So I did a lot of research preparing for this trip but it seemed like everything we did didn’t quite go according to plan. The night before Dubrovnik was no exception. Instead of being ported right next to old town Dubrovnik as I though we’d potentially be, we were a 15-20 minute bus ride away 🙈 but thankfully Princess’s daily information booklet told us that the night before so we were at least semi-prepared. They also let us know that bus rides would be $16 per person round trip 😳 thankfully we had some on board credit from booking the cruise through Costco that we could use for that. There were cabs as an option too but we felt more comfortable not only using money already set aside for the cruise but also going on a trip with the ship because if the bus broke down, the boat would wait.

So that morning we woke up, ate breakfast, then headed down to catch a bus to Old Town Dubrovnik. We bought tickets ahead of time to walk the walls so once in Dubrovnik, we found the shop to exchange our pre-bought “tickets” for real life tickets. We also asked them about the bathroom situation because apparently everywhere in Europe charges at least €0.50 for a restroom...and she said to ask a restaurant to use theirs and they did actually let us use them even without buying food from there which was nice.

So we walked around the walls of Old Town Dubrovnik which is basically the fort around the city. It was beautiful and you got great views of both the ocean and the city. It was pretty crowded for being “shoulder season” and it was a little frustrating because the walls were relatively narrow. People would randomly stop to take a selfie with their selfie stick (yes, really), or someone would be trying to take a picture of someone else while they posed “sexily” on the wall *rolls eyes*, or there was a tour group that would stop to listen to their tour guide smack in the middle of the walkway. Once we got away from the entrance to the walls it thinned out a little and became less frustrating and we could walk and enjoy the view instead of worrying about running into someone who randomly stopped in front of us.

Old Town Dubrovnik was beautiful. All of the buildings were built from the same limestone which came from a local island. They also used the limestone to pave the streets which made it particularly slippery. Because the entire city including the walls and the ground were covered in this stuff, we set off on a journey to find some earrings with it (without paying an arm and a leg). Cheap bracelets were very easy to find, but finding earrings seemed to be a harder feat. Eventually we found a shop that was selling them for what we deemed an acceptable price. From there we set out to find a restaurant. We thought we wanted food but then we both decided we weren’t hungry and got a local beer and a local wine instead. We found a cafe in the middle of one of the plazas in the city. While we were sitting there enjoying our drinks, two different wedding parties marched their way through, presumably going from the cathedral to a reception spot. They were led by a small band and the bride and groom and followed by everyone from the wedding (at least that’s what it seemed like). It was pretty cool.

Overall, Dubrovnik was a beautiful city and was probably once a super cool place to live before it became overrun with tourists. There are a bunch of fun alleys to wander down and cool restaurants to try.