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Game of Stones and Kane and Bellingham and …

Despite being roaringly drunk on Friday night, I did have the wherewithal to take my asthma medication and plug my phone in to charge. In fact, I’d had a half hour fight with my USB brick and universal plug and lightning cable because the phone resolutely refused to start charging. Shit. I was down to 20% so I thought, well, to preserve some for the morning I’ll turn it off. I also left it plugged in, and much to my surprise it was at 100% when I woke up. WTF.

Also much to my surprise was that I woke up in Dubrovnik, and had barely a hint of a hangover, having had a fantastic night’s sleep but woken up in pitch darkness (solid shutters are great) and from the middle of a vivid dream where I was having a beer in Wimbledon with my footy mates, and Mandy had just turned up on roller skates. Huh.

Anyway. We’d both slept very well and were feeling great, and ready for breakfast - to be served at 0930 on our little private terrace. Popped out a few minutes early and lo and behold, here comes a pot of tea and a cup of coffee and blimey a massive spread of all kinds of food. Wonderful

That’s breads and pastries and hummus and cold meats and cheeses (including cubed!!!) and fruits and orange juice and nom nom nom. Destroyed most of it, properly setting us up for a day in town. For the past few days the forecast had been for non-stop heavy rain, in fact at some points it said there’d be thunder and lightning all day, but as we finished breakfast it was just spitting.

Before we could even cross the drawbridge into the old town we were warned of falling branches by an excellent stick figure in peril, and then had our attention piqued by “hey, look at that cute stray cat!” - a cat which wanted nothing to do with us, and hid under the big christmas tree made of baubles.

Next we went to check out the bit of sea that we’d looked at last night. Pretty wild and choppy.

Down the bottom you can actually reach the water, through a small park and some closed, out of season stalls offering sea kayaking and other watery adventures. No thanks.

Finally managing to enter the old town, almost the first attraction was the old pharmacy - and I do mean old. It’s the world’s longest continually operating pharmacy, having been on this site since the 1300s IIRC. For no apparent reason we were given a discount on entry, and went for a wander around the courtyard.

There are semi-circular paintings all the way round, above the doors/windows.

On the other side of the courtyard is the main exhibition, and it is AMAZING. Utterly fascinating history of the pharmacy itself, full of potions and instruments and elixirs and texts from the 1500s or earlier explaining the composition of medicines and stuff. Photographs are forbidden, which is really sad but wholly understandable given the fragility and age of what’s on show. This next pic is the only freebie creative commons images that Adobe Spark Page has thrown my way when searching for “Dubrovnik pharmacy”. Bah.

It’s not just pharmacological history, but as this is also the site of a right old monastery, there’s loads of religious stuff too. Lots of paintings, but also reliquaries of some saintly arms and feet, a giant processionary crucifix, and something called a “monstrance”. Good word, that. And a brilliant first bit of culture to have visited.

Emerging back at the end of Stradun, Dubrovnik old town’s historic and famous main drag, it’s still barely raining, so we resolve to make the most of the lack of rain. We wander all the way to the other end, past the gorgeous alleyways which look even better in the light than the previous night, past the big church that tells the time with both analog hands and a strange dual-format digital thing - hours in roman numerals, 5 minute intervals in regular numbers. What? And past the statue of Marin Držic who’s culturally significant, we assume.

We’ll return to this alleyway later.

There are LOADS of disinterested stray cats. All looking healthy as anything.

Current time: XI:00

I took a pic of Helen taking a pic of Marin.

Also: PIGEONS.

Emerging by the old port, suddenly it’s extremely windy. There’s a grumpy old stray cat lying on a boat who wants nothing to do with us. And there’s a little pier, where some small children are fishing with a net but once they leave Helen decides to brave a walk to the end of it.

Skirting around the path outside the city wall to another pier, it’s very windy and the path is predominantly puddles. On the far pier there are a few other couples, and periodically the water crashes over it. One couple, fully cognisant of what they’re doing, walk up to the bit where the sea is most frequently making an incursion … and the woman gets utterly, totally drenched. Mercifully she finds it hilarious, because so I do, in a way I cannot hide.

We almost both get caught out in a similar fashion as we head back but just about miss it. Deciding this time to eschew yet another walk through the main drag, but rather explore some of the alleyways and stuff, we find ourselves heading through a maze of streets mixing residences, small closed restaurants, and holiday apartments. There are more stray cats, and a collection box asking for money to provide stuff for the cats into which I put 10kn. Also there’s what seems to be a real full size guillotine. Not yer office supplies paper cutter, but yer French revolution “off with their heads” style thing. It’s next to a kids playground. What?

