Up too early in Croatia

The long walk to the old city.

Grey skies, grey water, grey walls.

We had the streets of the old city to ourselves. 

There is no easy way to get from Budapest to Dubrovnik. No direct planes, no trains, just a bus. 

The bus only runs on Fridays during the summer. It winds its lazy way through Hungary into Croatia, all the way around most of Bosnia, which juts into most of Croatia. It labours up and down switchbacks along a coastal road from Split to Dubrovnik, where it scheduled to stop after 14 hours of driving time. In this part of Europe a bus does not stop if it can go further; this bus was continuing to Montenegro.

It was the only affordable way my sister and I could find that either didn’t cost a King’s Landing's ransom or require so many connections that the trip might be mistaken for a road trip on the Spanish Road.

The upside? Well, it was an overnight bus, so we managed to sleep a bit  – after we read until the lights went out and burnt out the batteries of our iPods – over the 12 hours (that's right, we were two hours early, which is a huge difference when you're folded up like a pretzel on a Balkan bus).

Left at the bus station all groggily-eyed at 5am in the morning on a Saturday, we decided to shake a leg and walk off our bus leg cramps.

Aside from us, the only people on the streets were garbage men and a slurry, stumbly couple in night club clothes. Then we saw another night clubber in full zombie mode, alternating between zig zagging into the street and leaning/riding along the fence.

We turned a corner and found the source of the late/early party-ers: a club just outside the wall. It was closing and disgorging the last few stragglers into the streets to greet the rising sun, look for a kebab stand, and, from the sounds of things, try to continue the party.

Zombies of Dubrovnik. All they want is a party and some kebab.

Our hostel’s office did not open until 8am, so we took that time to wander around the old city with the streets to ourselves. At this point, chairs and tables at some of the restaurants were being laid out on the main drag, but the side streets were quiet and deserted. We had no idea what a treat this is until we were shoulder to shoulder in the same streets later in the day.

We had breakfast at one of the only places actually open and went to the hostel office only to find out our room wouldn’t be ready until 12pm. So, we walked the city wall. We pretty much had that to ourselves too.

The morning light was great and it wasn’t yet too hot to linger in the sun to take in the views. Here again was a treat that we enjoyed but didn’t really grasp how special it was to be one of few on the wall – it was us and a bunch of early-rising seniors – until we saw the crowds trundling along the top later the same day.

This is the third overnight gypsy bus ride I’ve taken somewhere and I don’t regret any of them. In return for losing a bit of sleep you see Dubrovnik in this way, or the canals of Venice slowly come alive or dawn in the Balkan Mountains on the road to Sofia – things any sane, or sober, person on vacation would not usually see.