Power Is Power

I'll start this post with what may seem like a stupid statement: I'm not sure we end up in Croatia in 2023 without having watched HBO's series Game of Thrones.

It sounds stupid, right? Croatia is this picturesque, coastal country right on the Adriatic Sea with the most gorgeous crystal-clear blue-green waters and spectacular historic cities and we are there because we watched some television show. The food is incredible. The people are amazing. The weather is idyllic. The cost of living (or tourist life, I guess) is super affordable and we are there because of some fantasy show that broadcast altogether too few episodes over too long a period of time. 

It's true!

There are a lot of motivators behind our choice of travel destinations. Family. History. Culture. Food. Wildlife. Architecture. Spirituality. Connections with different types of people. Epic walks. The outdoors. I could go on and on and on. For Croatia, it was Game of Thrones. At least that's where it started.

Stupid. You can go ahead and think it. Or say it even.

Dubrovnik's Fort Lovrijenac.

Now to be fair here, 30 years ago Croatia was at war over its secession from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and nobody wants to go to a country either at war or recovering from a war and sometimes these thoughts stick. But 30 years ago is a long, long time and recovery and stability can occur within a span of time way shorter than that pretty quickly. Croatia was poised for success as a tourist magnet along the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Its coastline is no different than those of Greece and Italy and France and Spain. It just needed to separate from the rest of Yugoslavia to realize its full potential. Unfortunately, that took a war and an eventual recovery. 

Ultimately, it took Game of Thrones to turn our attention to Croatia. Good thing we watched Game of Thrones. Croatia was a revelation. 

I do think it's peculiar, by the way, that we visited not one, but two (Rwanda - which I did not blog about), countries this year that were involved in some sort of civil war or conflict with allegations of genocide in the 1990s. It's scary how quickly things can change. In the case of Croatia and Rwanda, things are much, much better than they were 30 years ago. But there are other places where the opposite is true.

View from Klis Fortress looking back down towards Split.

When we first started looking seriously at Croatia as a destination, we focused on the historic city of Dubrovnik, which was adapted in Game of Thrones into King's Landing, the capital city of Westeros. Our intent was to stop the Game of Thrones stuff there, quickly seek out some sights in and around Dubrovnik where some scenes were filmed and then enjoy the rest of Dubrovnik for what it is today: a city filled with history and culture and character. 

It became apparent pretty quickly that Dubrovnik wasn't going to keep us busy for more than a half a week. That would mean we'd need to find someplace else in Croatia to keep us occupied, either as a day trip or as a separate overnight stay. Eventually, we found Split, a city a couple of hundred kilometers up Croatia's coast which was founded with the construction of the retirement palace for the Roman Emperor Diocletian. And lo and behold, scenes in Game of Thrones were filmed in Split, too.

Split. Dubrovnik. It had to be Game of Thrones tour time. HAD to be! And yes, we took two GoT tours on this trip, one in Dubrovnik and one in Split. Never accuse us of doing anything halfway. See Vienna if you doubt me.

Dubrovnik at night, looking north from the steps outside St. Ignatius' Church.

So we've been here before. Northern Ireland. 2019. Call it our first Game of Thrones pilgrimage (I think Croatia will likely be our last...). We spent a day with one of the extras in the show tracking down random locations where the series was filmed that we never would have thought of going on our own. We committed to the mission. We wore cloaks. We answered trivia questions. We brandished swords. It was an awesome fun day out. 

That was not our Croatia experience. It wasn't better. It wasn't worse. It was just different. No cloaks. No swords. No random locations. In Northern Ireland, we went where we were taken. In Croatia, we used our GoT tours to get to some places we wanted to go which would have been difficult to get to on our own. Yes, we wanted to see spots where dragons breathed fire or where slave masters were killed or where plots were hatched, but we also wanted to get out of town in Split and Dubrovnik. Our Game of Thrones tours both did that for us.

When we started planning our Croatia jaunt, we found hotels right in the heart of (or just outside) the historic city centers of both places. In Split, that would put us right in the middle of what used to be Diocletian's Palace. In Dubrovnik, we'd be a five minute walk to the Pile Gate at the west side of the city. Couldn't get any better locations. We'd get a ride from the airport (in Split) or the ferry terminal (in Dubrovnik) and be close to most everything we wanted to see. No fuss, no how-do-we-get-to-the-city, no car, just a walk away.

And yes...MOST everything. We had a couple of other spots on our list in the Klis Fortress (outside Split) and the Trsteno Arboretum (outside Dubrovnik) that we wouldn't be able to get to unless we got a taxi and had the driver wait or we spent a lot of time on buses to more buses and then waiting for return buses. Lucky for us, Klis Fortress became the city of Meereen in GoT and the Trsteno Arboretum was the gardens of the palace at Kings Landing in the series. Let's just knock these both out by booking a GoT in each spot and there will be no public transportation logistics to coordinate and we'd get to see where some of our favorite scenes in the series were shot.

So that's what we did.

