Having made critical comments about tourism in Eastern Europe, I have now started the real holiday section of my travels and, in effect, become a tourist myself. I dropped down from Cetinje (above) to Budva on the Dalmatian coast and then drove north-west,

taking the ferry across the Kotor inlet, before crossing the border from Montenegro into Croatia at Njivice, on the Prevlaka peninsula, a worthy wheeze communicated to me by a Cetinje taxi-driver. It proved a nice quiet crossing, getting me to the Dubrovnik airport in time to pick up my wife.

We have spent the weekend in Cavtat, a small harbour village which is a good indicator of the sophisticated development of the Croatian tourist industry, with dozens of good restaurants and one of the largest hotels in Croatia, the Hotel Croatia.

This concrete 5-star monstrosity dominates the headland overlooking Cavtat, with hundreds of rooms looking out to sea. Although the published rate for a room is over £100 a night, Thomsons and other tour operators offer weeks here at a fraction of the price, and most punters give it a good write-up, even though it looks a bit like staying in an airport terminal, albeit with a spectacular view.

Most holidaymakers here like the place and many are on return visits, including some we met crossing to Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is a 45-minute ferry ride across the bay, and the frequent ferries certainly pack them in.

 

Dubrovnik – the so-called pearl of the Adriatic – is every bit as photogenic as reputed, and fully recovered from the ravages of war, just as it has rebuilt in previous centuries following earthquakes. It has a good range of museums, for which a combined ticket costs 100 kuna (around £10), though this does not include the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries.

The archaeological museum, inside the Fort Revelin, the north-east corner of this still walled city, displays beautiful fragments of 9th century carved limestone, which fails to attract the crowds which throng the central plaza and main pedestrianised walkway of the Stradun. They are busier deciding which restaurant to patronise for lunch and, like most tourist destinations, the oversupply of such establishments means young men and women touting for business from the passing crowd.

 

You can walk the walls, at a price and only in an anti-clockwise direction (despite the Lonely Planet guide saying it is clockwise). The clock tower contains life-size bronze bell-ringers, named the Jacks, which are more recent replicas of these two originals, now housed here in the extensive museum in the former Rector’s Palace.

 

Yes these are the urinals in the Rector’s Palace, cunningly disguised with bin liners, to indicate that they are out of order. These are not the first I have found so beautifully garnished, so – despite generally high standards of bathroom fixtures and plumbing, with the footprint toilets I remember from 1968 long gone – there is clearly a problem with adequate maintenance. Maybe all the competent plumbers have relocated to better jobs elsewhere in the EU.

 

That said, there is still some serious money around. Cavtat harbour hosts a bevy of millionaire yachts, some from the Caribbean, but obviously some with more local roots. This weekend, they come from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, with this subtly named floating fornicatorium all too typical:

But I believe this astonishing 21st century 3-masted schooner, spotted sailing out of Dubrovnik harbour, is more locally flagged, and reflective of the fact that Croatia was the first of the former Yugoslav republics to go independent, putting them ahead in the East European race to a competitive market economy and increasingly successful at attracting the tourist euros.

 

One thing the Croats are clearly good at is massage. Today, both my wife and I took advantage of a beachside massage which the excellent trained Zagreb masseur, Miljenko, runs each summer for three and a half months. My muscles have not had such a workout in years, and I feel better for it. Your body needs to relax! his leaflets exclaim, and I intend to take his advice.

 

This has been a good stop, certainly better than staying in Dubrovnik itself, which really is in thrall to the tourist and can get overrun when the cruise ships are in. Although the food and wine are generally good in the Croatian littoral, and the service pleasant, it is far from uniformly efficient, with it sometime seeming like an eternity before the waiter’s return. Tomorrow we return to Montenegro to compare notes.