The Voice of Dubrovnik’s weekly review

This is the Voice of Dubrovnik’s weekly review powered by The Dubrovnik Times.

Under the command of Captain Marc Masse the first MSC cruise ship for this season arrived at the Port of Dubrovnik this week on Tuesday. MSC Magnifica, with a crew of 1,000 and carrying 2,400 passengers, docked in Dubrovnik. This mega cruise ship will arrive in Dubrovnik every Friday, and from the 26th of May the cruise ship MSC Sinfonia will also start to arrive every Thursday. It is expected that MSC Cruises will achieve 60 arrivals in Dubrovnik in 2016 and bring a total of 180,000 passengers. The season, this year, will close in early November with the last sailing of MSC Magnifica. In addition to Dubrovnik, MSC Sinfonia will sail to Split on Sundays and bring a total of 50,000 passengers on 20 different arrivals.

The flights between Dubrovnik and Tehran that were due to take place from the 18th of March have been cancelled. The airline Limitless Airways had planned to operate a total of nine flights between Dubrovnik and the Iranian capital from the 18th of March till the 1st of April, however all these flights have been cancelled. According to a report by the specialised aviation website Ex-Yu Aviation there has been no official reason from the airline for the cancellation of these flights, a statement simply read that they had been stopped because of “administrative reasons.” Qeshm Airlines is operating flights to the Serbian capital, Belgrade Airport, and the first of these landed last week. However this was a one off charter flight.

Dubrovnik choked on Wednesday under a thick fog of orange as south winds blew up sands from the Sahara. The historic old city was invisible from the observation points, cars and buildings turned an orange hue and the seas were crashing against the rocks. “In my sixty years of living in Dubrovnik I have never experienced anything like this before,” explained a local resident to The Dubrovnik Times. “Let’s just hope that it doesn’t start to rain as the whole city will be covered in sand,” he added. Gale force southerly winds blew overnight on Wednesday and brought with them a thick blanket of sand. Residents woke to find their cars completely covered in yellow, sandy blotches. And during the morning on Wednesday the wind picked up and made conditions even worse, residents and tourists could be seen shielding their faces and covering their mouths to avoid getting a lungful of sand.

The tourism season in Dubrovnik looks set to start with a boom! According to information from the Dubrovnik Tourist Board around 6,000 foreign tourists will arrive in the city for what is considered the traditional beginning of the season, Easter. Tourists from the UK, Spain, the US and South Korea are expected to be the most numerous in Dubrovnik over the Easter holidays. Many airlines start their flights to the city at Easter and Iberia, Vueling, Eurowings, Finnair, AirLingus, Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Norwegian Airlines and easyJet will all arrive this weekend. The winter hibernation is over for many of the city’s hotels, restaurants and travel organisations, cruise ships have already started docking and the old city is already relatively busy.

The historic city of Dubrovnik is slowly getting ready for the summer season, the film crews have gone home, at least for now, and the first cruise ships have arrived. And, just in time, the temporary wooden bridge on the Pile entrance was removed this week, revealing a shiny new wooden bridge. The temporary bridge was installed in early February whilst work on the bridge began. It wasn’t without its critics, as the pontoon style bridge has steep steps on both sides and proved mission impossible for prams, wheelchairs and citizens carrying shopping bags. This week the situation returned to normal, status quo, when the pontoon bridge was removed and the new, wooden bridge unveiled. The secretary of the Friends of Dubrovnik Antiquities, Niko Kapetanic, the organisation that controls and cares for the Dubrovnik City Walls, reported that after the removal of the temporary bridge the work on the lower sides of the entrance walls will continue.

The power of Facebook is really unbelievable sometimes! Anne Mikaela Levine from Finland posted an old memory from Dubrovnik, trying to find a little girl that was with her on a photo. Thirty-years ago Anne had obviously spent a family holiday in Dubrovnik and sat for a minute on the stone base on a statute in a square. Just as the camera clicked to record the family holiday a young, local girl joined in, for a moment they were friends. ''Testing the power of Facebook. Dubrovnik, old town, 1984. Who is the girl, who became my best friend for a moment in time? Can you help me find her? Please share!'', Levine wrote on her Facebook profile and soon this post had gone viral and was all over the Facebook. After more than hundred shares the girl, now a lady, appeared in comments. ''Lovely photo, it’s taken near my home, so nice memory from Dubrovnik market (Placa) in a front of Ivan Gundulic monument, I’m so happy!!!'', wrote Zore Vukanović, who recognised herself on the photo after the local website shared this post. Adding that “Next time when you come to Dubrovnik hope we will take photo at the same place.”

What’s on…

On Monday there will be an Easter concert by the Sorkočević Quartet. The concert starts at 9 pm in the St Saviour's Church.

On Wednesday the music continues with a concert by the Dubrovnik String Quartet. The venue is again the St Saviour's Church and the concert starts at 9pm.

And on Saturday at 11am in front of the St. Blaise Church the traditional festival of oysters will be held.