Celtic Rover
I had heard from friends that the Croatian coast was very nice and that has proved to be the case, we had our first night in the very nice town of Rovinj which was a little gem of an old town an easy walk from the campsite and a good dinner overlooking the sea, all in all a good start for this section of the trip and a change from the hustle of Venice.
I had decided to head to Bosnia and had found a nice complex of waterfalls to target just before we crossed the border, which would be our first crossing outside the EU in this trip. These waterfalls were actually a complex of lakes at Piltvice National park and were as nice a set of waterfalls as I have seen anywhere they go on for miles and you could easily spend a whole day hiking around them, we had been warned they were busy so got there sharp at 8am and were heading out as the big coach parties arrived from the cruise ships.
A bigger surprise came when we went into Bosnia. After the usual running around to get insurance we headed off to Mostar along beautiful valleys and lakes with towering Mountains on the sides, it was a bit wet from time to time but the views were really worth the trip and it made for great driving
The town of Mostar has a very nice campsite just outside at Balgaj which had been recommended to us by our friends who were a few weeks ahead of us and we enjoyed some nice Bosnian stuffed peppers while watching the river flow by before preparing ourselves for another short bout of sightseeing. Mostar itself is ancient, it is at a choke point in the valley and was originally fortified by Suleman the Great and has been fought over ever since, destroyed most recently in the 1992 war it has been fully restored and is very pretty if overrun to some extent by tour groups. Thanks to some good information we were able to avoid the parking traps and found a nice safe space by the Franciscan Cathedral for 1 Euro – safe parking in complex old cities is a real find. You get a good sense of the history of the place in-between the souvenir shops
It was an easy trip from Mostar to Dubrovnik which is another place that had to be rebuilt after the 1991/92 war and sadly another place which is very beautiful but very overrun by tourists, we had a nice lunch and snuck off into the side streets to avoid the worst of the crowdss.
At the end of all that sightseeing we did manage to have a couple of evening dips in the sea and the odd pitcher of cocktails overlooking the sunset, thanks to our very nice campsite just outside Dubrovnick, tomorrow we head out to the wilds of Montenegro and Albania, by all accounts much more basic and difficult travelling to start to toughen me up after our soft and touristy procession along the Adriatic coast!
