But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

With nothing firmly planned for the day we could afford to have a little bit of a lie-in, a leisurely breakfast, then head down to the shuttle bus into the old town area of Dubrovnik when we saw that the queue had died down. We were docked near the Dr. Franjo Tuđman Bridge and had briefly entertained the idea of walking to where all the more interesting things to see were – under four kilometres – and if the route had been a flat one then we might have, but flat it was not.

We didn’t see the queue diminishing in size at all after breakfast and didn’t want to keep our steward from cleaning our room any longer so eventually headed down and joined a long line in the sunshine. There were some grumblings about not enough shuttle buses being put on but I don’t think we were out there too long. Once we’d actually taken the bus we realised that the small drop-off point near the old town was a limiting factor to how many buses could reasonably make the journey to and from the ship without blocking the road up. Locals in popular cruise destinations get grumpy enough as it is without that sort of thing adding to their frustrations.

We were dropped off close to the sixteenth century Pile Gate and joined the crowd threading its way through it and into the old town. We immediately saw signs for the Wall Walk, converted the value from Euros to Sterling, said “Fuck that for a laugh!”, and decided we’d explore inside the walls instead for no money. We’re not tight – far from it – but we like to get value for money, and the cost was hard to justify for what we imagined would mostly be a slightly elevated view of what we were going to see anyway but with less access to anything and likely no shade at all. Nah, not for us.

Dubrovnik was exceedingly pretty at first glance with walls of white stone glaringly bright under the bright sun. Much of the city was flattened in an earthquake in 1667 but some gorgeous rebuilding work took place to produce the incredible sights you can see today. That earthquake did cause some loss of history and architecture, naturally, so there are elements of fifteenth century Onofrio’s Large Fountain – the most obvious structure we first saw upon passing through the gate into the city – that are lost forever.

We slowly wandered the length of Stradun as it looked like the main street of Dubrovnik’s historic old town based on the volume of fellow tourists, peering down each alley we passed on the lookout for anything of interest. Surprisingly, we didn’t see a lot, but we were loath to divert from the main route at first as it seemed we were more likely to see “the big sights” of Dubrovnik by sticking to the wider thoroughfare.

We reached the end of Stradun and the first of three churches that we would end up taking a look inside. This one was St. Blaise’s Church, named for the patron saint of Dubrovnik, and delightfully Baroque, architecturally. A Romanesque church had stood on this spot since the middle of the fourteenth century when the Black Death made its appearance and it was felt a church might just remind God to protect the people (don’t roll your eyes; people don’t think vaccines protect you these days and we’re all supposed to be a lot smarter than medieval peasants), and you might be thinking “Ah, yeah, but you’ve already mentioned an earthquake so I guess it didn’t survive” and, no, it actually did. However, Blaise’s by name and, as it turns out, Blazes by nature, because in 1706 it burnt to the ground instead.

Back into the Croatian sunshine, a quick check of the map, and we headed in the direction of the old port area and bastions surrounding it. Eastwards, in other words.

Now, I told myself when I began writing this travel account of our day in Dubrovnik that I would not mention Game of Thrones, partly because everyone mentions Game of Thrones, but largely because we’ve never seen Game of Thrones and therefore knew nothing about Game of Thrones, but I have now mentioned Game of Thrones five times in this paragraph and that’s because we started associating Dubrovnik with fabulous doors and decided we were going to call it the Game of Doors city instead. I suspect it won’t catch on.

The port area of the old town of Dubrovnik was exactly how you’d expect a boat-filled marina in front of a stone landing area beside high-walled fortifications to look, and yes, we always like to see the sea whenever we’re travelling anyway, but it was also nice to get away from the glare of the solid white stone architecture of the city.

To the second church next, or more accurately, Dubrovnik Cathedral. Unlike the first church we’d seen, the cathedral that had formerly stood on this spot was mostly destroyed in the 1667 earthquake and had needed rebuilding. Interestingly, the basilica that had not survived had been partially funded by Richard the Lionheart as thanks for surviving a shipwreck just off the coast during his return from the Third Crusade.

The façade of the cathedral had some lovely Corinthian order columns and a pair of statues erected high above the main entrance. One was of Joseph and the other of St. Blaise. A gold-plated arm, leg, and skull of St. Blaise are amongst the building’s most important relics although we never got to see them.

We carried on in an approximately clockwise, generally random walk through Dubrovnik’s narrow alleys, constantly on the lookout for… anything.

Now, if we’d paid a lot more attention to the map than we had, if we’d zoomed in enough for items to appear, if we’d done any sort of proper research beforehand, then we might have noticed that we were remarkably close to a maritime museum and an aquarium, and we would absolutely have visited them. But none of that happened and we headed off another way entirely.

We found another church. You knew one was coming because I’d already mentioned there’d be three.

Baroque in style, once more, this was the Church of St. Ignatius, and probably my favourite of the churches in Dubrovnik that we saw. I’ve only shared a few photos from inside it but there seemed a bit more atmosphere and more variety in its relatively small interior. Work had begun on the clearance area for its construction in the seventeenth century when the earthquake put a halt to proceedings, and work didn’t subsequently begin until the next century making it the most modern of the three buildings we visited. The church’s belfry houses Dubrovnik’s oldest bell, cast in 1355.

One thing we did spot on our map was a bar just outside the city walls, apparently with lovely views out to sea, and a must-visit place according to lots of people who visit Dubrovnik, and it was close by so we headed towards it. We found it without incident but to say it was popular would be doing a disservice to the word popular. It was heaving. I took one photo from outside the wall we’d passed through and that was in the split second that I wasn’t being jostled on the narrow steps down to the location. It looks quiet and peaceful. It was not.

