postcard 23: don't order the seafood on sundays

a long weekend in King's Landing, er, Dubrovnik

“I never order seafood on Sundays,” Anthony Bourdain lectures from our speakers, “and I never order the mussels unless I personally know the chef.” We’ve been driving south, through the dry, scrubby bits of Croatia that hang onto the coast, standing intrepidly between the sea and Bosnia and Herzegovina, for hours now.

I turn the audio book off and we pick it apart, naming all of the random places we’ve successfully enjoyed a bucket of mussels across the world. We drive through orange groves and past villages hanging onto the cliffs, the same turquoise waters that have become synonymous with Croatia in my mind lapping at tiny beaches in hidden inlets.

The sun is setting when we pull into Dubrovnik, following a pin our Airbnb host dropped to a random alley. We circle the block three times before he whips by in an Audi, beckoning us to follow him back up the hill. He leads us to a tiny parking lot where we stuff the car in the last open space and load our luggage into his car. I can tell Hazelnut is terrified when we coax her into the trunk and I pray she doesn’t fear pee in his “very big, very nice” car he’s telling us about proudly. His name is Peter and he waves us off when we profusely thank him for escorting us from the parking space to our Airbnb in the Old Town. He manages properties across the city and does this all day long. He turns the radio up, singing loudly as he navigates the narrow streets far too quickly. He slams on the brakes and simultaneously answers the phone as we pass underneath a portion of the city walls. Hazelnut stuffs her nose in between the cracks in the seats and huffs worriedly. Finally, we’re there, which turns out to be a bus lane Peter parks in without concern. Everybody seems to know him and we stop often, alternating between chats with passerby and him pointing out famous sights. We walk across a drawbridge, through a gate in the wall and we’re in the Old Town of Dubrovnik, a place most of the world knows better as King’s Landing.

I marvel at the stone streets and thick walls, the cathedrals and palaces and the lanterns giving everything a warm, yellow glow. No cars are allowed inside the walls, so we walk on foot to our Airbnb, tucked down an alley just behind the big basilica. We immediately head back out to explore, on the hunt for any open restaurants. We’re deep in off season and I’ve been calling places that Google claims are open all afternoon to no avail. We double check what time the market closes—just in case—and start wandering.

I’ve never seen more feral cats than I have in our time in Croatia, but Dubrovnik is something else. There are hundreds of cats in this city and they own it, at least here in the off season. They lay on windowsills and come around the corner of every street. They sit under tables and on the steps of the church and they do not like Hazelnut one bit. As we pass one particularly ammonia-scented street, a big calico puffs up at us. We pass quickly, keeping her on a tight lead, but the cat is following us and she’s called for reinforcements. We book it out to the main street, literally being chased by cats. We take to walking single file, me in front to peek around corners for ornery cats before Topher and Hazelnut follow. It’s ridiculous and we’re about ready to give up and grab snacks from the market when we stumble upon an pizzeria. There’s open tables outside and the waitress brings us menus with the winter specials. €14 for a pizza and a glass of wine or beer. We’d been prepared for Dubrovnik to be much more expensive, but between the $43 Airbnb we’d scored and now this, it was turning out to be a very cheap weekend indeed. It’s some of the best pizza we’ve had in Croatia yet. Spicy pesto for Topher and cacio e pepe, complete with a fried egg, for me.

We get what we’ve paid for in the Airbnb and awake the next morning bleary eyed. There’s a hostel upstairs and it sounded like they were rearranging furniture until the wee hours of the morning. The mattress is missing a box spring and Hazelnut has once again met her nemesis: the poorly mortared stone wall she insists on sleeping up against. She wakes up looking like a chimney sweep, covered from head to tail in dust. It can’t deter us though and we walk through the glorious sunshine to the entrance to the walls. We’re already stripping off our jackets and applying sunscreen by the time we climb up top, spring in full swing here.

I’ve heard horror stories of the city walls in summer, 100,000 tourists fresh off cruise ships packed like sardines, shuffling along the two-mile circuit. But there’s hardly anyone up here, luckily for us, including cats. We take our time meandering, peering out over the sea and the red-roofed city below us. It’s breathtaking, and mindboggling to think that this city existed as its own little empire in the Middle Ages. Hazelnut wibble-wobbles along the walls when the drop isn’t deadly, otherwise pissed she can’t see anything from the ground.

