On location at the port of Dubrovnik

Our arrival in Dubrovnik was fairly swift - the last hour or so, especially smooth in the lovely motorways of Croatia.

The view on the motorways as you enter Dubrovnik

At our guest house, we were greeted by the nicest old lady I have ever met. Jele had fresh juices and water ready for our arrival, and told us about the best places to visit during our stay. If you ever get the chance to visit Dubrovnik, be sure to pay her a visit at Guest house Nikolina
An invaluable tip she gave us was about the Dubrovnik Card. It's a but like the London Pass, with options to choose from 1 day to a week. They grant you entry into quite a few places and museums along with free travel on the public transport, So, our walking tour was ditched in favour of the Dubrovnik card, which pretty much dictated the sites we'd visit.
That night, we drove up to mount Srd at the recommendation of our lovely lady at the guest house to watch the sunset. Oh my! what a spectacular view of the walled city and the surroundings. You can take the cable car up here and walk down too. Or if you fancy, there's a restaurant on top of Mount Srd where you could dine as you look at the beautiful city and the sea beyond.  The baa-lamb and me- we did none of those things. We did, however did go slightly overboard with the clicking of the walled city in the sunset, the sunset, the kids with the backdrop of the old city in the sunset, us with the backdrop of the old city in the sunset, a random couple clicking pictures of the sunset...you get the drift (you see, the Baa lamb had just discovered this wonderful thing called the selfie-stick).

Tell me you don't find that beautiful!

My mum in law though we were complete nutters. Refused to have anything to do with us, The smart woman. Of course, we chose to drive down in the dark (it had some pretty tricky moments with no lights and car coming both ways when really, its a one-vehicle road in some places).

A fabulous sunset at Sdr

The view as we drove down Sdr

Didn't have a tripod, so not the clearest of shots. 

The next morning we set off by bus to discover Stari-Grad and walk along the walls of the old city. We were instantly surrounded on all sides by avid Game-of-Throners who insisted on clicking themselves at every single spot ever shot at for 'Kings Landing' occasionally letting out an excited squeal or an 'OhmiGAwd!'. The slight more articulate ones kept throwing phrases like 'Winter is coming!' at unsuspecting tourists (who were looking rather bewildered on the hot, sunny day).
Me? I kept clicking all those spots too- But more for the jaw-dropping views it afforded, yes, yes, I know I have probably exhausted all synonyms for spectacular by now, but really... here. Look!

This is one of my favourites- a musician playing outside the church, 

Roaming around Starigrad was fun (for me) but the kids by now had had enough of 'old stuff' and 'dead people' and so off we went, to Banje beach, which was a stone's throw from the old town.

Blue seas as far as the eye could see and tiny. yelling humans occupying every square inch. The kids didn't seem to care a jot, but I was frantically trying to sit under the shadow of resting surfboards and kayaks being hauled in from the sea.

Banje- somewhere in the sea of humans is young Pickwick. 10 points if you can spot him!

This couple obviously didn't want to share the sea with screaming rugrats, so they decided to take a dip just off the fortress. 

Got myself some pretty dubious looks the way I was skulking about, so after about an hour of suffering in silence, I finally gave up the ghost of an afternoon by the sea and moved on to the restful, cool climes of the apartment, only stopping long enough to book a sun-set sea-kayaking expedidition. That got the kids (and frankly, us too) so excited, we could hardly wait. and just like most things that get us really excited, it ended up in a damp squib - no literally. We were hit by thunderstorms just around sunset. Considering there were about 1.5 swimmers amongst the 5 of us, we decided sea-kayaking would just have to wait another place, another time.
Having found ourselves at loose ends on account of the weather, and not behind able to enjoy the beautiful outdoors, we decided a few of the museums mentioned in the City Passes would be worth visiting (that being the only way to drag the baa lamb into the museum - inclement weather).

The Natural History museum in Dubrovnik is one of the most beautiful buildings, housing one of the most disappointing exhibits! It was full of stuffed animals, you couldn't touch any of the exhibits and there wasn't a single dinosaur bone in sight! There were some interesting fossils in in bubbles, but again, we couldn't touch the bubbles! (have you tried telling kids you can't touch bubbles, especially ones with interesting stuff in them?)

the only interactive thing at the natural history museum!

 

To soften the blow, we had Pizza that night, and turned in early.

The kids wanted to know if the plane would find the pot of gold of it flew into the rainbow :)

We also caught sight of a rainbow to make up for the rain. That cheered the kids up no end! Our next leg covers 3 countries and ends back in Croatia! Stay tuned...