Thursday, December 21, 2017: Split to Plitvice National Park 

This morning at 10:00 am Cherie had a business call via SKYPE.  We were able to sleep in later than usual. 

By 11:30 we were on the road north to Zadar, a coastal city.  We were told the 3 gems of the Dalmatian Coast are Zadar, Sibenik, and Split.  Zadar’s walled city was interesting, but not as nice a Split.  At about 3:30 we began driving inland, with the destination of Plitvice National Park. The A-1 has a 3.5 miles long tunnel, going through the beautiful Velebit Mountain Range. The tallest peaks are completely snow covered, the lower peaks just have a dusting.  When we came out the other side of the tunnel, there was snow, and the temperature had dropped.  

Roman Forum on Zadar

Doughnut Balls with Nutella

We drove to near the Plitvice Park entrance.  We found one of the only Hotels open for the winter. The hotel restaurant had a limited wintertime menu, but it was great homestyle cooking. Today has been more relaxing.  

Tomorrow morning, we will go through the park before driving into Zagreb, hopefully by mid-afternoon. 

Wednesday, December 20, 2017: Dubrovnik to Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina and back to Split, Croatia. 

After checking out of the hotel, we drove to Mount Srd, the mountain-top point overlooking Dubrovnik.  It provided a wonderful view of the city, giving perspective to the city and the surrounding area.  We wanted to return to the Walled City, but we had problems finding a parking spot, so returned to the hotel, ordered a taxi to take us downtown.  It was more expensive, but the best plan.

Mt Srd on Right 

Monument on Mt Srd

View from Mt Srd

Today the churches in the walled city were open, however none of them were that wonderful.  We did buy cold medicine at the oldest continual pharmacy – Franciscans opened it in 1317.  Wow!! That’s a long time!

We liked the old walled city of Dubrovnik, but it did not have the character of the walled Diocletian Palace in Split.  We are glad we spent the extra days in Split. 

Dubrovnik Cathedral

City Gate

It was almost noon before we were on the road to Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a destination of Mostar.  We wanted to see the Old Bridge (Stari Most) in Mostar.  

The recent history of this whole area (former Yugoslavia) is interesting yet confusing.   It depends on your origin, as to how you feel about the whole situation.  Feelings and tensions will be there for several generations, but by then nationalist feelings could be stirred up!

We are planning to drive a rural road that cuts across the country-side from Dubrovnik to Mostar.  After you leave the coast, you climb over one mountain range and then another.  These are rocky barren mountains. We did see several beautiful snow-capped ranges in the distance. There is not enough grass among the rocks for grazing, even for sheep.  The rocks look like they are growing out of the ground.  Anything green was low shrubs, barely surviving. Yes, deserts are barren, but this was a different kind of barren.  It was an interesting drive. 

Every once-in-a-while you saw a small village of several homes, but there were no larger villages along this route.  As to how these people make a living, we have no idea. We began seeing small slate-roofed Orthodox chapels, each with a cemetery surrounding it.   We stopped at several, looking at the dates on the memorial stones. We did find it interesting, that other than the little chapels, there were no churches in the villages. 

For quite a distance we drove along the same river.  The lower part of the river has been carefully managed.  The river banks appear to have concrete along the edges at places.  The one thing that was of particular interest are the irrigation wheels that can still be seen along the river.  The wheel had buckets that collect water from the river, rotated, carrying the water to the top of the wheel, where the water flows out of the bucket into a catchment area that is connected to a water pipe that carried the water to the adjoining fields for irrigation.

Water Wheel

Farther up the same river we drove through a valley that is prone to flooding.  The small villages sat on the edge of the valley.  However, they were using the rich soil of the river bottom to grow crops – lots of vineyards and other crops.  It appears they had built a network of drainage channels, with raised areas on which they planted grapes, etc.  This appeared to be a productive area.  Interestingly, this river flowed south to the river delta we saw the other day where all the citrus is grown.  

