3D Trip 2022 Day 5 - Kings Landing Again
In 2012 we came to Dubrovnik on a cruise with my family and Game of Thrones had just finished airing its second season, the first it filmed in Dubrovnik. I remember on the tour of the city they had mentioned some of the actors being on location and how big of a deal it was for Dubrovnik. Fast forward a decade and there is Game of Thrones shops on every corner and maybe as many tours for the show as the history of the city. Being massive fans of the books and the show (including the last season) we booked a 2-hour tour for this morning. After waking up at 7: 30 we quickly got ready and went downstairs for breakfast.
After a quick bite to eat we made our way into Dubrovnik and met our group for the 2-hour Game of Thrones tour. One thing that immediately struck me was that they really only filmed the middle seasons of the show in Dubrovnik and even that was limited. Where Dubrovnik got lucky was that many of the show’s pivotal scenes, especially those that took place in King’s Landing happened in Dubrovnik. For two hours, we walked both in the city and outside to a nearby fortress to see several of the locations where they filmed the show. It was fun to be with other fans (many who have already started the prequel, House of the Dragon) and to see how they used the backdrop of Dubrovnik (and a lot of green screens) to bring the show to life. We were so fortunate that the weather stayed mild, making the two hours in the city very bearable. Although nothing about the tour blew us away we enjoyed it quite a bit and if we ever re-watch the show we’ll know exactly when it was filmed in Dubrovnik.
From the tour, we grabbed some water and a cappuccino and continued walking around town. Just as we were making our way out, we stumbled into a Christmas store where Jenn got a beautiful Dubrovnik ornament that will go perfectly with the rest of our collection and one day on a travel tree. From there we contemplated going on the cable car but by the time we got there, we decided against it, instead siding with more time at the beach.
We arrived at our hotel’s beach a little after 1 PM and for the next 3 hours, we laid around, enjoyed our books, and a Pina Colada and a beer. It was such a mild day out that we, of course, overestimated our skin’s ability to ward off sunburn, and by the time we arrived back in our room we knew we had stayed out a bit too long. But it was so worth it.
An hour later we arrived back in Dubrovnik in search of dinner. So many restaurants are closed on Mondays that we didn’t have one picked out (a rare move for us on trips) and so we spent an hour looking for the perfect spot. Even when we did land on Portun a highly rated restaurant we had our doubts. We started off with a mojito and a glass of white wine and shrimp ravioli to share. The wine was good and the mojito was fine but the ravioli was not good at all, chewy and bland. Unfortunately, our main courses didn’t improve much Jenn had the fish and I had the lamb shank and both were tasteless and bad. It was easily the worst meal we’ve had on the trip so far.
We left the restaurant completely bummed out from the bad meal and our spirits did a 180 when we got gelato. Jenn had cookies and cream and I had half snickers, half chocolate. That was exactly what the doctor ordered. We came back and our room was being turned down so we waited in the beautiful bar area on two Eames chairs (my dream chair) reminiscing on our day and upcoming adventures. The food may have been bad but the day was excellent.
