Good Or Shit: King's Landing

It’s the year 2014, umpteen years since the coming of the First Men; King Joffrey is dead; an even smaller boy king sits on the Iron Throne.

King’s Landing is busy. Its cobblestone streets are crowded, its beaches have no room for another pair of thongs, the whole place is heaving with ... tourists.

“If you’re going to spend the whole time we’re here, banging on about Game of fucking Thrones...” My friend threatens me over breakfast.

It’s our second day in Dubrovnik, easily Croatia’s most famous city and a popular tourist spot.

It’s not hard to see why; the place is magical. The city is built into the sides of imposing mountains that look out over the sparkling Adriatic. Forested islands dot the water as far as the eye can see. But after a sweeping look over the view, the eye is always drawn back to one thing – the dramatic white walls of the Old Town, with all its turrets, towers, and red tiled roofs mushroomed in between.

Dubrovik’s Old Town is considered one of the best preserved medieval walled cities in the world, its history layered with seafaring tales and brutal battles right up to the 1990s when if suffered heavy shelling during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Thanks to GRR Martin another layer has recently been added, albeit a mythical one.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the Red Keep,” I say, pointing to a fortress-type structure. My fellow nerd-sister ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ enthusiastically; the boys roll their eyes.

I’d been banging on about our trip to King’s Landing for weeks, even going so far as to send invoices to the accounts lady at work – another GoT fan – with the proclamation – “Off to King’s Landing next week, money would be ace.”

Since HBO shifted their set from Malta to Dubrovnik, it would not have been hard to guess that someone would be capitalising on it, so it didn’t take long to find the “exclusive” Game of Thrones Walking Tour. Three hours of exploring Dubrovnik’s GoT filming locations. What more could a girl want?

“Ninety euros each?!” one of the boys squawks. “No way. Nup. We’re not doing it.”

I try to pout but what’s the point? Even I’m not willing to pay $129 for a tour. Besides, what could they tell me that I couldn’t find on Google?

“This is Blackwater Bay,” I announce as we stand on a patio looking out over Pile Harbour. “And this is where the Lannisters were attacked by that angry mob,” I explain, as we descend the stairs inside the Old Town’s Pile Gate. When one of the friends suggests a day bike riding around the island of Lokrum, the conversation goes something like this:

“Lokrum, that big island, just there.”

“You mean Qarth.”

“No, it’s Lokrum.”

“I think you’ll find it’s the city of Qarth.”

“Are you going on about fucking Game of Thrones again?”

Two-and-half-kilometres along the coast lies an abandoned hotel. My friend has been there once before and he entertains us with urban legends about a wine cellar that’s never been uncovered and perhaps other treasures, but he leaves out the rumours about the unexploded grenades.

Walking on roads high above the sea we see the rusted pylons of an unknown structure jutting out of the trees. We head in that direction until an arched rusted gate tells us it’s Hotel Belvedere.

Built in the 80s, the hotel had a short life as a luxury hotel in a prime location before it was bombed during the siege of Dubrovnik.

It’s hard to describe just how colossal this structure is. Graffiti — English to Croatian, racist, to pro-skateboarding —covers every accessible surface.

We wander past the empty swimming pool and into the darkness of the hotel, wandering through its gloomy halls, peering into decrepit soot-covered rooms carpeted with burnt books; we duck under wires hanging from the ceiling, look out into courtyards while avoiding the jagged remains of the windows. Every step is accompanied by the crunch of broken glass. The stairwells smell like shit. This is horror and science fiction all at once. It’s The Shinning, it’s Alien, it’s –

“Just use your imagination, Liz.”

But even out here, away from the tourists, all roads lead to Westeros, including the one we are descending, looking for a private place to swim.

It is indisputable. Even without the CGI, with its floor painted in the colours of a Croatian soccer team, with the whole area’s obligatory scattering of hotel debris, it is definitely the amphitheatre where the Mountain took out the Viper.

And I just happen to have a big, bulky bald guy and a slender, bearded one at my disposal.

(Excuse the shaking, I was laughing so hard I almost wet myself).

On our last day in King’s Landing, one of the boys and I go down to Blackwater Bay and sit in the shadow of the Red Keep. Thick grey clouds roll across the sky and a rough sea splashes over the pier where Cersei had once stood to see Myrcella sail off to Dorne.

A tour group wanders down and lingers for a while. I notice a few of them are wearing basketball jerseys. House Stark and House Targaryen they say, above their relevant sigils. One of the girls is making other girls go out onto the pier to photograph them standing in the same position as Sansa and Shae do in the show.

As if you wouldn’t.