Finally, we arrived in Mostar.  We followed the GPS to the Old Bridge.  This bridge was reconstructed just like the original old bridge in the mid 1990’s.  During the Yugoslavic war of the early 1990’s, all of the bridges across the Neretva River were destroyed because the leader, at the time, wanted the river to be the natural boundary between the Croats (Catholics) on the west side and the Bosnia’s (Muslims) on the east.  (This is the man who committed suicide (drinking poison) in the World Court, in The Hague, Holland, in November of 2017, after being convicted and sentenced due to war crimes during the war).  Needless to say, he is not very popular in Mostar.

Ancient Mostar Bridge

Can you imagine a city where people used the bridges every day to go back and forth across the river, and all of a sudden the bridges were destroyed?

We decided it would be neat to see the bridge lite up at night, so we found a lovely restaurant in the old town for dinner. After several more photos of the bridge at night, we were on the road back to Croatia.  It was dark, so we could not see the landscape.  We know we were driving in a river valley, so it would have been nice to view the area, but we made the choice to see the bridge at night.  Here again, it is not late, as it is dark by 5:00 pm.

Before crossing the border, we began driving on the A-1 Tollway. Since we already had dinner, we decided to keep rolling until we were as far north as Split.  The Tollway goes through an area of the country that is barren.  We had seen this area driving south, so there is no need to see it again in daylight hours.  We found a hotel near the A-1 outside of Split. 

Tuesday, December 19, 2017: Dubrovnik, Croatia to Montenegro and the Kotor Fjord area before returning to Dubrovnik.

By 9:00 we were on the road south of Dubrovik, driving right along the coast. The sun was just perfect for lovely photos of Old Town Dubrovik.  It is a lovely coastline with lots of islands in the Sea, as stated before, some are inhabited, and others are not.  At the border crossing, we left Croatia and entered the country of Montenegro. We will be spending most of the day in Montenegro, driving around the Fjord/Bay of Kotor. 

You drive on a narrow road near the coastline, so that most of the village is situated above the road.  The village along the first part of the drive were not special, but the further you drove the move interesting they became. The mountains coming down into the fjord and the fjord itself was lovely.  

Dubrovnik from our Hotel Room

The Walled City of Dubrovnik

Beginning of Fiord to Kotor

The town of Kotor was the most special, as it is a walled Old Town.  We walked around the town enjoying the old buildings.  We found a couple eastern Orthodox churches, which proved to be interesting, comparing them with Roman Catholic.  We found a little store that had a large collection of Slavic Wooden Dolls, made in Montenegro.  The store clerk was very knowledgeable in the history of the dolls.  Rachel purchased another Santa for her collection that is totally different from all of the other Santa’s she has. The store clerk recommended a restaurant that we found and were able to have a light lunch.  We had muscles for lunch, which were excellently prepared.  After lunch we returned to the car and headed back to Dubrovnik.

The Store clerk gave us the history of the city wall and the wall going up the mountain.  Because of this wall, Kotor was the only city that did not fall to the Ottoman Empire in the 1600’s.

Water Rushing out of the Mountain

Chapel in the Fiord

Sea Farming - Muscles

City Gate to Kotor

City Wall with the Wall Going up the Mountain

Our Dinner Restaurant

Top of the Chimney

Orthodox Church

When we arrived in Dubrovnik we went to the old walled in city for a short walk around dinner.  The city has been rebuilt several times due to earthquakes and therefore does not quite have the ancient city feel to it.  The original city was built hundreds of years ago so it is a very old city.  We found an Iris Pub that served meals for dinner.  After dinner we walked around the city before returning to our hotel for the evening.

Small Boat Slips near Homes

Bell Tower in Dubrovnik - Time 5:30

Decorated Store Window

City Gate

Our plans for tomorrow are to return to the old walled in city of Dubrovnik and walk around more before leaving for Bosnia-Herzegovina.