Dubrovnik, Day 1
Before we left the beautiful city of Split we drove up to Klis Fortress, which is just about a 20 minute drive out of the city. The beginnings of this stronghold are from the third century, and it was the castle of the Croatian kings for a long time before becoming a fortress during battles with the Ottoman. Most recently, this was the filming site of Meereen in Game of Thrones. I took a ton of pictures, and it is hard to narrow them down! This first group of pictures are some of the views from the fortress and around the outside walkways while we explored.
We got to the fortress early, so for the first hour we were practically the only ones there. The kids enjoyed climbing on everything, and as long as they didn’t get too high up we let them run around and explore. There were a lot of arrow slits in the walls, and the kids played soldiers and armies. Zoey’s weapon of choice is the bow and arrow, Ronin’s is the sword, and Willow’s is the magical unicorn horn.
Within the fortress was a cavern that had some of the dragon statues in it along with some informational plaques explaining the site as a GoT filming location. There was a lot of construction going on so there was scaffolding all over. I figured since it is off season they have to get all the refurbishing done now. The small chapel was pretty bare, and Ronin couldn’t understand why it was so ugly and not like the other pretty churches we had seen. As we were exploring we ducked through a small alcove and found a tavern! This was another GoT location and the long tables and bar in the corner were still there. We spent several minutes here with the kids playing restaurant. Everyone ordered lots of beer!
By now it was almost noon and time for us to head to Dubrovnik. After a three hour drive along the coast we made it to our next apartment, which was beautiful. This was probably our favorite place we stayed. There were two cats, a bird, turtles, and a fish in the beautiful front garden. The outside kitchen area wasn’t used, but I can imagine hanging out here in the summers when it gets dark later instead of at 5:30.
It was a little hike from the apartment down to the Old Town, which is a walled city. To get there we had to go under the highway, and the tunnel had graffiti church murals and a statue, which is different than anything I saw.
We walked down what felt like a billion steps to get to the Old Town, and the kids thought it was pretty cool to go over a real drawbridge.
Dubrovnik is the location of Kings Landing in GoT. Just walking around this place is magical. Since we only had a little time left in the afternoon we walked along the walls, which takes about two hours. There really is no way to limit the amount of photos taken from the walls, but I tried as much as possible. The views are breathtaking, particularly when looking out at the sea.
The view of the city was also really great from the walls. Looking out over the rooftops is one of the things I like best about walking along these walled towns. We also got a really great picture of all of us, which is pretty rare.
Walking along the walls was really fun. There were stretches where the kids could run, several cannons to climb on, and cool towers. You could also see the GoT references everywhere.
Zoey has gotten a little self-conscious of handstand pictures, but she wanted to do a picture of a big split kick.
This might be my favorite picture of the day. Looking out of a window in Minceta Tower to the sun setting over Fort Lovrijenac and the sea.
Once the sun went down all the lights in the city began to turn on. It was really pretty to see the different areas of the town in the dark, and I like this picture of Ronin jumping up so he could get into the picture. It was a long walk back up all the stairs to get to our apartment but the view of the town all lit up was pretty neat.
