Carnival Horizon Review: Day 11 – Dubrovnikfeatured

We’ve been on four Europe cruises and more than 20 cruises to the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. Been a lot of places, seen a lot of things. I’ve never been to a port like Dubrovnik before.

When I woke up in the morning to Stephanie shaking me awake to look out the window, taking in a first sleepy glance of the white buildings capped with orange rooftops that the city is known for, clashing in the best possible way across the bright blue sky, I knew I was about to experience something special.

The meeting time for our tour was a little later, so we took some extra time in getting ready and had breakfast up at the Lido Marketplace instead of a quickie at Ocean Plaza. I swear on everything that is holy, no breakfast food served on a cruise ship is tastier than those Blue Iguana arepas. Have I mentioned it before? 100%. Will I continue to mention it? Absolutely.

We didn’t linger over our coffee, opting instead to head up to deck 15 to take in as many views of Dubrovnik as we could get. On the starboard side of the ship, we were treated to views of those beautiful white and orange buildings and some of the archipelago (there are more than 1000 islands off the coast of Croatia, including 13 that make up the Elaphiti Islands, a string of small archipelago islands off the coast of Dubrovnik). On the port side of the ship was the Franjo Tudman Bridge, a 1700-foot long cable bridge. Directly ahead was the unmistakable sight of the Old City, a medieval city fenced in by sky high stone walls dating back to the 11th century. The Old City is so beautiful, so significant to Croatia’s history, that it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Not a specific site within the Old City – the entire thing as a single entity is a UNESCO site. If you’re an avid TV watcher, you’ll know the Old City as the setting for many Game of Thrones episodes. I don’t do the whole Game of Thrones thing, but Stephanie does, and she was vibrating with excitement the entire time we were docked. Like, to the point where she walked around with a Funko Jon Snow figurine in her purse all day to take pictures with. My sister, y’all.

Each part of Dubrovnik was magnificent on it’s own – the bridge, the archipelago, the Old City, the mountains, the orange roofs, all of it. But the experience of taking all of it in, at once, from as high up on the ship as we could get, was other worldly. Srd mountain and Srdj Hill loom around the edges, creating almost like a dome-effect as they stretch above everything else, sloping gently up and down like the waves of the sea below. It’s larger than life, an all-consuming visual.

We couldn’t wait to get out and explore all of the country we could in our short day in port. We headed down to the Liquid Lounge to pick up our stickers and wait for our number to be called to disembark. There were a ton of options for touring in Dubrovnik. The ship offered a variety of tours that ranged from photography to sightseeing to tours focused squarely on touring the Game of Thrones filming sites. There were land tours, sea tours, tours that took you up to the highest vistas. And if tours weren’t your thing, you could purchase a ticket for the shuttle to the Old City ($13 round-trip) or you could walk – it was a gorgeous day for a nice walk. Stephanie booked us on the Above & Across Dubrovnik tour, a half day tour that included a ride up on the cable cars to the top of Srdj Hill, a walking tour of the Old City, a snack at a monastery and some free time.

When our tour number was called, we made our way down to deck zero to meet with our guide for the day, Divo, who walked us through our itinerary for the day as we began the short drive to the cable cars. Our group was one of three for this tour, and all of the three groups were going up on the cable cars to the top of the hill. The cable cars could only take ~30 people at a time and there were only two – one going up and one going down, so it took a bit of time to coordinate getting everyone into a car. Once we were loaded, the ride was quick – a minute or two, as we ascended to 415 meters above sea levels.

Once we were all at the top, Divo gave us the cliffs notes version of the cable car and the hill we were standing on. The cable cars were built in the late 1960s and on a day with perfect weather (like ours!), you could see out up to 37 miles. Because of the depth of vision up on the hill, Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned a fort in the early 1800s, which would become Fort Imperial, which went unused from the time Austria took possession of Dubrovnik in the mid-1810’s until 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence. The war left much of Dubrovnik in a state of disarray causing millions of dollars of damage. If you look closely enough, you can still find remnants of the destruction left by the war, but much of it has been rebuilt (like the White Cross).

After a 15-minute intro, Divo set us free for 50 minutes of free time. There’s a few different paths and views you can take in, as well as a restaurant and a gift shop. We spent most of our free time taking pictures and marveling at the view below us. I couldn’t believe how beautiful and peaceful it all was. It just seems impossible that something so perfect and so beautiful can just…exist…you know?

