Dubrovnik log 7

Today was spent entirely in the old city, albeit in two sessions. In the morning, we arrived as early as possible in order to beat the hordes arriving from the tour ships. The first thing which we did was find a parasol for my wife - but for this we had to wait until the shops opened, which was just before 9am. Once equipped, we then returned to the Pile Gate and took the steep staircase to the city walls.

It took us over two hours to walk around the city wall, including a sorely needed cup of tea at one point. At times, the walking was easy, and at times hard (mainly going up and down narrow staircases); at times, the path was wide, and at times narrow. At one point, I was behind a group with a French tour guide; whilst it was interesting to listen to her commentary (and understand most of it), she did cause the convoy to slow down and at one point we got totally stuck. An American woman behind me kept calling "Keep moving", as if they heard, understood and cared; her husband quite rightly asked "Where are they going to move to?", as the blockage occurred at an intersection (new people were coming up to the walls and the French group were letting them in).

After this marathon was finished, we rested for a while before collecting ourselves and finding a spot to eat lunch. We then dragged ourselves back to the Pile Gate and onto a bus to take us home.

In the evening we returned: our first port of call was the synagogue just off the Stadun, which is one of the oldest Sephardic synagogues in the world. We arrived just before closing time (8 pm) but the caretaker/ticket man kindly let us stay until we were finished. We then went in search of Dubrovnik chocolates; we had been told to try at the Dubrovnik House, a quaint shop off the beaten track selling individually made items, but this wasn't what we were looking for. I had found that the local prized chocolate was called Bajadera and was to be found in a shop called Kraš; we stumbled onto the modest shop which we had passed several times a day without noticing it. We tasted some bajadera but didn't like it; we did, however, buy some almond biscuits and two boxes of chocolates with cherry liqueur filling.