Our GoT guide in Split, Luka, showing us where the dragons were kept in Mereen.

For me on these two tours, the best places inside the cities that we visited were Fort Lovrijenac, the 11th century fort that sits just west of the city of Dubrovnik, and the substructures of Diocletian's Palace (which later became Split), built to both support the private quarters above for the former emperor and to keep food preserved as long as possible in a relatively cool environment. 

Fort Lovrijenac was built specifically to defend Dubrovnik from attacks either by land or sea from the west of the city. Walking around the Fort today, it is completely believable that in the event of an attack, you'd be safer in that place than anywhere else in the vicinity. It's is an absolute giant of a compound that seems impenetrable from all sides and is accessible from a single point that is easily defended. This place, combined with the thick wall that snakes all around the city itself, were the keystones to the defense of Dubrovnik. It does not take long to explore Fort Lovrijenac. You can definitely get the sense of what happened there pretty quickly. But the walk itself down to the place and back to the city is definitely worth the effort as well. We for sure got the best views of the entirety of Dubrovnik from the Fort.

In Split, the substructures of Diocletian's Palace were the only piece of the place we did not explore on our own (meaning without a GoT tour) but we could have. The underground spaces are so atmospheric. They have an authenticity about them that can only really come from places that are actually authentic. The feeling we got when we walked through the Iron Gate at the south wall of Split when we got to the city just kept happening again and again and again in the substructures. They are a fantastic achievement of engineering to be still standing as constructed a full 1,700 years plus after they were first constructed. 

Our Dubrovnik GoT guide, Daniela, showing us around the Red Keep.

So, of course, since we are on a Game of Thrones tour in both places, we are following a guide (Luka in Split; Daniela in Dubrovnik) holding a notebook with stills from the series to show us what the places looked like on television vs. how we see them today. I know...it's corny and a little stupid but there is something genuinely exciting about being somewhere that such an iconic television experience was created.

So...here goes some of the nerdy stuff.

The substructures of Diocletian's Palace were used to represent the dungeons or cellars (not sure which) of the city of Meereen, a city with three giant pyramids (added by CGI) with an economy built on and driven by slavery that was conquered by Daenerys Targaryen who subsequently freed the slaves held by the rich masters. Two of Daenerys' three dragons, after a couple of shall we say...unfortunate incidents with the third dragon, were confined to the cellars of the city. Or in real life, the substructures of Diocletian's Palace. And sure enough, we were clearly right there where Tyrion Lannister freed the two dragons from their restraints in Season 6, Episode 2. Obviously without the actual dragons, since you know...they don't exist.

According to Luka, they filmed more than 200 scenes in the substructures but used very few. I believe it. There's not a whole lot of footage of this place necessary.

Fort Lovrijenac was primarily used to represent the Red Keep in Kings Landing, the ultimate defensive inner sanctuary for the royal family, but there were so many more scenes filmed there. One of my favorite scenes in the whole series is the "power is power" conversation between Petyr Baelish (a whorehouse owner who somehow has enough clout to be on the King's Small Council) and Queen Cersei Lannister (Season 2, Episode 1 if you must know). And sure enough, with a doubt, that conversation was had in the courtyard of Fort Lovrijenac, with any sort of Catholic iconography or baptismal fonts erased from reality. I'm not going to go so far as to claim that this is goosebumps type stuff (I'm not that into this) but I'll just say pretty cool to have been there.

In the streets of Mereen where the slave masters were killed. Uh...I mean...Split. Of course.

There are a whole lot of other spots in both Split and Dubrovnik where you can discover the actual places where Game of Thrones was filmed, from the alleys in Split where some of the slave masters were killed; to the dock outside of Dubrovnik where character after character after character set sail for wherever; to Cersei Lannister's walk of shame through the city of Kings Landing. This last one is probably the most famous and celebrated scene in the series for people to check out in Dubrovnik.

Two things about this last one. First, the producers of the series wanted to have this scene filmed at the side door of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary but the local leaders of the Catholic church wouldn't allow a scene with a naked woman to be filmed on their doorstep so they moved the location to the steps outside the Church of St. Ignatius. Second, there are a bar and restaurant at the bottom of the first set of steps where you can get all sorts of shame-themed dishes and drinks. We didn't try them so no endorsement coming on that one.

This series, by the way, seriously disrupted life (and tourism) in these two cities. Fort Lovrijenac was closed for an entire month during on sequence of filming and the entire city of Split inside Diocletian's Palace was closed while the series was being filmed there. Can you imagine showing up on vacation to either of these places and finding significant portions of both cities off limits? 

If you are wondering about loss of income for merchants and restaurants and hotels, apparently HBO covered their expected revenue and more. 

Shame burger or cocktail, anyone (top)? Checking out where Bron trained Jaime to fight left-handed (bottom).

But these GoT tours weren't about seeing stuff we could have walked to from our hotels, right? Let's talk Trsteno Arboretum and Klis Fortress.