We ascend, and ascend, and ascend, and ascend. We’re on the very edge of the old town just inside, and under, the old city walls. The “cold drinks with the most beautiful view” is closed, but anyway we were unlikely to walk down the perilous looking metal staircase to reach them.

Eventually we’re so high up we can’t go any higher, but the views across the rooftops are lovely, even without sunshine.

And then suddenly, oh! It’s the ethnographic museum. This is one of the ones we’d thought about maybe visiting, and since we were here, why not? We’re forced to buy a ticket that gets us into 8 museums over 7 days (but no repeat visits!?) and pay with a card, because they don’t take cash and there are no other kinds of tickets. Well fine.

We are allowed pictures here. Being an ethnographic museum, it’s 3 storeys of “life in Croatia over the centuries”, arranged by topic - like, farming, fishing, home life, costumes, etc. It’s pretty good tbh, and we are the only visitors.

By now it’s, what, half twelve? Something like that. We fancy a sit down break, not lunch since breakfast was so large, but certainly take the weight of our feet and get some liquid. So we descend the steep, cobbled staircase alleys back to Stradun and, oh, hang on, here’s Marin Držic’s house. Our newly purchased museum pass lets us in here, so fuck it, let’s have a look.

Turns out ol’ Marin was an important priest and writer, “Croatia’s Shakespeare” but dying when William was only 3 years old. Apparently one of Europe’s most significant playwrights of the era. Well whaddya know. His house was small, his bedroom had a kneeling thing for prayer, a desk for writing, and a bed. There were statues and paintings of him made my modern artists. I took no pics and didn’t really find any of it interesting except learning of his existence. Sorry.

In town, I suggest the place for liquids and seating is Glam Cafe, because it’s a verified venue on Untappd and has a great beer menu. Hello!

The lone staff member is extremely friendly. He offers me a menu but I say no need, I’ve checked on Untappd. Ah! But! He’s got a NEIPA on tap that he hasn’t yet added to the menu on there. I get a pint of it and it’s gorgeous, and he goes to add it on Untappd which makes checking it in nice and easy. Helen has a Lindemann’s kriek, which goes down slowly enough that I can even sneak in a second beer. Ordering a bottle of stout, I’m told 5 minutes later (after he’d put them on ice to cool) that all 3 he had had exploded all over the floor. D’oh!

Pretty much as soon as we’d arrived and sat down undercover, there was BIBLICAL RAIN. It utterly hoofed it down for the entire duration of our visit, and stopped just as we paid up and said our goodbyes. Marvellous. Oh, also, some young kids came down from further up the alleyway, armed with a walkie talkie through which beer orders were relayed. Good work, lazy Dubrovnik adults.

Again back along Stradun, we next visited another place our pass was valid for - the rector’s palace. This is a big imposing building outside of which a singing woman on Friday night had stopped us to ask if we could take a pic of her, and then she reciprocated and my cynical Londoner mindset was briefly convinced she was going to run away with Helen’s phone. Or was it mine? Doesn’t matter. She didn’t, she was just being friendly - which was a common theme. We were yet to speak to anyone that wasn’t extremely friendly and welcoming.

Anyway. The rector’s palace. It has a courtyard that I thought looked a bit like an Escher picture. You know, that one with the stairs ‘n that. Like hole 17 in the Walkabout Mini Golf VR Labyrinth course.

Helen was by now extremely annoyed by the way I thought everything was a bit like something else. Those alleyways? A bit like Napoli. Some of the less impressive alleyways? A bit like Rye. The big hills with the switchback roads? A bit like Mytholmroyd. That one flight of steps from the Ethnographic Museum down to the centre? A bit like the steps from Croft Road to Holloway Hill in Godalming. And so on and so on.

This bloke on the left looks a bit like one of the Drunken Bakers characters from Viz. “He’s shit hisself, your honour”

Apart from the Viz effigy and Escher courtyard, there was loads of other stuff too. It actually really was a very good museum.

These are giant men who used to hit a clock tower bell on the hour.

This iron box is, according to the little plaque on the wall nearby, portable.

And this is a magnificent lock for a portable iron box, inside the lid. Here’s another one. Fascinating.

