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I’m sitting on the covered terrace at our place near Virpazar Montenegro. We arrived yesterday early afternoon after departing from  Kolasin where it was snowing all morning. It’s warmer here but far from hot.  This is our 7 th time staying in the area. We love the green valley and surrounding mountainous landscape here although…

We are in Kolašin at our second lodging because the first place wasn’t a good fit (literally) for us. We had booked two nights there but when we arrived, even though the host’s father (another Zoran) was friendly, we discovered the place is on a main road, has a tight spiral staircase that exacerbated Jim’s…

I was sad to leave Zorica and Dragan after a full week of good food, excursions, hikes and easy friendship but it was time to continue on our huge loop that will hopefully get us back to Zagreb in a couple weeks.  The first 4 weeks of our trip were planned and scheduled but we…

Thursday I laid low and stayed in bed much of the day. I had been wanting an easy slow day for a while but much prefer to choose to take it easy rather than getting sick and being  forced to. In any case, I was extremely grateful to have a comfortable place to recover. The…

Wednesday we had coffee and breakfast downstairs again. By the way, when I say we had coffee it always means Turkish coffee which is what almost everyone drinks aside from in the biggest cities where some people drink other coffees, but Turkish coffee is served everywhere and is the mainstay. We weren’t told where we…

The day after my birthday, Dragan needed to go into town and do some things but said we would meet later in the morning to go to a spa. It was unclear where the spa was and if we were going to go in or not. But when the times approached Zorica brought us big…

Monday morning, my 65th birthday, we got up early enough to have some eggs before going down for coffee as we had no idea if they would give us any food. Turns out indeed Dragan had gone to the bakery for freshly made burek (savory cheese filled pastry) which we ate, along with liquid yogurt,…

Sunday morning we had a leisurely breakfast then walked back to the green market to buy a plant for our next host, Zorica. Like many (most) people here she has a lovely garden and we trusted we couldn’t go wrong by getting her a plant. We left Kruševac at about 11:45 and arrived in Zajačar…

We drove to Mrzenica (a tiny village about 15 minutes north of Kruševac) where Zoran’s grandparents settled long ago. We parked by the side of the through-road where Zoran was waiting for us. He greeted us with warm hugs as if we were long time friends even though we have only met once before, and…

I forgot to mention that on the drive to Kruševac we stopped  at the top of a pass at the sprawling Kadinjača monument to WW II fighters from the town of  Užice designed by an artist and architect. We came upon it on our last trip amid thick fog. This time the day was sunny…