And so we are city mice again. Here’s our home for the next week.

We explored the neighborhood, which has lots of cool stuff to look at, like this glass gallery and workshop.

Love this. Recognize it?

This place for breakfast

And onto the Museum Quarter.

 

. . . and to the Mediterranean.

No amount of time would be enough to make me insensitive to the beauty of this place, or of the many other spectacularly beautiful  places we have visited over the past two months. There was not a single one we were not sorry to leave. But without leaving, there is no chance to arrive! 🤔

I am writing this from the balcony of our hotel in Cavtat.  Here is our view of the Adriatic, now my favorite sea.

Tonight, an early dinner.

Tomorrow . . .

While Jay was planning our trip, I read an article about Kotor, Montenegro,  It was described as beautiful, remote, and on the brink of being taken over by luxury resorts catering to Russian billionaires. So it seemed like a good time to go.

Kotor is a classic example of a fortified town. It is surrounded by a wall that extended to the Adriatic on one side, and by a wall built into the mountain and going up to the peak on the other. Here’s the wall  that faces the sea:

On the day we arrived, the city was being guarded by Pippi Longstocking.

Entering through one of two gates we found the maze of streets that is Kotor

We we’re in town by 10;00  to avoid the crush of cruise passengers. We wandered,  listened to some fantastically energetic street musicians, had a bite, and headed back to our hotel in the early afternoon, passing this behemoth on the way. Note the size in comparison to the other boats. And the mountains.

We returned later for dinner and a short walk up the first steps along Kotor’s other defensive wall, this one designed to deter invasions from the side or from over the mountains to the rear of the city.

In this picture you can see the castle.

Another view. The church is Our Lady of Remedy, built in 1518 to mark the end of the Plague.

It’s hard to capture the scale of these walls. The wall in the mountains is nearly three miles long and sits on sheer rock face. The sea wall is similarly massive. But it was all worth it  – Kotor was protected from many attacks, including a two month siege by the Ottomans in 1657.  In the 16th century, at least, it seems like walls were  the way to go.

 

This excursion gets its own post because it was just that amazing.

The Dragon’s Cave is accessible only by hiking up a steep trail, with the one person in Croatia who has the key. Our guide, Zoran Kojdic, has been guarding, and guiding people through this cave, for 17 years.

We rose at 6:00 and drove to Split, an hour away, to catch the 7:30 a.m. catamaran to the island of Brac, where Zoran picked us up.

Our first stop was the old house of his grandparents, who now live with him and his family on the island.  This was Zoran’s home for the first five years of his life and   he remembers that time with great fondness.

A nearby house with a new red roof faces the one remaining wall of an old house.

We were now on our way to the cave. There are two paths to the cave, one quite steep, and one longer and less difficult. I was not sure how I would do on the steep  path. But unlike the longer path, it is mostly shaded, and given the heat (94 degrees at 9:30 in the morning) Zoran encouraged us to take it, so we did.

It was a very difficult climb for me, close to an hour with many stops to catch my breath, but we made it.

As we entered, Zoran explained to us that the Dragon’s Cave is a place that has been claimed by archeologists and by theologians. That is, there are competing explanations for the age of the carvings in the cave, who made them, what they mean, and so on. What is known is that the cave was used by monks in the 15th century. Archeologists, however, point to evidence that some of the carvings are as much as 1000 years older than that, and they suggest that these carvings were made by religious hermits who lived in the cave in isolation over a period of years.

Here are a few of the wonders of the cave.

Here’s a carving that I immediately responded to, to Zoran’s surprise.

What I said was  “It’s the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus”. What made me say this was the position of the two heads – the small one to the left of the larger one was so recognizable. Zoran was clearly impressed. I said: “I’ve seen a lot of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus in the last two months”.

Below, one of several small chambers that may have been used for meditation or prayer.

This is a very very special place.

The descent was long and hard, we were exhausted, and we had hours of travel ahead of us to get back to Trogir.

It was all totally worth it.

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon in Trogir, a lovely seaside town with what have come to be the familiar Roman ruins. I must admit that Jay and I have become a bit blasé  about Roman ruins. But here are the local castle and the local Cathedral

and here’s what’s across the street from our lodging, which is across the bridge from the Old Town.

We had time for a stroll, a nap and an early dinner. The following day would be a long one.