Dubrovnik light

The title of this entry could be read as a double entendre. That’s because I didn’t ‘do’ Dubrovnik – I took no tours, went into no museums or exhibitions. What I did do though, was fall in love with this wonderfully restored gem of a town and stayed in the most gorgeous hotel. In fact, when it was time to go home, it was a bit like leaving home. I got all homesick and sad about it. 

I also want to mention the actual light: it’s bright and clear, and bounces off the sea and makes the whole place sunshiny happy. 

The stay was the five-star Hotel Bellevue, part of the Adriatic Luxury Hotels group, who own some of the most luxurious, top-end stays in Croatia, so they know what they’re doing when it comes to comfort and spoiling their guests. The Bellevue is a complete reinvention of the Communist-era hotel previously on this cliff-hugging spot. Every room and suite looks down on the private beach and out to sea, and comes with a terrace where it’s incredibly easy to while away the time just watching boats go past and birds swoop around. 

Of course, you can’t stay in your room the whole time, even if it’s so nice it almost seems a shame to leave it. There’s a great restaurant terrace downstairs, where they’re just waiting to feed you, as well as a bar, where they’d very much like to serve you a cocktail or two, plus a spa offering relaxing treatments… But really, best of all is that beach and the lounger-side service, should you want it.

You’re about a 10-15 minute walk, depending on your speed, from King’s Landing – sorry, I mean the old town of Dubrovnik. It’s mostly downhill, with some great viewpoints and fabulous old stone-built mansions in the Venetian style to ooh and ahh at as you pass. “I’ll have this one. No, that one. No, wait, the one over there,” you may well find yourself thinking. The thing is, any of them would be a treat.

Once in the old town, a couple of things to keep in mind: it will be crowded and it will be crowded. There is now a law limiting the number of cruise ships that can dock in the bay at any given time, in an effort to keep the hoardes down, but it’s still extremely full. Not so you can’t walk, but you will never find yourself either alone or with less than about 50 or so people about. You can still appreciate the beauty of the place and, what was quite remarkable, is how there is no looming ‘new’ town anywhere in sight, which makes it extra special.

Here is what we did do there: walked straight down the main street, looking left and right, through various covered bits and then out to the harbour. Here you will not have to look to be presented with at least half a dozen stalls selling trips to the local islands. Don’t wait: just hop on the next one going. The islands are beautiful, but so is the journey to them. The trip we took gave us about 20-30 minutes on three of them and a couple of hours on the final fourth, which was just right and meant there was time to swim, sunbathe, get a drink and meander back onto the boat. All the trips also serve lunch, which is a bit of salad and your choice of either fish or chicken. I can’t speak for the chicken, but the fish was perfectly fine and there’s much fun to be had throwing bits of fish skin or heads to the waiting seagulls, who catch it midair.

The final thing to say about this visit is that I left my phone and therefore my camera at home. Yes, by mistake. And so for the entire two-night stay I only managed to take one photo, from our balcony down to the beach, when I borrowed someone’s phone.