For me, Trsteno Arboretum was a bit disappointing. Maybe it was because it was at the end of a long-ish tour or maybe it was because we were focused on the place as a setting for Game of Thrones, but I didn't get a whole lot out of this visit. The drive up the coast is gorgeous but ultimately, it's a garden without a whole lot to discover from my perspective. The plaza along the coast where Bron trained Jaime Lannister to fight left-handed (after his right hand was dispatched with a big knife) was the highlight for me.

But Klis Fortress was awesome.

Occupation of the piece of land where the current Klis Fortress stands dates back to before the time of Christ but construction of something resembling what we might see as a stone fort today dates from the ninth century. The current manifestation of the Fortress was built in the 18th century when that part of Croatia was under Venetian rule. The location of the Fortress is about as spectacular as you can get: it sits on an absolute sliver of a piece of rock high above the neighboring land. The walls behind walls of the Fortress are perched along a knife edge thin length of solid rock with sides of cliffs below the walls that are almost sheer vertical. 

It sits immediately above the town of Klis and has served as a refuge for the population of the town and Croatian rulers in that part of the country for centuries. It seems impenetrable but it has, at a few points in its history, been taken by an enemy, most notably by the Ottoman Empire in the year 1537 (it took the Croatians 111 years to re-take it from the Ottomans in what I assume was not a continuous effort).

I can't imagine how hopeless attacking this Fortress would have been. It's difficult work walking uphill in shorts, a t-shirt and my Skechers. I can't imagine assaulting the place in metal armor with a helmet and heavy weapons while the defenders repel you from above. The layers of defense are obvious and I am sure daunting to an attacking force. Get past the first walls and the defenders of the Fortress would just move back behind the second wall. Then past the third once that layer had been conquered.

There's not a whole lot of context to what you are walking past when you get to the Fortress itself so I was happy to have Luka with us to tell us about the history of the place and guide us all the way to the top of the hill while stopping here and there to tell us some Game of Thrones anecdotes. The top is definitely the highlight. There's a small church (shown below) up there that was a converted mosque built by the Ottomans upon the ruins of the original church that they destroyed when they conquered Klis in 1537.

Of all the places we traveled to see filming locations on our two GoT tours, I understood why they traveled all the way to Klis the least. It seems like such an effort to get a cast and crew and extras up to this place to film pieces of scenes using bits and pieces of this Fortress. Sure, it's an incredible location but the stills that Luka showed us made me wonder if they really couldn't have done these scenes in a studio somewhere. I mean, Meereen looks really nothing like Klis. Meereen is a gigantic place and Klis is decidedly not gigantic. It's actually pretty tiny. I can't imagine housing an army in that place for any length of time. 

Although I guess if faced with a choice of being somewhere altogether too small for comfort and being indiscriminately slaughtered by an invading army, I'm headed to Klis at the first opportunity.

We got about an hour at Klis Fortress. I'm sure it was not enough to get into everything there was to see at the place but I think we saw enough. We walked through the whole entrance sequence, visited the small museum of an armory on the property and visited the cell where prisoners were held (I can't imagine how cold that stone cell on top of that cliff was at night...) in addition to seeing the super spartan church at the top of the Fortress. We also got one surprise in the parking lot, an exposed vertical face of textured rock that seemed to go on and on for a while and served as graphic inspiration for the wall at the north of the north in Game of Thrones.

Standing where HBO actors stood (top) and the inspiration for a certain wall (bottom), Klis Fortress.

I don't know how exactly we would have made it out to Klis without signing up for a Game of Thrones tour. My hunch is we would have deemed it either too much trouble or too expensive to worry about and would have found something else to do in Split. And that would have been too bad, I think. I consider Klis an essential part of our Croatia memories and we wouldn't have done this in all likelihood without of GoT tour. It's a pretty amazing site even if it doesn't take a whole lot of time to walk the entire place. They apparently have evening dramatic performances up there in the summer. There's a small stage with about maybe 50 or 60 seats set up. I bet the view at night is spectacular.

Before I close blogging about Game of Thrones (probably forever...) there are a couple of other spots in and around Split or Dubrovnik to get your fantasy fix. 

There's a small Game of Thrones museum in Split which is all of four rooms big and is probably not worth the €14.50 we paid for admission. It's mostly filled with props (some of which, like an authentic shutter used to cover modern windows, are very underwhelming) and dioramas and costumes and maybe one or two Funko Pops. Enter at your own risk. We're not sorry we went but I also feel we could have skipped easily.

There's also a Game of Thrones exhibit on the island of Lokrum off the coast of Dubrovnik. The place was used as the setting for the city of Qarth and it's about a 10 or 15 minute boat ride from the old Dubrovnik harbor on the east side of the city. Lokrum is worth the trip regardless of any sort of GoT attraction. There are hiking trails and insane amount of peacocks over there. There's also a replica of the Iron Throne. And who can resist getting a picture taken when faced with a replica of that thing.

That's enough Game of Thrones stuff for this trip. Valar Morghulis. 

Thanks to Elite Travel for getting us to all these places.