Game of Stones

Me and Dominik just had our very first trip outside DE, it was happening on last week of July for his 30th birthday. Neither of us have been to Croatia before + I was FOMO because I have three colleagues + one friend that has been there, I gotta do it as well!

Our base was in the city of Dubrovnik. While we were still on planning stage, we saw so many tours about Game of Thrones movie set. Unlike him, I didn’t dedicate myself to watch it, therefore I couldn’t care less. Hainka has been there, he told me it was mostly filmed in the Old Town, I don’t need to necessarily join the tour, I still can go to those spots. Ahhh okay understood!

We flew in, arrived at our AirBnB around 01:00 AM. Our Host Zoran & Igor were waiting for us. P.S: I really like their place, located only 800 meters from Old Town…. chill… there’s no straight way in life, their place was up in the hill, you gotta be good at the game of stones #Stairs everywhere.

Regardless of Game of Thrones’ fans or not, you gotta admit, Dubrovnik’s Old Town has it’s own charm. My first time in East Europe and it’s not dissappointed 😉

The moment we step in the first alley, Dominik said “it’s directly given him a GOT vibes”. Not to forget the iconic scene of the series, if someone who doesn’t watch knew it, it does meant something 🙂 None other than the famous “Walk of Shame”. I guarantee you will find it, there where most tourist are!

We tried to familiarize our way through the Old Town first. Where does this path leads to etc until we found the beautiful corner near the Port area. The view of the boats parked + lights on the walls make it looks magestic.

You can’t really change what stunning hey? That area looks dazzling day and night time. We bought a Dubrovnik Pass (40 Euro) had one main target in mind: City Wall (the entrance itself 40 Euro). Will I be satisfied only with breakeven? No way in hell #Haben wir es schon bezahlt! Was kann man noch sehen? let’s tick it one by one and boy oh boy we did!

I didn’t want to be on the City Wall during midday, we unraveled what Dubrovnik Pass has to offer, such as: Rector’s Palace + Dubrovnik Natural History Museum + Friars Minor Franciscan Monastery Museum + Archeological exhibition ~ where I sat in the kids corner to “dig” some archeological stones.

Around 15:30, it’s about time to visit the City Wall, one more Museum to check: Maritime Museum. Little that we know, it’s connected the entrance to the City Wall. It reminds me of Great Wall of China. Take some water please, there was no shade.

Unless of course, the whole wall takes only about 1,5 hours max to walk haha in the end it’s not really like Great Wall of China 😉

Last spot on the Dubrovnik Pass of the day was Lovrjenac Fortress. Where? up the stairs, my oh my. I have no Lust for pictures. The entrance without the Pass is 15 Euro, in conclusion: get yourself the Pass! #Money wins 😀

Are we content with all the stones we seen? Noooo. It is not Marlyn if I don’t participate on Walking Tours. Our guide Antonia (Tonka) took us around the Old Town, which means I also got some behind the scenes theory of filming GOT.

What I like the most was how the HBO Productions supports the economy of Dubrovnik. It is extremely important to keep the secrecy, they didn’t want any spoiler to record them during filming so they need the locals who owns a restaurant / hotel to be closed. They paid them a big time a.k.a choose the highest earning per day then trippled it. They paid every house owner located on the “Walk of Shame” stairs to shut their windows for 3 days. Tonka explained there was a very smart grandma who kept coming back to his apartment during shooting, what did people do? They need to give her more money in exchange for her to not come close to the production area. Within those three days ~ rumours said the Grandma earned 1000 Euro, a phenomenal amount of money, talking back in year 2011.