Views from Dubrovnik's walls

The seafood restaurant that I was most excited about is, miraculously, open and we stake it out until a table in the sun, complete with blue and white striped chairs, opens up. Unfortunately, the calico cat has found us again. The waitress brings Hazelnut a bowl of water and fawns over her and we decide maybe Topher should see if he can go make peace with the creature. She lets him pet her and though we’ll see her around town for the rest of the trip, it seems to work because she watches Hazelnut cautiously, twitching her tail back and forth, instead of actively trying to attack us.

We order plump oysters from nearby Ston Bay, a big garlicky bowl of mussels swimming in wine and olive oil, and fried calamari with the most delicate batter. Dalmatia, the province we’re in, is Croatia’s most productive wine region and we drink fabulous rose in the sun. At noon on the dot, a man comes out and flings a bucket of grain across the square and even the hundreds of pigeons that descend from the sky can’t kill my mood. Hazelnut backs under the table, her bravado gone now that she’s sorely outnumbered by both cats and birds, and we linger into the afternoon. It’s the best meal I’ve had in ages.

Revived, we climb from the sea way up the side of the cliff back to the car. I left my sunglasses and have been wearing Topher’s Pit Viper’s all day, looking super fly. We stop often, our chest colds not quite gone, wishing we’d packed shorts. On the way down, we rally and decide to also climb to the fortress across the tiny bay. Topher needs little convincing, it’s a castle after all, but Hazelnut is less enthused by all the stairs. I promise her an ice cream cone if she’s good and she patiently follows us around until I buy her a personal hazelnut gelato. People stop and gape at us as we stand there in the dying sun, eating ice cream and feeding a cone to the dog on Dubrovnik’s main street. It’s delightful and we decide not to mess with perfection, heading back to the pizzeria again for dinner.

After a long walk dodging cats, Hazelnut waits in the room while we explore the Rector’s Palace the next morning. The seat of government from the 14th century, we wander through the ornate rooms. There’s an exhibit in a lower chamber with photography from the Homeland War. Dubrovnik was hit particularly hard when Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia and it’s sobering to see photos of the streets we’ve been walking barricaded, shelled and burning. There’s frequent reminders here in Croatia of the horrible and bloody war that happened just 30 years ago and it’s hard to comprehend how much resiliency it’s taken to put the pieces back together in less than half a lifetime.

We head back to the seafood restaurant and order cuttlefish risotto and spaghetti with mussels and it’s decidedly not great today. We spend the afternoon sitting on a wall overlooking the water, watching the boats and a few brave swimmers, including Hazelnut, by accident of course. She’s gone in face first and is soaking wet, though I don’t think she cares. At least she’s no longer dusty. We navigate the bus across town to a sushi restaurant and we’re in heaven in the moment, our Japanese food withdrawals always present, but Topher’s definitely got food poisoning by the time we get back. It’s unclear if it was lunch or dinner (probably the former since we at the same thing at dinner) but I wonder if Anthony Bourdain was onto something as I slip out, leaving Topher in peace to go wander the streets alone on Sunday night. Armed with my camera, I shoot long exposures at the empty tourist destinations. A group of kids and their grandma are playing soccer in the square, using the church steps as one goal and a statue as another. Our cat friend comes and sits at my feet as I watch, and I notice the star shaped indents on the main street where shelling scarred the stone. I linger longer than I should, but it feels important here.

Hazelnut has abandoned her dad in his time of need so I sleep curled around his feverish frame, covering him with all of our clothes to stop the violent shivering. The shitty bed has one thin sheet and dawn can’t come soon enough. I buy all the fluids and crackers I can carry from the market, and we leave the Old Town.

There’s no way Topher is climbing the hill in his current state, so Hazelnut and I leave him at the bus stop and tackle the stairs on our own. My manual driving skills are paltry at best, but I’m determined to get the car out of the tiny lot. It takes 15 minutes of back and forth, back and forth, and I’m sweating like crazy by the time we make it onto the street, but I am victorious. I manage to navigate the winding roads back down to the bus stop, but make Topher drive back up out of town. There’s no way I’m making it up the mountain without stalling.

The drive home is long, punctuated only by the changing of Taylor Swift albums and stops for coffee and bags of oranges. I’ll come down with something, whether it’s the stomach flu or delayed food poisoning the next day, but in the moment it feels marvelous just to collapse into our own bed.

-Mikaela