September 10, 2013 

We were scheduled to arrive in Dubrovnik at 10am, so I woke up at 8am to start getting ready. Mom ordered room service on the door tag the night before and it was delivered right on time at 8am. The Lido buffet was very crowded this morning, and the lines were very long for the two omelet stations in the Havana Bar. I ate my breakfast and went back to the cabin to finish getting ready for the day. 

We arranged to meet our friends at 9:30am in the lobby bar area on deck 3 so we could share a taxi into town. We went out onto the deck to take some photos as we approached the port… unfortunately, those clouds didn’t look very promising. 

We went down to deck zero to wait for them to clear the ship, but they said we had to go back up to deck 1. We were the first to arrive so we just stood near the stairs and waited until they started letting people get off the ship. Soon after, a crew member put up a rope and a line formed behind us. By 10am, there were hundreds of people lining the halls on deck 1, anxiously waiting to get off the ship.

They finally cleared us to exit at 10:10am and we were the first people off the ship. We got a taxi right outside of the gangway, and he quoted us 15 Euros for the 4 of us to go straight to the cable cars. It took about 15 minutes to drive there, and when we arrived, there was a long line already formed. There were one or two other cruise ships also docked in Dubrovnik today, but they arrived much earlier in the morning so even though we were the first people to arrive from the Carnival ship, we still had to wait inline behind them (boooo!). 

We pre-purchased our tickets online, but needed to exchange the vouchers for a real ticket at the ticket window.

It took about 30 minutes for us to reach the front of the line, and the cable car ride lasted about 10 minutes. They cram about 30 people in each cable car, and there were two cars running at a time, going in opposite directions. The views were beautiful from the first second we left the gate.

Once we got off the cable car, we spent about 30 minutes enjoying the views. It was much cooler up on top of the mountain, and it was very windy and drizzling rain. They have a few different lookout decks, so we took lots of photos while we were up there. They also have clean bathrooms on the downstairs level.

We had a short wait to get on the next cable car going back down the mountain, and when we reached the bottom, we noticed the line wasn’t very long to go up.

Once we exited the cable car station, we turned right, and then immediately after the bus stop, we turned right again to walk down the staircase. 

We kept walking down until we reached a fork in the road where the fort was directly in front of us (there was a Mexican restaurant on our right). At the fork, we turned left and continued down the street about 50 feet until we could see the drawbridge. We entered the city here at the Ploce Gate.

Dubrovnik is a beautiful old city and is very well preserved. Everywhere I turned, there was something else that was interesting to see and photograph. I wish we had docked earlier in the day so we could have spent more time enjoying the city, but instead, we had to quickly walk through town and along the Stradum because we wanted to have enough time to enjoy walking the city walls as well. Here’s a few highlights from Dubrovnik…

I had heard about a great candle store on the Stradum called Candle Kingdom, so I knew I wanted to check it out. The candles were beautiful, and they made them in every different color combination!

They were kind of pricey, but I decided to buy a small one to take home. They list the prices in Euros, but apparently they only accepted payment in their local currency of Kunas, and they did not take credit cards. I had not exchanged any money for Kunas, so the sales lady offered to take my Euros to the exchange place and get the Kunas for me. I think I probably came out ahead by doing it this way because I avoided paying any fees to exchange the money, and I didn’t have to do the running around haha It took her a long time, but she finally came back and I left with my new pretty candle:

The Stradum isn’t very long, but there are also lots of stores lining the side streets. Once we reached the end of the Stradum, we found the Pile Gate where we could enter the top of the city walls. While I was buying my candle, mom and our friends bought some gelato, and they were still eating it when they went to pay for their tickets to the city wall. Apparently it is considered very rude to eat while conducting a transaction like buying your tickets because the guards scolded them! They said that we would find it rude if they were eating when we came in to buy our tickets, so why is it ok if we eat in front of them? Point taken! Everyone quickly finished paying for their tickets and finished their gelato.

After we bought our tickets, we hiked up 87 very steep and narrow stairs to the top of the wall. Literally the minute we got up to the top, the skies opened up and it started pouring! There was no where to seek cover, so we took out our umbrellas and tried not to fall on the wet slippery stone of the city walls. 

Luckily, the rain only lasted for about 10 minutes. Bands of dark clouds came and went all day, but this was our only period of heavy rain. It took 1 hour to walk slowly from the Pile to Ploce gate with many stops along the way to take photos. The beautiful red roof tiles contrasted with the blue water, and the views over the cliffs were breathtaking! 

There was another side of the wall which would have let us go into the forts, but we decided to skip that part.

At 1:30pm, we walked back down from the wall and took some time to explore the side streets off the Stradum. I needed small bills changed from the 50 Euro bills I got at the ATM, but 2 banks and the currency exchange place all refused to help me. It was very frustrating because we needed small bills to exchange the money for our tours the following day, but there wasn’t much I could do. By 2:30pm, I was starving since I didn’t eat anything since breakfast earlier that morning. I read a few reviews on Cruise Critic saying that you could buy fried calamari in a to-go cup at many restaurants in town, but after searching unsuccessfully, I gave in to the hunger and just got a piece of pizza. This was one of the few times I neglected to take a photo of our food (mostly because I inhaled it within 30 seconds of sitting at our table!!), but it was very good and cheesy.

