Montenegro -- The Cats of Kotor Bay

Forget beautiful water, good seafood, historical architecture, relaxing sun... there's a cat museum in Kotor! Well, officially, it's Cats Museum, and it is two rooms full of cat stuff: paintings of cats, postcards with cats, bad cats, good cats... Only one euro each entry fee. Who could resist?

Kotor's well-fed and entirely independent street cats

loving and noble husband after the cat museum

Lisa hasn’t been this excited since our wedding.  Actually, she was more excited. 🙄

Dubrovnik

 We spent five nights in Dubrovnik where we took a tour of the old town and spent some quality time at the beach. 😊. The orange roofs, white stone buildings, medieval walls, domes, and the blue water of the Adriatic are so beautiful. I could spend a lifetime here! The tour buses and cruise ships are the only drawback. Thousands of people! Yuck! (Notice I'm not considering myself a tourist here--judge me as you will!) It's also an expensive city. Darn. 

Here's some trivia that you may already know if you're a fan: Dubrovnik was a prominent location for filming Game of Thrones. You can even take a Game of Thrones tour. We passed on that.

Relaxing at Banje Beach

How can you not love a sign that tells you sex on the beach is prohibited?

The old town and city walls

Strolling through old town

Street food -- grabbing a bite of fried calamari with a side of octopus salad

Our walking tour group

Mostar

Mostar. I can't make sense of it. 

Taken from the historic Mostar bridge

I remember watching news about the Bosnian War in the early 1990s and reading about the genocide in Srebrenica and the campaigns of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. Up until now I had thought of the war as part of a long history of ethnic hatred between Serbians and Croatians, with the Bosnians suffering  attack and genocide as Serbia sought expansion into a Greater Serbia.

Well, I still think kind of along those lines just because I need to make sense of something, but the whole is so much more complex and convoluted. After listening to our guide’s perspective on the war and visiting the War and Genocide Museum, I realize I can't even begin to wrap my head around the complexity of the ethnic divisions here and how those divisions impacted what people did. Mostar was attacked first by Bosnian Serbs and later besieged by the Bosnian Croat Army for ten months. But just saying that is still missing all sorts of information… I’ve rewritten this too many times and tried to jam information into every sentence. I have to accept I just can’t summarize or make sense of things.

The symbol of Mostar - the old bridge divides the city east and west

In Mostar the front line wasn't exactly at the bridge, but a few streets further out--  a neighborhood street that still divides Mostar's western side, the old city that is predominantly Muslim, from Mostar's eastern side, which is the Bosnian Croat neighborhood. Up until recently, people didn't cross the street without trepidation, and even now there are people who have never crossed the bridge, which is the symbolic division-- Bosnian Muslims on one side and Bosnian Croats on the other. And the divisions still aren't healed. We learned that even now, although everyone goes to the same school, there are three different history curriculums taught. 

The neighborhood street that divides Mostar -- there are still holes from bullets and shrapnel, as there are on many buildings throughout the city

And it gets confusing again. Our guide, Sheva was born and raised in Mostar. He is a Herzegovinian Muslim who fought in Mostar during the war with a group that included men from different backgrounds and ethnicities. I'm not sure how people made their choices. How did the unit get people from different backgrounds with all of this ethnic division? I just don't know or understand, and I get more confused as I try to unravel things. The only thing I know is what Sheva showed us, which is where the city graveyards are filled with Muslim and non-Muslim graves alike. Almost all the deaths read "1993." 

The city is in a valley surrounded by rocky hills and it was besieged by the Bosnian Croat forces from June 1993 to April 1994. People couldn’t get food, water, or medicine from outside the town. People were shot going to the river for water and they had to fish using explosives. The bridges were blown up, including the old bridge, which was eventually repaired after the war. Throughout the city, there are still damaged buildings and some bombed out buildings remain partially standing, but many places around the old town have been restored or rebuilt. It amazes me how much has been rebuilt, especially when you think that it's not even been thirty years, and 70% of the city was destroyed. 

Another view of Mostar from the old bridge 

The cobbled streets of the old town

One of the many mosques as you walk through Mostar. The graveyard we visited was just across the street on the other side of the minaret. 

Bosnian coffee before our tour

Next Door to Krka National Park

 

For the last couple of days we've been relaxing in a little cottage near Krka National Park in the Croatian countryside. Discounting the rooster that crows at all hours, it's quiet and peaceful here. We have everything we need, including a beautiful garden, fruit trees, and fresh eggs. It's a bit early in the season for the veggies, so we've contented ourselves with loads of cherries. We haven't had to run to the store once, which is good because it would be a fair distance to go. Instead, we've been catching up on trip planning, internet time, and laundry. And chicken watching (the chickens love the side of our car because they can sit in the shade and look at themselves). We also have a new companion: The Cat.

Tomorrow we're headed to Bosnia for two days and then back to Croatia to Dubrovnik.

Zadar and Nin

 

While we were in Petrčane, not only did we frequent the beach, we also made a few day trips to Zadar and one to Nin. In Zadar we shopped at the outdoor market a few times (we got delicious cherries on our second visit!), and we spent one morning on a walking tour of the old town. The Greeks, Romans, Venetians... they were all in the area and each built on top of the other. In fact, we learned, Zadar is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Croatia. I was fascinated by the ruins scattered throughout the old town, and how each new settlement usually built using the older settlement's existing stones and columns. 

 

Roman forum in the heart of old town Zadar

Church of St. Donatus (9th century) built right next to the Roman forum using the forum's stones

Blessed roman columns reused to build this church

A 16th-century Venetian building on one of the main squares in the old town

One of Zadar's old town squares

Our tour of the old town ended with a stroll on Zadar's modern boardwalk, just a two-minute walk from the Roman forum. There are several art installations here. My favorite was the sound art of the Sea Organ, which is series of pipes built underneath the seawall steps. The pipes play as the sea rolls in and out, so the tune is always changing and the volume goes up and down, depending on the wind and wave action. I love the idea that you can translate the physics of that motion into musical sound.

Piano keys to sit on as you enjoy the view of the sea. The Sea Organ is just over the seawall. 

One of Zadar's marinas

On the morning of our walking tour, we stopped for some delicious pastries near the old town market. and later we returned to one of the shops there to pick up some Pag cheese (Paški sir -- a delicious hard cheese made from sheep's milk on nearby Pag Island) and some Ajvar, a roasted red pepper spread that goes with everything (I love this stuff and could eat it all day long!). 

Before we left Petrčane, we also made a quick run to the Zadar mall. It wasn't exciting in itself, but I love seeing what stores there are and looking at the displays in the windows. The Zadar mall felt familiar as most modern malls do, all the way down to the crowded parking garage, food court, cinema, and T-Mobile store. 

Nin was one of our other day trips. It's a beautiful small town with an old square, Roman ruins, and nearby beaches. We had a relaxing stroll, followed by a nice cold beer and sparkling water on the square. (It was a hot day!) 

Just parked and heading to the foot bridge

Nin's old town

City wall and gate from the 1st century

Ruins of the largest Roman temple on the eastern Adriatic coast 

We're off to Krka National Park...