Our tour group met back up near the cable car and things started going off the rails a little bit. The cable cars are a public attraction, so anyone can buy tickets. Between the three tour groups from the ship, the private tour groups and the tourists visiting Dubrovnik who just happened to be going up to the top of the hill, we were herded around waiting for cable cars our group could board for nearly 45 minutes. And the experience of being in them was kind of terrible anyways because they crammed so many people in, and the only thing making that better was the fact that any pictures we could take out from the cable car, we already took from the top.

Once everyone on our tour had made it down from the top of the hill, Divo led us on a walk to the Old City, even though the tour description said we’d be picked up and driven to the Eastern Wall for the start of our tour. But it was a beautiful day and the walk took us downhill, so we weren’t complaining.

Once we made it in through the eastern gate, Divo directed us to a restaurant, not a monastery, where we were served a slice of a dessert that looked and tasted like flan and a glass of orange juice that I can only surmise slash hope was freshly squeezed from the oranges growing on the trees throughout the Old City.

After our snack, Divo led us on a walking tour through some of the Old City. Our tour took us through the bottom of the city (walking along the city walls required a separate fee), through the main street and down to the Clock Tower. I wish I could tell you more about what we saw and the significance it carries, but they didn’t include whispers on the tour and the Old City was packed and loud, which meant the soft-spoken Divo was washed out in the voices of louder guides, excited Game of Thrones fans discovering filming sites and the general hustle and bustle of a Sunday afternoon.

Making this worse was that Divo, bless him, was incredibly long-winded and by the time he finished his part of the tour, there was no time for free time, and we had three options: return to the ship on the tour bus with Divo, spend as much time as we wanted in the Old City and take a taxi back (at a cost of €20-ish, per Divo’s estimation) or take the shuttle to the cruise terminal back. That shuttle the ship was offering for $13/person was included for free for anyone on a tour that ended in the Old City, and given how little we felt we saw and our excitement to be in a new city that we’d never toured before, staying in the Old City for an extra hour or two was a no-brainer.

We wandered through the side streets, discovering markets, shops and so many charming café’s. We had gelato and did a little shopping. If I had to do it over again, I’d have skipped the tour and done the cable cars on our own, and then followed that up with a self-guided tour along the walls and some lunch at one of the sidewalk café’s. Hindsight is 20/20, and I’m so sure we’ll be back, now with a greater sense of what to do. As big as it seems, the Old City is actually relatively small – Divo told us that the ship was longer than the main street and while the ship is big, it’s not that big.

Croatia, while in the EU, has its own currency (for now…this should change in 2019 or 2020 when they adopt the Euro). Until then, while many shops accept both Euros and Croatian Kuna, some do not. Fortunately, just about everyone (except for the vendors at the street market) takes credit cards, and if you have a credit card without foreign transaction fees, there’s no need to add another currency into the mix.

We could have used another hour exploring the Old City, but we weren’t sure where or how to pick up the shuttle and given the traffic issues we faced in Florence and Rome, we wanted to get back early. The shuttle picked up at the entrance we had come in through, and there were so many signs and people holding directional signs that it was pretty hard to miss.

The ride back to the port took no longer than five minutes and the shuttle dropped us off right in front of the ship. We looked through some of the merch at the market, but I was already set with my postcard, guidebook and bag of Croatian candy that we gave up on shopping and headed back into the ship.

Lunch was winding down when we got back on board, so we quickly dropped our bags at the room and headed upstairs to the Lido Marketplace for lunch, where we feasted on comfort food and those delicious dessert cakes.

After lunch, we headed back to the room and promptly drew the curtains and passed out into a nap that would take us to departure time. Arriving into Dubrovnik was an entirely special experience, but leaving it? I don’t even have words. Thankfully, I do have pictures.

We had an early dinner reservation at Ji Ji, where Rinyami, the hostess, remembered us from the Vista and each course was better than the last despite the fact that we ordered all the items we always order. Ji Ji is often forgotten behind the glitzier Fahrenheit 555 or the Chef’s Table or even Cucina del Capitano (perhaps because it’s on so few of Carnival’s ships), but the food is so, so good and the way it’s presented – it’s basically art on a plate that tastes every bit as good as it looks.

 

After dinner, we had a handful of options to choose from, including a Headliner show from the winner of Britain’s Got Talent, but we opted for the Dive In Movies, where a showing of Wonder kicked off Drama Night and a picturesque sunset over the Croatian coast capped off a fantastic day in another beautiful city.

The temps outside were rapidly falling throughout the movie and by the time it ended, we were absolutely chilled. We stopped into the Marketplace for coffee and tea while we planned our day in Corfu. And then, even though it was still relatively early by ship standards, I was in bed by 10:30 PM, looking at pictures, writing my notes and planning for the day ahead.