I hate the phrase ‘Bucket List’, it casually accepts that you’re going to ‘kick the bucket’. But Dubrovnik has been top of my list of places I want to visit for a very long time now.
As I sit here typing, I’m in a hotel, overlooking Dubrovnik. Job done.
The timing was perfect. I’d just had my retirement date confirmed and an advert popped up. Flying from Cardiff, reasonably priced and what is known as ‘the shoulder season’. In the summer the city can get overwhelmed with tourists and cruise ships, but spring and autumn are much quieter, but still reasonably warm. So we booked.
It’s a package holiday, with transfers from the airport and three meals a day all included. A first for me.
I wouldn’t consider 6am to be early. But if you add the two hours before flight you recommend you arrive at airport, plus the forty-five minutes drive, plus getting up and getting ready, we were basically leaving the house before the time we usually go to bed.
Cardiff is a small airport. It’s very convenient and I’d rather fly from there than anywhere else. It’s only drawback is the number of destinations that fly out of there. As we queued to check in our luggage, I looked up at the board and counted the number of flights leaving today. Between 6am and 5:30pm, there were a grand total of seven flights all day. I really don’t get what the problem is, it’s beyond me why people prefer to drive past Cardiff to get to Bristol Airport.
There is a plus side to this lack of flights though. The bar/cafe in the departure lounge is sparsely populated and we are quickly served with our pre-flight pint and breakfast. Our flight is delayed by forty-five minutes, so we technically have time for several more pints, but as is the way these days, I have to consider my bladder and the availability of toilets.
When we eventually board the TUI flight, there’s a lot of people on the flight, but it is by no means full. Probably more empty seats than any other flight I’ve been on. The seats are comfortable and have a reasonable amount of leg room. Not the the most comfortable plane I’ve ever been on, but certainly better than some of the budget airlines.
Two and a half hours later, we are winding our watches back an hour whilst the driver parks up our plane.
The next bit is, I hope, the most ‘package holiday’ bit of the trip. Outside the airport there are more TUI reps than you can shake a stick at. All of them painfully pleasant and cheerful. There is a long queue forming for people who are joining a cruise here in Dubrovnik.
A young girl named Annie is thrilled that we are staying at a hotel she is responsible for, then shepherds us over to our bus. The drive takes forty-five minutes, stopping off at several other hotels. A young Michael Hutchence look a like is on the mic throughout telling us about what we can see out of the window and the history of Dubrovnik.
It’s all going fine till he comes to the Balkan Wars and the break up of Yugoslavia. I’ve made a point of reading up on thd subject. The causes were many and complex, mostly revolving around nationalism and xenophobia. Obviously there’s a lot more to it than that.
But on the bus today it is the first time I have heard it suggested that the war was because Croatia has more beaches than Serbia, so if Croatia became independent Serbia would lose out on the tourist dollar. That could possibly have been a factor, but it most certainly wasn’t the main reason. At this point I stop listening to him other than to learn which stop we have to get off. And do you know what? The dozy surfer dude even got that wrong.
When we eventually get off at the right hotel, our room is not ready. The bar is open though, so we do some research into local dark beers. It’s weird, back in the UK I would never touch a drink you can’t see through. I’m a cider drinker and never touch beers, stouts or ales. But abroad they are much nicer than the light beers and lagers.
After a couple of Karlovacko (6%) we go back to reception to see if our room is ready. We are informed that because ‘a little bird’ had told the receptionist we were celebrating something special, our room had been upgraded.
Rewind to last December. Megan and I got married. It was a very small, low key affair with just our children & granddaughter. Because we travelled so much last year, I had run out of annual leave, so we never got around to having a honeymoon. We have been away since then but we didn’t want to tell people that we went away to watch football for our honeymoon. So after we booked this trip, we decided it would be our honeymoon.
When we opened the door to our room we found some towels arranged to look like swans making a heart shape, a bottle of champagne on ice, and an upgrade so our room was overlooking the harbour.
I said, “Look Megan, what an amazing view.”
Megan replied, “Never mind the view, let’s guzzle this champers down our gregory.” Or something like that.
After demolishing the bubbly on our balcony, we went back to the bar and sampled some more Karlovacko and got chatting to an eighty year old Irish gentleman who was here with his two daughters. He’s not impressed with Dubrovnik, but he’s not really interested in history. Horse racing, beer and fags are his main interests. Whilst his daughters had been walking around the old town he had been propping up the bar in the Irish pub. But given there are several of them, two of them with the same name, and he didn’t know which one he was in, his daughters had to go to all of the Irish Pubs to find him.
Eventually dinner is served. As expected, veggie options were thin on the ground but we manage to cobble together a plate of something edible before hitting the bar again, until the fact that we had only had an hour sleep the night before started to take it’s toll. Mr ZZZZ tapped us on the shoulder and said, “You’re not youngsters any more, go to bed’.” We had one more for the road and then… well I’m not sure what happened next, I just remember waking up with an empty bottle of Karlovacko by the side of the bed.