Balkan Travels

It’s Saturday. Sky is blue and clear aside for some thin scattered clouds far in the distance. There is a cool breeze this morning, cool enough that I need my jacket as I sit in the shade on the balcony. When I sit out here I always seem to see at least one cat wandering…

We arrived safely in Promajna Croatia on Wednesday just before 5. The drive from Virpazar took closer to 5.5 hrs than the 4.5 estimated on Googlemaps. The route was scenic the entire way through small mountains and open scrubby hills, except for the stretch of road that turned to dirt through a huge limestone mining…

It’s just after 7, our last morning in Virpazar. So many birds are singing, tweeting, chirping and making sounds i have no good words for. No words are as good as the bird sounds themselves. I’ve enjoyed the barn swallows and sparrows that perch on the utility wired right next to the porch. I often…

Liljana was busy adding details to an oversized clay perch (fish) on her little table outside her shop and studio when we stopped to see her after dinner. She gestured for us to sit at a table ten feet away at the restaurant by her shop. We had Turkish coffee and talked for about 90…

I’ve slept ok the past few nights, not long enough but close, so I’m feeling ok. I really enjoyed my day ‘off’ yesterday and decided to splurge and take it easy today as well.  It rained much of the night and morning, not a storm, just a pleasant soothing rain. Marko asked if we wanted…

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…