I know I said it in a previous post, but we’re not that good at touring cities. One marvelous, ancient church or museum tends to look like the other 20 marvelous ancient churches and museums nearby. Yes, the architecture is fascinating – especially considering the times during which they were built. But all that aside, when we’re living in a van not making any money (purposely!), touring cities can be a bit intimidating cost wise.

While on this adventure, we’ve done a pretty good job at not spending excess money, but every Kroner, Euro, Frank or Kuna gone means a little bit more of our savings is gone, meaning more unknowns lie ahead. As you can imagine, that can lead to some stressful and annoying conversations while considering which experiences we want to spend our money on. What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do? Do you want to do x or y? Well those will cost this much or this much. But then what do you want to do instead? I don’t really know. And the cycle goes on and on similar to that. This conversation pattern is part of the ups and downs of being long-term travelers and I’m unsure if there really is a way to solve that (first world) dilemma. Oh the hardships of not having to work and trying to have fun all the time! (Note: we will need to be working eventually, we just haven’t planned that part yet!) Being unemployed dirt-bag travelers isn’t always easy and I don’t want to fool anyone into thinking that Dustin and I are perfect and don’t have our moments of wanting to strangle each other! I’ll just leave this here. 

Queue the Game of Thrones theme song. Yesterday and today we were in Dubrovnik where many King’s Landings scenes were filmed. We arrived in the old town using the trusty lady in Dustin’s phone and found a parking lot our van would fit in. We made our way down to the old city where we found ourselves among too many people to genuinely enjoy the city. I know it was a Saturday, but we are into October now so we thought the crowds wouldn’t be so bad. After an hour, we were both kind of grumpy and having one of our, “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know where do you want to go?” conversations so we just decided to call it quits for the day. We were actually quite discontented with each other. It sounds kind of pathetic now that I write this. I admit it, it actually sounds pretentious. I don’t think we’re pretentious, we’re just discovering our strengths and our weaknesses while traveling and one of our weaknesses is, willingly going into tourist traps without a plan, even thought there are some exquisite tourist traps out there! We left. We quarreled about what we’d rather try or do. We agreed to try the city again with a plan.

Today we went in with a plan to park further away. Parking costs are a quarter of the

price for a 30 minute walk rather than a 5 minute walk (obviously). We just didn’t have that part planned out yesterday so when we found a spot in a busy city for a high-top van, we took it – and payed for it. We also planned at least 1 thing we wanted to do (walk along the top of the fortress wall) so that we didn’t start our, “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” squabble right away.

We triumphed today. The old city is visually stunning with the coast, the 16th century wall, and the castles. I’m just going to dump a bunch of pictures here now for you to enjoy because I feel like I’m rambling on now! We also lucked out today with overcast skies and less people.

 

Now, as I finish up this post, we found a little campground just south of the city. We are so close to Montenegro. Crossing that border will definitely be in our plans for tomorrow! We found our campground at a perfect time, as it started to thunderstorm right as we parked. We are charging our devices, blogging, freezing our ice for our cooler, taking warm showers, and catching up with friends and family using the lovely internet provided. Have a great day!