Dubrovnik – Prapratno 61.25km 🚴♀️ 4.04.53 ⏱ 15.0km/hr ⬆️ 1040m ⬇️ 1140m
After saying goodbye again to Daphne and Ronald who wake up before we left, we carried the bikes and bags, with a little help from Ronald, up 75 stairs. One last wave 👋 and there we went. We had a little trouble leaving the city since Dubrovnik is the city of stairs, but in the end we made it to the main road alright. It was around 7.30 Sunday morning, so it wasn’t too busy. At least hardly any busses 🚌 and trucks 🚛. This was probably the only right time to cycle out of this overcrowded city.
We decided to cycle a little longer on the number 8 highway before taking secondary roads, saving ourselves about 200m of climbing. When we hit Trsteno we exited the road and stopped at a small bakery to get a sausage bread 🥖 for Suuz and an Apfel strudel for Mas.
Going off the main road means going UP. It was nice though. The first bit was really smooth, there was hardly any other traffic on the road and the view was absolutely amazing. Without knowing it we killed quite some meters of climbing. We were sweating all over, but there was a bee 🐝 who didn’t mind sweaty and flew in Mas her eye. She threw of her sunglasses 🕶 so the bee could escape. Suuz was behind to pick them up so all was good.
Just after Majkovi there was a sweet downhill all the way to Slano. From here the next climb started straight away. We still followed a secondary road, the main road looked busy from where we could see it. When we took a break to eat some gummy bears 🐻 a woman in an old Fiat Panda 🐼 stuffed to the brim with foldable chairs stopped to tell us we were doing great. And yes we were!!
From our break spot we could already see the road go up on the other side of the mountain. Also, some dark clouds were dooming above the mountain ⛰ so we were a little scared rain and thunderstorms ⛈ would hit us, but yeah, we had to go in that direction. The beloved 10% incline signs showed up again, but those don’t really bother us anymore. It’s the 20% hills that scare us, but those apparently don’t merit a traffic sign.
Anyway, we cycled up and up and just when we thought we were there it was up a little more. The sky was amazing, a little frightening but amazing ⛈🌪💨.
From the top it was all the way down to Doli. We did not expect a nice village where we are offered a cold beverage to comfort us. Since we are in Croatia it is really hard to find a spot to stop for a drink cause there just aren’t many places to go to. So no cold drinks, but we did get a nicely paved cycle path all the way to Ston.
Ston is a small town on the island of Peljesac (pel je zak) with its own castle and a huge wall going into the mountains ⛰. In addition to its castle 🏰 Ston is famous for oysters. We didn’t have those for lunch, instead we had a Croatian tosti, half of which Suuz fed to the tiny little kitten 😻that was running around on the terrace of the restaurant.
After Ston it was only four more kilometres to the campground we had planned on going too. It was situated right by the ocean 🌊 so the last bit was down hill 10%. That will be a great start tomorrow!
We set up the tent and went to the beach 🏖 for a swim 🏊♂️. It was a little busy, there were no beach beds, there was no shady spot. We have been so spoiled over the past few weeks with great, quiet beaches and comfortable beds in the shade. After a quick dip we left, took a cold shower and asked the Bella Vista restaurant Suuz had spotted 1km uphill to come pick us up (it is a service they provide). We spend a few hours at the restaurant playing games and eating a tasty platter of seafood 🐟 🦐.
Back at the campground we watched a show in the hot and sticky tent ⛺️ and tried to sleep. Great success! Only it was not. ❌😴
