountainside. And this is just what our crappy/dirty point-and-shoot camera was able to pick up.

Unfortunately our plans in Kotor were cut short by a day-and-a-half of rain, but we were able to get in a wonderful hike that took us up the Kotor fortifications on the mountain above Kotor and up even higher onto the mountain above the fortress.

A little background: Kotor is a walled city whose city wall stretches for 2.5 miles up the hill around and the city. The current wall dates back to the 15th century when it was built under Venetian rule, but the mountain has had fortifications for well over a thousand years before that. Nowadays the walls are a popular tourist attraction, and for good reason. The hike is great - incredible views, plus you get to see a lot of amazing ruins, including the castle at the top. Here's photographic evidence of our foray up the walls and the mountain above.

Cats rule Kotor and several tried to follow us on the hike up the mountain

Church of Our Lady of Remedy

it's sprouting

St. John Fortress

The city and bay of Kotor

And if you wanted to keep going after reaching the top of the wall, like we did, then you can climb through the wall and go up to the next mountain. I think this is the Montenegro mountain that gave the country its name, but am not positive about that.

JRam on the other side of the wall. Watch out for wildings JJ!

Just past the wall are the ruins of a small town called Spiljari.

The ruined church of Spiljari

Inside the church

Spiljari with the Kotor city wall behind

The path up the mountain

A very special place. Not surprised to learn that it was just named the #1 city to visit for 2016 by Lonely Planet. We thought the food is awful, but the scenery and the kind people more than made up for it.

--
More of our Kotor photos