2geonomads

An early start and after breakfast at the apartment Mr Bogdanovic drives us to the Bus Station for us to take the bus to Dubrovnik Airport to pick up our rental car. Much to our dismay we are advised by the lady at the ticket office that the bus does not stop at the airport so we would have to take it to Dubrovnik and then take a bus or taxi back to the airport.

One compensation is that the drive around the fjord towards Dubrovnik and especially the last kms before we reach this world-famous city are quite simply breathtaking.  Why the bus cannot stop at Cillipi to drop us off for the airport is one of life’s mysteries as the terminal is literally only 200 hundred metres from the road on which we are travelling. Ours not to reason why, I suppose.

Do not venture into the city itself as we plans to return later in our journey and find a very friendly taxi-driver to take us back to the airport.

Pick up up VW Passat at Fleet Rent-a-Car and set off on our merry way to Mostar in Bosnia – Herzegovina. Interesting scenery without reaching the splendour of Kotor and the surrounding area and we are very happy with our VW, at least at this stage!

As we head north I notice that the car is rather sluggish and as we approach a town called Stolac we suddenly lose power and we are forced to pull into a side road to check out the warning symbols which have now appeared on the dashboard. What follows is bordering on the farcical. I try to interpret the meaning of the warning symbol by referring the car manual, only to find that it is all in Croatian. Yours truly then phones to Fleet and tries to read out to the office clerk the Croatian notes from the manual. One way or another I get the message through but as it is Sunday it seems very unlikely that Fleet will be able to get assistance to us. While considering our position we meet up with a couple of blokes ( at different times ), neither of whom speak English. One of them speaks German so he manages to say to me that he doesn’t believe the problem is major and that we should press on to Mostar. The second guy agrees with this and while I am on the phone to Fleet John is off engaging in a lengthy conversation with both men. Not sure how he achieved this as they didn’t speak English and as far as we know J’ s Croatian is non-existent. However, in due course J comes back with the news that he has managed to glean from the guys that the building nearby used to be furniture factory! We are still wondering how this startling piece of news might make a contribution to solving the car problem but as we are finding out J’s eccentricities are to provide to a constant source of amusement,

Decide to press on to Mostar, albeit at a very slow pace, and arrive at Shangri La Mansion, our hotel, at about 4.30.  Meet up with the delightful owners Nermin and Dzanita and settle into the lovely 2 bedroom apartment.

Before walking into town we sit on the roof-top terrace to enjoy the bottle of red which had been given to us by the Bogdanovic family in Kotor. Nermin speaks excellent English and works as an interpreter for United Nations. He had previously worked as a photographer in the army and his claim to fame was that he had translated Pink Floyd’ s lyrics into the Bosnian language.

Gail John Maureen

He recommends the Hindin Han restaurant in town and off we go enjoy a fine dinner close to the famous Stari Most ( Old Bridge ). The meal is everything we could wish for and our first view of parts of the Old Town whets our appetite for the following day.

Cheers

The Obese Ferret