After eating, we continued along the side street to a jewelry store. I wanted to look at the silver ball charms I learned about on Cruise Critic. They are unique to Dubrovnik and are very pretty. Unfortunately, they cost more than I could afford to spend, so my only souvenir is this photo:

At 3:30pm, we left the city walls through the Ploce gate draw bridge where we originally entered. There was a taxi stand right there and we got right in a taxi with no wait. It cost 15 Euros for all 4 of us to get back to the cruise port. Along the way, the taxi driver drove passed the Pile gate and it was extremely crowded with thousands of people boarding busses and looking for taxis, so I was glad we used the less common exit. 

When we got back to the port, our taxi driver would not drive through the port gate, even though we saw several other taxi drivers do it, so we had to walk back. Along the way, there was a large tent set up with several vendors along the pier. They all sold the same generic Dubrovnik souvenirs for about the same price plus/minus 1 Euro. Mom bought a few things, and I found a nice vendor who was willing to change my money for smaller bills. We got back to the ship around 5pm to get ready for dinner.

Here is the dinner menu and what I ate that night:

Chilled Langostino Cocktail

Pita crisps and beef kebab with greek farmers salad

Zuppa di pesce

Grilled NY sirloin steak

Dessert menu

Chocolate and hazelnut tart

Tonight’s entertainment was a comedy hypnotist. He brought about 15 people up on stage and had them do all the standard hypnotist things. We really weren’t sure if the show was that funny because the hypnotist was funny, or because the participants were great. There were 3 people up there who REALLY got in to it, and we were hysterically laughing at their antics for the entire show. 

After that, we wanted to see the comedy show, but when we arrived at the lounge, there weren’t any seats left. Instead, we went back to the cabin to kill some time before the deck party. We went up to Lido deck at 11pm and the party was over! There were only 10-15 people left dancing and other than that, it was deserted. Considering it was supposed to start at 10:30, that seemed a bit odd, but we found out later that there were never all that many people there like you see on Caribbean cruises. I was a bit surprised considering the following day was the first sea day, but I guess people just don’t think about line dancing when they’re on a Europe cruise? 

Anyway, we were hungry and looked around for a snack, but the Lido buffet had very limited options. Aside from the pizza (which I was avoiding considering how many times I ate it in port and that we would be in Italy for the following week), they only had hot dogs, ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, and brownies. Had we arrived a few minutes earlier, we could have gotten something from the deli, but that closed at 11pm. Mom had some ice cream and I ate a brownie. 

Tonight they asked us to set our clocks ahead 1 hour due to the time change heading into Greece and Turkey. It was nice that they scheduled our one hour less of sleep to be on the night going into a sea day when it didn’t matter and we didn’t have to wake up early anyway. 

Oh, I just found where I had the cabin bathroom photos…

I also wanted to post a photo from the show lounge…

A few things to note in this photo:

1) It was taken at 8:05pm before the hypnotist show which started at 8:30pm. Notice how full it is already? And this was at the very beginning of the cruise- by the end of the cruise, the entire room was filled and every seat was taken by 8:05pm. Before the cruise, my assumption was that the shows wouldn’t be too crowded because it was such a tiring port-intensive itinerary. Clearly I was wrong!!

2)Notice the curtains along the stairs on the left side of the photo? They were very annoying and partially blocked our view, but they were even more annoying for the people who did not get seats and were standing in the back of the room. The curtains make it so people without seats will only have a partial view of the show. I wish Carnival had thought this through a little better and maybe designed it so the curtains retracted all the way to the top of the stairs, out of view.

3)Notice the columns on the right side of the photo? They also blocked peoples line of sight during the shows. I understand that they are necessary as weight bearing support beams, but it unfortunate that they blocked peoples views and are something you should look out for when picking your seat for the show.

4)The seating on the ground level of the theater is no longer benches- it is now individual chairs. These chairs are a bit wide, so that limits how many can fit in each row. I think there is less seating available now as a result of these chairs, but I don’t know for sure. The chairs do move, and the staff arranged them differently depending on what the show was (they left a large dance floor in the middle during the disco show, and had two raised platforms for the dancers in the Epic Rock show), and they made announcements before the shows starting asking people to not move the chairs from where they were placed. I did see a few people try to carry chairs to near the outer round couches to sit with their friends, but the staff asked them to put the chairs back so I guess they were unsuccessful.

5)On a positive note, I liked how the upper seating area was a really steep incline so you could easily see over the people in front of you. We only sat in this seat for the first show… after that, each night we sat in the first or second row up on the left side of the theater and we always had a great view of the shows (but that’s because we arrived early enough to claim our seats!)

Ok, I think that’s all I have to say about the theater 🙂

Up next: Our first sea day!