Dubrovnik is justifiably famous as the “jewel of the Adriatic”.

Although visitors are gouged left right and centre, every step they take, the old city is an amazingly beautiful place. As you walk through the narrow, marble paved streets the high walls of the city loom over you. After a while of walking around the streets one feels compelled to go to the top of the walls and walk around the city from above.

 As you walk along the walls you get a real sense of what a daunting place is would’ve been to attack. I kept on imagining what it would be like to try and scale the walls by ladders only to by pushed off 25 meters (75 feet) to the ground. Everywhere around the walls was a long way from the ground. Some people were having trouble with the height and they stayed pressed against the ramparts as the wobbled onwards with their quaking knees.

Dubrovnik was packed with tourists, which wasn’t a surprise considering there were two cruise ships anchored of the old port and another at the modern dock. In the early evening the two ships anchored near the old port left and another two came in.

I spoke to some of the cruise passengers about their trip and their itinerary sounded punishing. Quite often they arrive in the afternoon at a port and leave in the morning the next day. One guy told me that the next place they were going to visit was Venice and they would only have about half a day on shore there.

It just didn’t sound like the sort of travelling I’d want to pay a small fortune to do.

The height of the wall gives fantastic views across the city.

At places, the views out of the city were just as spectacular.

On the map of the old city of Dubrovnik there are marked two beaches, but they aren’t beaches like I’ve ever seen before; more of a cross between a bar and a rock pool. We could hear Dean Martin crooning as we passed by.

All very nice but also very expensive.

Dubrovnik was everything I thought Venice would be, in that it is an expensive tourist trap crawling with other tourists but the one thing you can’t take away from the place is that it’s beautiful.