On To Bosnia-Herzegovina

After our memorable lunch we hit the road again, climbing out of the Ria of Kotor to the heights above, on through some of Montenegro's highlands, and then into Boznia-Herzegovina. We stopped at Trebinije, partly to adjust and partly to get steps and partly to get some some B-H marks; and then drove on to a campground near Strolac.

Good-bye, Perast

And Our Lady on the Rocks

And Ria of Kotor mussel farms

And Ria of Kotor

In the Montenegrin heights, a goat attack

Welcome to Bosnia-Herzegovina

More mountains ahead

In Trebinije; oh my, not the 1st Baptist Church...

Its wall

War memorial...so many wars in this land

City park

In the cathedral

Never miss a St. Mark

Another war memorial

At the "Heaven in Nature" auto camp near Stolac; the manager, Tarik, welcomed
us with coffee and a long conversation about the area and Bosnia-Hertzegovina;
a former taxi driver, with superb English; his brother served in the US Navy but
has now returned to B-H; Tarik further arranged parking for us in Mostar to see
the town; definitely not in Kansas, Todo, with this great hospitality

The beautiful clear river by the campground

Beautiful Restaurant: Konoba Catovica Mlini

Mostly it's the food, but sometimes a restaurant's setting or ambiance pushes it over the top. Such was Konoba Catovica Mlini, up the road a bit from Pestar, and which we'd read about from Rickie Stevie. (Our search, in the Balkans, for an English guidebook to the Balkans, turned out to be futile, and so we just downloaded the most recent (2016) version of Rickie Stevie's guide to Croatia/Slovenia; it has proved more than adequate, although doing a guidebook on the phone or Kindle has been a trial).

It did not start well: we followed the GPS and the signs, but the road led to an
underpass we could not pass under; we parked, and I set forth on foot to reconnoiter

The resto was just around the corner a couple hundred meters;
but things did not improve when I saw the menu--every
item was seafood! Vicki does not eat seafood, although she
has often sacrificed on my behalf...; I walked back to tell her
the news, but she was already determined to try the place

The underpass turned out to be a defunct mill in an area studded with the clearest
of springs--all only a couple hundred meters from the Adriatic

One enters through a forest of bamboo

And we were shortly seated with this view and presented a fuller menu that
worked just fine

The place was gorgeous, atmospheric

Nearly all the seating is outside; in a climate that rarely goes below 50 degrees
F, why sit inside?

The salads were 2E and 4E

Her pasta carbonera...maybe 10E

Me, suitably attired for the mussels, maybe 10E

Thus, and cooked just right...although with perhaps the most garlic I've ever
seen on a dish...except for a roasted bulb, maybe

A local cake thing we shared for dessert

Just wandering around the place

Inside dining under the barrel vaulting

Not to miss!

Perast

Perast is nowadays another beau village on the Ria of Kotor. In its days of glory, it was the principal guardian of the narrowest part of the ria (bay, gulf, fiord, what have you), a free city associated with Venice, and, later, a major ship-building center. But now it's girding mostly for the tourists. It is just a few miles around the ria from Kotor.

There it is, upper left

Off-shore dining

Apparently the tallest campanile on the coast, in its time

Miscellaneous church interior

Much construction going on in Perast now

Spare parts

Lots of churches

The most interesting of the old palazzos is now the museum

Among Perast's claims to fame is Our Lady of the Rocks, the only artificial
islet in the Adriatic; they built the islet and then the church because the relic
insisted on staying there...look it up

There is also nearby the islet of St. George, which, alas, is not artificial and
also lacks a relic; but it has a chapel, of course

Street scene

Marina scene

Art class scene

The Club de Boule...a legacy of the Napoleonic era?

The Boule Pen