Back to Croatia

We went to Croatia last week and we had no particular destination in mind. We thought we might spend a night in Dubrovnik and then drive north from there to
Split and time permitting perhaps go as far as Pula. We had more or less the same plan a little over a year ago and got as far as Trstenik and fell in love with it.
This year I was a little reticent about going to Trstenik because I was afraid that if we went back and it wasn't as wonderful as we remembered it would just spoil all our memories.
But when we got to Ston we said to heck with it, we would got to Orebic and would stop by Trstenik "just to see it" and then go on. Ha! The very second we caught sight of Trstenik we both said, "Ohhhh....let's stay again." So we sought out Marko at the Konoba Feral and he helped us find a room. There were quite a few more people in Trstenik than when we were there in late June last year so we made the split second decision to stay five nights. And boy, we are so happy we did. It was even better than our memories and was just so beautiful. It wasn't nearly as hot as when we were there last and the water was warm and so clear you could see several feet to the bottom.
Here's a photo of one end of Trstenik the first night we were there. There are only 60 people who live there year around and there were about 250 people staying there this last week. Most of the people visiting there were Italians, some Hungarians, Germans, Brits, and a few Romanians. For some reason Russians don't visit Croatia nearly as much as they do in Montenegro and Greece.
I'll write more later about the rest of our week there.

The Post about the Ice Cream

Okay, a few posts back I mentioned how serious people take ice cream in eastern Europe. The first time Tom took me to Slovenia I was amazed at all the ice cream cafes, the multitude of choices you had, and the sheer heights of the ice cream cones. It's the same thing in the rest of the Balkans. They just don't go for prissy little one scoop cones, either. They might have a little cone, but believe me, there will be an array of multicolored scoops of ice cream stuck on top at angles that defy gravity.
This is only one of dozens of ice cream venues along the beach in Budva and it isn't even the largest one. I didn't get a very good picture of it because of the glare on the glass, but you get the idea.
I settled on a hazelnut flavor right off but Tom tried a new one each time we went for ice cream. He had one that was over the top: it was called Don Vito and was a swirl of mostly chocolate, with some vanilla, then there was this gooey red syrup type stuff in it and then strawberries. Lots of strawberries. Unbelievable.
Move over Baskins Robbins.

Popeye's Retirement Home

Well, it could be! I took massive amounts of photos like this one in the Kotor Bay area. Every few feet were old doors, weathered windows and old wooden boats. I'll probably post some of them on Woophy later today if anyone wants to see them.

If there is a better place....

If there is a better place on earth than this, someone tell me where it is. I can't remember the name of this little village, but it is very close to Tivat, in the Kotor Bay on Jadranski Put.

Why I Love Budva

Budva has so many things going for it, it's difficult to list them all: the beach, mountains, Stari Grad (the old walled city), shopping, restaurants, fishing, boating, parasailing, the list goes on and on.
But this is what I like the most: simple homes with little courtyards crammed with hydrangeas, roses, figs, pomegranates, lemons and palms. Usually they have a nice plump cat taking a nap in a patch of sunshine.
This is just a house I saw while we were out taking a walk in Old Town one day.

Jaz Beach

You can see from this photograph how Jaz (Abyss) Beach got its name. Not only is the beach really clean, the water wonderful and the view spectacular, but they also have restaurants right there. I don't mean your Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk variety of fast food, either. We're talking full service restaurants with salads, grilled meats, brick oven wood fired pizzas, pastas, beers and wine. And you would have to go there to see for yourself how cheap the prices are. We always went to the same one, Poseidon. Fantastic! We would have breakfast at the hotel and then not eat again until about 3:00 in the afternoon and that was pretty much all we needed to eat for the day. We would get an ice cream cone in Budva at the beach maybe about 10:00 sometimes and I'll have to write a whole post later about the seriousness of ice cream in eastern Europe.

Dobra Dosli u Crna Gora

We went to Montenegro for a couple of weeks and just got back. Seems like no matter which place we visit I always think that is my favorite place in the whole world while I am there. But Montenegro really does have a very special place in my heart. It is about an eight hour drive to the coast from Pristina but the sights you see before you get to Budva! You can't imagine. It really is "Wild Beauty". That's part of the advertising campaign they are using on their tourism commercials. I'll post some photos I took while we were there, not in any particular order.
These two are from Jaz Beach which is about a 10 minute drive north of Budva. We like the beach there, too, but it's more crowded than Jaz so we went here most of the time. (By the way, Jaz is pronounced "yahz" and it means abyss in Serbian.
Just look at the water: crystal clear and as warm as bath water. The beach itself is very rocky with a hard surf which is perfect for grinding down little pieces of glass to produce the beach glass seen here. I picked up about a pound of it while there, but tried to find the really pretty light aqua colored ones. They were a lot more difficult to pick out in all the rocks but the green ones sparkled like emeralds.
The weather was perfect this year, too, not up to 100 degrees like last year. We brought three bottles of 50+ spf sunscreen and slathered it on. We didn't get one speck of a sunburn, miracle of miracles.