Dubrovnik on film

It turns out, for some reason, I never posted the film photos I took last year in Dubrovnik. It was a beautiful time and a beautiful town, despite the billions of tourists and the number of cruise ships that came into the port every single day. Besides, I love 35mm film. I like how it turns 21st century trips into 90s holidays, how it gives a slightly different perspective on a place and how often the picture is a completely different angle to what I’d take with my digital camera.

Sometimes the pictures come out a bit grey-brown and you just have to shrug and say “Well, they’re not all going to work” but this batch came out pretty well. Of course, it was nice and sunny and hot – in a good way, not in this sweltering way we’ve been enduring in the UK lately – and so all the pictures have come out with a lovely contrast between bright blue and a kind of reddish-beige.

Blue sky over yellow-white stone buildings. The big one to the right is Dubrovnik's Baroque-style cathedral.

The first time I thought to get my camera out, after I’d spent an entire day kayaking the Elafiti Islands and half a day strolling around the Old Town getting hot and sweaty. This is Dubrovnik’s Cathedral. Baroque is not an architectural style I have any interest in at all but I like cathedrals and I’d very much have liked to see inside if it had been open, which it wasn’t.

A view of a street as seen from the shade of a canopy over a pavement bar.

This is how late in the day it was – I’d already walked around Dubrovnik until I was so hot I needed to find a cafe with shade to sit and drink, and astounded the waiter by requesting two Sprites despite only being one person. I was right that I wanted more than one but it was such an effort getting to the bottom of the second one.

A narrow street, high up on the hill so that you can see the other side of the hill opposite and rooftops in the middle. There are washing lines strung across the street and washing hanging from them.

Dubrovnik’s Old Town is a bit of a tourist theme park but it’s surprisingly easy to get away and suddenly you’re in a maze of narrow streets, climbing steeply up the hill, criss-crossing, occasional views through the famous walls out to the blue, blue Adriatic. This is a very traditionally Mediterranean scene, I think – locals rather than tourists hanging their washing above the narrow streets.

A tall, starkly bare brick wall rising up. In front of it is a park with dusty paths and green hedges and trees.

Those are walls you don’t want to try to besiege, aren’t they? I didn’t do the wall tour – was it too expensive, too busy, too hot or a mix of the three? I wish I had.

A nice shallow sheltered bay, with a huge bastion sticking out of the city walls on the left and a fairly substantial building perched precariously on a limestone outcrop on the other side.

This was a popular spot for swimming, being positioned between the city’s main entrance and the busy area where the buses drop off. Again, I’d have liked to swim but 1) I don’t think I’d brought my swimming stuff 2) even I draw the line at getting changed in quite such a public place 3) I didn’t have any way of keeping my stuff safe while I was in the water. Don’t worry, I found a beach a day or two later and put everything in two drybags to take out with me.

A very blue, even on 35mm film, bay with a low harbour wall enclosing the far side and the port part of Dubrovnik across the water.

Here’s where I swam! This is a bit of a pain to get to; it’s on the opposite side of the port of Dubrovnik, where I was staying and I could almost see it from my apartment. Well, I could see the cruise ships from my apartment and I could see the cruise ships from this bay. But it took a long bus ride and then a 20-minute walk through a campsite/holiday park to get down here.

The wide arc of the round bay, now from the other side with the shingle beach visible and the trees behind it.

I hesitate to call this place a beach club, because I understand beach clubs are quite exclusive and expensive and no one paid a penny to enter, but it felt more like a beach club than just a beach. It had sunloungers and tables under shady nets and cafes and music playing, and none of those things would make it feel like a beach club if it was in Bournemouth but somehow it did here. Beautiful water, a little colder than I expected.

A big storm cloud blows up over the port of Dubrovnik, as seen from the city end. I'm staying in an apartment somewhere on the hill on the right.

A picture of the port, which is where I was staying, just after I got off the bus. My apartment is somewhere about halfway up the hill on the left. Even with a storm cloud coming overhead, the water is a pretty good shade of blue still.

The port now from the side as I walk back. The storm cloud is mostly off camera and the bit of sky over the water is bright blue, turning the water bright blue. Opposite is a square stone house with a terracotta roof. It all looks very Mediterranean and very summery.

This feels like the pictorial definition of “Mediterranean summer” – the turquoise water, the blue sky, the stone house with the terracotta roof opposite, the leisure yachts moored along the side of the port.

A long flight of stairs running from the upper level of the hills down to sea level. There are stone walls on each side and on the right, near the camera, is a mass of pink flowers.

This is my hike down to the sea every day. Whatever I wanted to do, whether it was a 9am kayaking trip, a run down to the supermarket or getting the bus to the Old Town, I had to tackle these stairs – and then I had to come back up them later on!

The view from my apartment's terrace, over neighbouring roofs. In the distance, just before the mountains dive down to the sea, you can see Dubrovnik's pointy bridge. The storm cloud is still hovering overhead.

This is the view from my apartment. Photos never quite capture the reality – I could see the cruise ships moored at the port quite easily whereas I struggle to figure out where they’re even supposed to be here. The white pyramid of the bridge that joins Dubrovnik to the mountain road on the other side of the inlet is also a lot more obvious in real life, and often lit up in pretty colours at night.

A view of the open sea from behind the walls on the seaward side of Dubrovnik's Old Town, with the coastline sloping steeply down into the water on the left.

I found a gate out of the Old Town. Of course, there generally isn’t anywhere to go but into the water but nonetheless, it’s very pretty and I kept entertaining hopes of finding somewhere suitable to swim.

Me, wearing a flowery dress and an absurdly big pink straw hat, on the edge of the sea.

And here I am just around the corner, having scrambled over that concrete jetty in sandals to find a swimming spot, taking a selfie with this absurd pink straw hat, which I wore to the beach just the night before last, because I love a silly hat.

The residential non-touristy part of Dubrovnik south of the Old Town, laid out on the hillside with the sea at its foot.

This is really the bit of Dubrovnik that the tourists don’t get at, this bit south of the Old Town, where buildings in Mediterranean colours cluster on a hillside with unmatched sea views. Nice.

The harbour behind the Old Town, a very neat square place where all the buildings except the ancient walls look clean and sharply-angled.

And finally, Dubrovnik’s other port, the one nestled against the Old Town. This is where I took my night pirate ship from, which helpfully brought me back to the port where I was staying. I appreciate that a lot of Dubrovnik was severely damaged in 1991 and subsequently rebuilt, so maybe that’s why, but everything about this port looks very new and clean and all the lines and angles are sharp and straight.

And that’s my trip to Dubrovnik through film photos! I think the next batch will probably be in September if I remember to take lots of photos of my road trip around Iceland – bit of a contrast to Croatia!