Dubrovnik

I’ve wanted to go to Dubrovnik for years. Now, everybody wants to go to Dubrovnik and it’s a huge tourist destination. This is both good and bad. As a tourist myself I can hardly complain that there are too many tourists – I’m part of the problem as much as anybody else, and I did wistfully think a couple of times, that I wish I’d gone to Dubrovnik a decade ago before it became not only a huge tourist destination in it’s own right, but also a huge tourist destination for Game of Thrones fans.

It’s still a wonderful place to see. I’m glad we went. But I think, in retrospect it might have been better to choose somewhere less well known. It’s tricky of course for the people who live and work in this area. Tourism brings in so much money, but it also changes the face of the city, and the feel of it. Dubrovnik doesn’t feel like a working city to me, a place where people live and raise their children. It feels completely geared to a tourist market. All the shops sell souvenirs, or ice cream or standard tourist (read unadventurous and pricy) food. I’m not sure what the answer is, in many places tourism is the main industry and it employs so many, but it’s also a blight that removes any sense of authenticity from a place.

We stayed outside the city walls, and took a lot of day trips – to the Elaphiti Islands, into neighbouring Montenegro, and out into the countryside, so we (mostly) stayed out of the walled city during the day when all the cruise ships disgorged their thousands of tourists, so for us it wasn’t so bad. I’m glad we went… but I wouldn’t go back again.