It’s absolutely unreal the sight of the walled off city jutting out into the Adriatic Sea surrounded by mountainous terrain. Long past its glory and prime, Dubrovnik used to be the center of a vast empire that rivaled even Venice.

Today, the city is perhaps most well-known for its role as the capital city in the HBO hit series Game of Thrones. Tourism to Croatia was steadily on the rise before the show, but the global series has boosted visitors to the city tenfold bringing in millions of people each year.

Any first-time visitor should begin with a walk around the city walls; the complete circuit measures over a mile. The city walls incorporate several fortresses, towers, and cannons. From high up on the walls you have perfect views over the old town and looking out across the glistening Adriatic Sea. Tours and activities can be found all over ranging from Game of Thrones tours, to historic walking tours, and as we are about to find out, jet skiing!

I knew from my research that water activities were a big thing in Croatia and thought it would be a unique way to see Dubrovnik from the water. The problem was finding available rentals. All the companies we looked at were completely sold out. We looked online, we checked in the tourism office, and we asked all the local vendors walking around selling tours if a last minute spot had opened up. Nothing.

We were starting to lose hope. While getting to see Dubrovnik was absolutely awesome and worth it, we thought having a jet ski around some old castle walls in the Mediterranean would be a cool pretty cool way to end the trip. As fate would have it, we did get our jet skis.

We were walking through the old town on our last day when we noticed a guy standing in the middle of the square looking very distraught. I mean this guy looked upset. He had a company shirt on and was holding a clipboard so we assumed he was working for a local travel company. We were kind of just wandering the streets when we decided to walk up and approach him.

“What’s going on” we said. “Anything we can do to help?” He looked up from his clipboard with a worried look on his face and told us that all his tour bookings had just cancelled a few minutes before they were scheduled to leave and he’s going to be out of pocket for the expense.

We chatted back and forth with him a few minutes as he told us the story and the position he was in. “Well, what tours were you selling” we asked. “Jet ski tours” he replied. Mmmmh interesting we all thought to ourselves. At this point we were all still pretty cash poor as I was building a travel business and my friends had just started new careers, so we didn’t have much to work with but we did want to help.

The rentals were like 200 bucks a person for a couple hours for us each to have our own jet ski, and unfortunately we didn’t have that kind of money. He was pretty desperate so he offered us half off and we could double up on the jet skis to save a few more bucks. “Done deal” we quickly said. Oh and to sweeten things even further, he just let us go free roam for a couple hours without any real direction. “Just don’t hit the castle walls and you’ll be fine” was the direction we got. Can do! And we were off.

There we were not only getting the jet skis we were looking for but for half off and complete unfettered access. We hit those jet skis so hard and so fast, ripping up and down past the castle walls, then deep into the bay, and around the various islands scattered in the sea. I even stopped at one point to get off so I could swim to a little island. On this little island was a small old stone guardhouse just sitting there from a bygone era.

It was unreal. We jet skied around the coast for hours in the midst of the medieval city and a stunning landscape. I would have to say this was one of the top travel experiences I’ve had. And it was all made possible because we decided to be polite to a stranger. So the moral of the story is you should always be kind to everyone because you never know when you’re entertaining an angel unawares!