Dubrovnik has rebuilt itself in the last 20 years, repairing most of the damage from the Homeland War while leaving shrapnel marks in the walls of churches and other buildings as a reminder. I was concerned we’d be charmed-out after Zadar, Split and Hvar but I needn’t have worried. The minute we walked through the main gate, we were transported back in time. I’m not a Game of Thrones fan but scenes are shot here and I doubt they had to do much to dress it up.

It is like the planners used the wall as a belt around the city and cinched it up to jumble all the houses together tightly. The UNESCO rules are strict but they pay off by limiting the excessive touristy elements and keeping the city uniform with light stone walls, terracotta half-pipe shingled roofs and dark green shutters.

During the day you have to avoid the hordes of cruise ship and bus tour people who, by their sheer number, chase you down the narrow, stepped streets like the bulls in Pamplona. I’m still most partial to simply walking around and soaking up the atmosphere. While this is enjoyable at street level, it is breathtaking up on top of Dubrovnik’s city walls. For a fee, you can meander around the perimeter for what is billed as an hour’s walk but stretches to two when you stop every few feet to snap pictures. The many stairs up and down and up and up again have something to do with that too. You look out over the beautiful turquoise and deep blue of the Adriatic and in on the inner courtyards and bougainvillea of hidden Dubrovnik.

Tourism is clearly the primary economic driver and never is it more obvious in the choice of music that permeates the area from restaurants and terraces and shops. There are jazz trios, string quartets and the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra playing a concert, while others blare Rod Stewart. We had our own lounge singer each night, wafting up from the restaurant directly below our attic Airbnb. We heard the pianist/singer’s full repertoire of The Entertainer, Memory, Windmills of my Mind, New York New York and Somewhere Over the Rainbow a number of times. But my favourite was Nat King Cole’s L-O-V-E. While we butchered Croatian greetings in part due to our misunderstanding of how their Vs and Ws work, they clearly had the same trouble with ours. The Love song turned into:
L is for the “vay” you look at me
O is for the only “vun” I see
“We” is “wary, wary” extraordinary
E is even more than anyone that you
adore…

That’s Dubrovnik without question, wary wary extraordinary, even more than you can adore.