Other rooms were full of art, or old books, or weapons. There was a prison cell, and a bannister with a hand gripping it in case you were wondering what a bannister is for.

This hairstyle/headwear combo is … I mean … I’m not a fan.

Some rooms were full of furniture, both static and movable. There were tens and tens of seats from the 17th century and earlier, in bloody good nick.

One room was full of coins, going back many hundreds of years and showing incredible craftsmanship. This next pic was taken through a magnifying glass ‘cos the coin weren’t right big.

I do not work from home at such a fancy desk as this.

Continuing my fascination with clocks I am temporarily mesmerised by this. It has an oil lamp attachment so you can still tell what time it is in the dark.

Now, this next cabinet is a bit much, don’t you think?

The last exhibit is the most sobering, being a corridor and rooms of pictures from 1991, when the city was under attack from Serbian and Montenegrin forces. The old town was under siege for months - I think they were without electricity for 131 days; this is not the blog for historical accuracy and detail. But the photos of places we’ve been wandering around this past 24hrs, taken in living memory - while I was at 6th form college, even - are a bit heartbreaking. We realise that several of the people we’ve already interacted with could be in these pictures - the children playing in rubble or carrying water. Bleurgh.

Anyway. I’m not being dismissive but as I say, I am not your guide through sober history, nor present sobriety for that matter. So. By the time we’re done exploring all the rooms, we’re actually genuinely hungry. About 95% of the city’s venues are shut but that doesn’t stop us suffering severe decision paralysis with the remaining 5%. Temporary respite from our failure comes in the form of being distracted by a puddle-drinking stray cat, who wanted nothing to do with us.

Seriously though we needed to eat, and eventually decided on Portun. It’s at the bottom of one of the alleyways. A very friendly waiter allows us to pick our seats outside, then puts a heater on when handing us the menus. Pretty much as soon as we are settled, it starts to absolutely piss it down. We have once again, as with the visit to Glam cafe earlier, timed our break perfectly.

I have a beer and a burger. Helen has tagliata beef and a cocktail of sorts. It’s all very nice.

By the time we’re done, the rain has significantly calmed down. Knowing that Glam cafe closes at 5pm, we pop there to buy some takeouts for back at the hotel. Then, we venture back along Stradun and buy some churros.

The old nunnery which we’d read should be hosting a larger christmas market is doing no such thing - instead there are just gates which say CLOSED on them. Never mind. The 15th century fountain is nice.

Back at the room, Helen wants a nap and I want to sit out on our terrace, writing a diary entry for how we reached Dubrovnik on the previous day while simultaneously listening to AFC Wimbledon’s 0-0 draw away at Swindon Town, extending our unbeaten run in the league to 8 games. I don’t think we had 8 unbeaten games in the whole of last season, did we?

Not long after I perch under the sturdy cover overhead and the rain comes. Yet again, we’ve timed taking a break correctly. But this time, it doesn’t stop. By the time Helen wakes up from her nap the weather is savage, both rain and wind. Oranges are being blown off the trees, and some gusts of wind are so powerful they startle me and I jump out me chair. Crikey oh reilly.

The good news is we hadn’t really planned to go out again anyway. As previously stated, about 95% of the city seems to be closed and those bars that were open didn’t really feel like places we wanted to visit - especially when England were playing France in a World Cup quarter final. That’s what our takeouts were for! Mind you, it was a bit touch and go whether I’d actually be able to watch it. Sky wouldn’t let me watch ITV, presumably detecting the VPN meant I wasn’t really in the UK. And the hotel room TV was… uh… well, it took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get any pictures at all on it. Despite the English instructions on a laminated sheet of A4! But eventually I figured it out, and found that HRT 2 HD would be showing Engleska - Francuska at 8pm. Woohoo!

I watched it in silence while Helen had a podcast on, meaning I was immune to any bias that might have come from ITV or 5Live commentary. Instead I was accompanied only by these two glorious stouts.

England lost. Bugger. I thought it was a fantastic game, the ref was a twat - demonstrated by the fact he needed to be told to give both our penalties - and that miss from Kane was massively uncharacteristic. Never mind. I love this squad and oh god I hope Southgate doesn’t leave. I want him to be manager forever.

I decide a nightcap is required, and the minibar Heineken doesn’t quite cut it. But what’s this? A Croatian Herb Liqueur Like Jäegermeister and very good for my tummy?

Go on then, I’ll have some of that and then go to sleep.

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Darren Foreman
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