MBA International Trip to Croatia: Part 3 — Dubrovnik is The Most Diverse and Beautiful City I’ve Ever Visited
Last week, myself and 60 of my Auburn MBA cohort colleagues traveled to Croatia for our international business trip. We spent the first part of the week in the capital city of Zagreb visiting several different companies and then finished out the week in the beautiful port city of Dubrovnik.
I have split this into series of posts in order to more effectively cover all that I experienced and learned. This is the third post in the series, but you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
I seriously have never been in a place like Dubrovnik where almost everywhere I went or looked, I just kept telling myself “wow, this is the most beautiful place I’ve been.”
I’ve certainly seen some nice views and pretty scenes, especially in my adventures on the bike, but I really don’t think I’ve ever been to a place with so many diverse and spectacular views from wherever you are. As I keep referring to Dubrovnik as “diverse” I’ll clarify by trying to explain my three favorite parts: the coastal views, the mountains/hills, and the architecture.
Dubrovnik is Clearly a Port City and It has All the Coastal Views You Could Ask For
From the very first bus ride from the airport, past Old Town and then all the way to our hotel that was on the coast of one of the smaller bays, almost everyone on our bus was in awe of where we had just landed. Sure, Zagreb had it’s cool views and landmarks, but from the time we landed in Dubrovnik, it was quickly clear why this port city was the popular tourist destination.
Dubrovnik is at the very southern tip of Croatia on the Adriatic sea. Within 15 minutes of getting to our hotel, myself and several classmates immediately walked over to the pier and beach that our hotel overlooked. We were treated with an active tide that made for some cool waves crashing over the pier. We also happened to get to the hotel just about an hour before sunset.
Later, when we got the chance to go the Old Town, we were greeted with even more views of the coast and all of the exposed rock on the side of the cliffs.
Old Town offered some of the best and most diverse views all in one place, but it also had some of the coolest architecture that made it pretty obvious why Game of Thrones and other features have chosen to film in Dubrovnik.
On the last day in Dubrovnik, a large group of us chose to take a ferry from the Port of Dubrovnik out to one of the small islands right off the coast. The ferry ride provided some more interesting views of the mountains that bordered Dubrovnik, but upon landing at Lopud island, it was very apparent that peak tourist season was quickly approaching as workers were making improvements and getting shops and restaurants ready for actual visitors.
Old Town of Dubrovnik, Best Known for Game of Thrones
I’ve actually never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones, so I didn’t necessarily have that to look forward to like the majority of my classmates. However, after visiting Dubrovnik and Old Town, I can see why they chose such an interesting city to shoot a popular TV show.
Our official tour of Old Town started with a brief discussion of the attacks and damage it withstood during the transition of Croatia, but once we walked outside, I quickly became distracted by all of the white stone and interesting architecture and admittedly missed out on many of the details from the tour (whoops).
Old Town is built just like I would have pictured an medieval city, a bunch of tight “buildings” surrounded by a large wall between a mountain and a coast. We walked in and around the narrow streets which are mostly tourist shops at this point, but then when we walked around the top of the wall, it was apparent that some people still live in other parts of the city contained within the wall.
Once we had mostly completed our tour of the inside of the city, we got the opportunity to walk around the outer wall. This wall probably wasn’t that long all the way around, but walking it took almost 2 hours since almost everyone would slow to take pictures at key points, only to have an even better views a few steps further.
While each point on the wall seemed to bring better and better views, none could offer the vantage point that we were later treated to from the top of the nearby mountain overlooking the city.
Crazy Uber Rides for a Perfect Lunch with a View
As one of the last main things I did in Dubrovnik, we took a few separate Uber rides up to the Panorama restaurant since the lifts were currently closed for maintenance. Both the ride up and the ride down featured a winding, one-lane road with nothing but rocks and a severe drop off on at least one side. Add in the “impressive” driving of the locals and it was quite the trip up and down the mountain.
But, the view at lunch was certainly worth it.
With a view like this, the Panorama restaurant could have had some of the worst service and food, and I’m sure people would still flock there each day. However, it actually ended up being some of my favorite food we ate in Dubrovnik, and the staff was incredibly friendly to us. Being at the top of an exposed mountain meant that it was a little chilly on a spring day, but the restaurant provided heaters and a little something else to make sure we stayed warm.
We were distracted by the amazing vantage point overlooking the city when we first arrived that we didn’t really notice the views of the others mountains on the other side until we were waiting for our Uber to take us back down the mountain.
From the backside of the restaurant, you essentially had a view into the mountains that bordered and made up Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Add Dubrovnik to the Top of Your Travel List
I’m not the one to really value travel at this point in my life, but even I really appreciated the views that Dubrovnik had to offer and would highly recommend it for anyone else. I think we went at the perfect time when the weather was decent but it wasn’t quite the incredibly busy tourist season yet.
Dubrovnik offered so many views that you rarely get to see all in one small city and that alone is what makes it probably my favorite place that I’ve been in my young travel experience.
The photos in this post don’t even begin to scratch the surface, so if you’d wish to check out more of Dubrovnik’s beauty, I’ve linked to my full album from the trip, with most of the later photos coming from Dubrovnik. After selecting the best shot from each location and angle, I still ended up with an album with over 800 photos from just a week long visit to Croatia.
Thus concludes my attempt to summarize my trip to Croatia in a few short posts and just a couple thousand words (and pictures). While Part 1 and Part 2 of this series focus on more of the things I learned and observed about Croatia’s young, struggling economy, I wanted to write one final post just to basically gush about all of the sights we got to take in during our last few days of the trip.
