The Dead Sea
The round salt lake โ the family's ideal swim.
Timur Voronkov โ Public domain ยท Pudelek (Marcin Szala) โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Diego Delso โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Pudelek (Marcin Szala) โ CC BY-SA 3.0
Half a day is the honest minimum (the full day truer in summer): monastery and gardens an hour, Dead Sea and swimming two, Fort Royal and the woods the rest. Carry water, hat and water shoes for the rocks โ and the peacocks are professional sandwich thieves: close your bag literally.
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Lokrum is Dubrovnik's floating garden: the green island ten boat minutes from the Old Port โ a complete nature reserve without car, hotel or overnight: pine and cypress woods, botanical gardens planted by Austria's Maximilian (before his fatal Mexican adventure), the peacocks he released still roaming free in their descendants โ rabbits hopping fearless among them. Its heart is a medieval Benedictine monastery in its gardens โ the Dead Sea a round salt lake fed through the rock: the family's ideal calm swim โ the southern rocks the brave's diving boards, and on the crest Napoleonic Fort Royal with the city seen from her own sea. Its famous rite is the monks' curse: expelled from their monastery (1798), they circled the island by night with inverted candles cursing its owners โ whose fates followed in drownings and killings (Maximilian himself shot in Mexico) until the island passed ownerless to the public: no one sleeps on it to this day โ the last boat leaves before sunset, and the island is surrendered to the peacocks.
The round salt lake โ the family's ideal swim.
Medieval, in Maximilian's gardens.
The city from her own sea, on the crest.
Lokrum (boat from the Old Port)