The idea of having a drink in a bar was now firmly in our heads – I’m not fooling anyone here it’s always firmly in our heads – and we could see that we’d mostly wandered the insides of the expensive walls as far as interest appeared, so we tried to work out the most direct route back towards the tourist heart of Dubrovnik’s old town as that was where we could see bar symbols appear on the map with enough frequency to suggest we might get a seat out of the sun somewhere. It was quite surprising how high in elevation we’d climbed without completely being aware of it.

We passed a couple of busy places that seemed to primarily cater for those wanting to eat before suddenly spotting a sign that said “Local Beer” and that won us over. Shade, beer, and toilets which we were both in need of by this time as it had been thirsty work walking around the hot, bright city.

The drinks were fine but what we had amounted to the limit of what was available so I did a little more checking on the map while we sat and rested and located somewhere that sounded a lot more interesting. A few minutes walk brought us back along Stradun then down one of those narrow alleys we’d bypassed earlier in the day, and then to Glam Bar.

We were immediately reminded of our visit to Kotor years before, sitting outside a bar in a narrow, stone-walled alley, drinking beer. It was cool and the range of very local beers and other national offerings was huge and very varied. We thought we might stay for a couple of drinks but three people sat down next to us; a man a little younger than us and his two more elderly parents, all fellow cruise passengers, though we hadn’t seen them before this. It turned out that he was a keen craft beer drinker too and his parents were tolerating his visit to this bar. We all got talking, and then we realised that with three of us keen to try as much as possible we could start sharing drinks (not glasses; we’re not mental). His parents suggested they go back to the ship and leave him with us until the last bus home but he decided not to do that, though not after the lot of us had probably worked our way through the vast majority of ales on offer with some of the pastry sours being some of the most wonderful things we’d tasted. Glam Bar was a fantastic place to drink in Dubrovnik for craft beer lovers.

We didn’t leave it quite to the last shuttle bus back to Azura but it wasn’t far off before we took the short walk back to where the bus would be and joined the queue nearly as long as the one we’d been part of in the morning.

We liked Dubrovnik but we weren’t wowed by it in quite the same way a lot of other people seem to be, but a few hours and no planning always comes with that risk. The city’s reconstruction following its earthquake lent everything a similar look that was initially wonderful, but soon became a little bit monotonous. There wasn’t enough of a variety in the architectural design we’d have liked to see.

However, we missed out on the museum and aquarium that would have changed things up a lot, and we didn’t take time to wander up and down all the alleys that likely hid a multitude of interesting treasures. That means that this is a city we could and should return to and explore more some other time, and we know for certain they’ve got at least one place that does fantastic beer. We still won’t do the walls walk at that price, though.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be back aboard the ship for the sail away from Dubrovnik with a sea day to look ahead to at the end of our week in the Adriatic.

We’d not left it until the very last shuttle bus to return back to the cruise port on account of us not being insane but that didn’t stop it being a very packed bus arriving back alongside the ship at around the same time that a number of tour buses were also returning to drop off more passengers. Boarding was therefore not swift – not bad, but a bit more shuffling than you’d like – and the likelihood of getting into a lift to rise the five floors to our room in any short time was poor. We therefore did what we like to do a lot in this sort of situation: we walked a few floors, then stopped for a drink to break up the climb. Actually, if the gangway had been towards the centre of the ship instead then we’d have walked forward and used the forward bank of elevators to get to nearer our room but that wasn’t the case this time around so a drink in Brodie’s was the answer, followed by another one to then take up to our room.

The sail away from Dubrovnik wasn’t the most impressive by a long shot but we got to see a decent view of the Franjo Tuđman Bridge, named after Croatia’s first president, and of the USNS Carson City, an aluminium, catamaran-design, fast expeditionary vessel. We like bridges and we like ships so this was pleasant even if neither were fabulous examples of design in their respective fields.

It was hard not to be reminded of leaving Montenegro many years before when looking at steep and rocky hills dotted with pale buildings with orange roofs along the Croatian coastline out of Dubrovnik, although the former was far prettier and we had far better weather for it. A light but solid cover of cloud had come in just as the day started to cool down.

The waterway approach to Dubrovnik clearly wasn’t particularly dangerous or tricky for ships to navigate as our pilot wasn’t aboard Azura for very long at all before re-boarding his boat and zooming off back to land.

We didn’t have a lot of Croatian coastline to enjoy before the cruise ship made the turn to the south that left us with a more simple view of nothing but the Adriatic Sea but we spent all that time out on our balcony because it’s one of the reasons we book a balcony cabin on cruise ships for.

After we’d got ourselves showered and dressed for the evening but before we headed out for some food and drink and entertainment we were treated to a sunset, the colours of which reminded us a little of cruising past Argentina many years before, but only a little bit. Nothing will ever truly compare to that particular experience.

To finish, dinner then for this penultimate night aboard Azura, and because P&O Cruises are still a bit old-fashioned in this respect this meant reluctantly donning the tuxedo and formal dress for the pair of us so as to not be severely limited in venues we’d be graciously allowed to attend. We don’t mind the odd formal night and we quite enjoy them when everyone is free to dress as much or as little as they like, but throwing in restrictions is a dated concept in cruising that’s trying to appeal to a younger demographic and it needs to be thrown overboard.

Anyway, it was a celebration night meal, and it was at least nice to see some effort made from the cruise line to reward those who’d made the somewhat enforced effort to dress for the occasion.

There will be one more post to come in this Adriatic cruise travelogue series and that will cover the final day at sea on the way back to Malta and some final thoughts about the week-long cruise as a whole, because that’s the traditional way to wrap these travel writings up around here.