The Pearl of the Adriatic: Dubrovnik, Croatia

If you can only go to one of Croatia's coastal cities, Dubrovnik is it. The city sits inside fortress walls built on scraggly rocks right by the water, backed up by the mountain.

Dubrovnik's old harbour:

Many of the buildings were destroyed when the Serbs & Yugoslav army bombed it during the war in the early 90's, but it's all been rebuilt with the same style of architecture. The new buildings all have red roofs so you can tell which ones were damaged (and there are lots of them).
Old vs new roofs:

The city was under siege for 2 months during the war. I'm not sure how they survived with food, but there's a fountain that's 400 years old that ended up supplying the city with water the entire time and it's still working. Now every one goes and touches or drinks from it for luck:

It is scorching hot during the day so there's no much to do except to go see some exhibits in nicely air conditioned museums (really missing the mid-day swims now). We went to two – one of Picasso's sketches which was really cool. The other one was at the War Photo Limited where there were photos from the war(s) in the Balkans and an exhibit on Child Soldiers. The photos of the Child Soldiers were from various regions of the world (Middle East, Asia, Africa) and the sad thing is, some are as recent as 2007. In some areas (think it's in Africa), kids are abducted and then given drugs before being sent off to the frontline to fight so they would be fearless, and if they resist they are beaten and tortured. Sometimes all the groups fighting each other are equally brutal so no matter who wins the people are screwed. I know that there are lots of wars going on in the world, but seeing the photos really drive it home. It also makes me realize how lucky we are to live in the US, and be shielded from much of the violence that are going on.

Once the heat got more bearable we walked on the fortress wall around the city. Everyone says it's a must do and I agree. You get a great view of the entire city with the Adriatic in the background, and in the parts that are alongside the water, you can look down and see the water slapping up against the rocks. It's just beautiful!

Dubrovnik rooftops from the wall:

View of main town square in Dobrovnik old town:

Next to the old town is the best beach in Dubrovnik, Bana. It's a pebbly beach but the clear water is so inviting:

In addition to the normal rules of conduct for the beach like no pets on the beach, they also had this as the last one on the list:

It was a good place to end our time in Croatia.

One note about Croatians. People are generally nice and helpful, especially once you get to know them. Our travel agent and the people on the boat were super friendly and explained a lot to us. However, when it comes to business you still have to watch out as what you get is often not what you're told. Our bait and switch incident on the boat was not our only experience. The room in Dubrovnik ended up costing slightly more than what we were told (at least we got to store our luggage there and they did our laundry which was very much needed); the owner of the apartment told us there is wi-fi but once we got there the wi-fi is not working due to some “technical difficulties”, etc, etc.. We also learned that it doesn't pay to be nice or polite and to be firm or they will just take advantage of you. It's marred an otherwise great experience to have to be on our toes all the time.