And onward to Montenegro....

We were up and away early this morning as we'd a long drive ahead of us. Or at least that was what we thought, turned out our first stop was at one of the infamous carpet warehouses! We pay the export duty and shipping you have nothing more to pay and it's delivered to your door....... That's f you really want to buy an expensive carpet. Even if it is a project to get women into the workplace, we need to downsize not buy more. The presentation as always was very slick and the carpets beautiful, but I resisted and we escaped after almost an hour.
We gathered in the car park and waited almost another hour while one couple chose and bought their carpet. We finally headed off though, for Montenegro. We travelled through the Serbian, Republika Srpska, part of Bosnia Herzegovina. Driving through high rocky mountains many with ruined forts on the top. The access to these is still only by mountain path and donkey! We stopped in the beautiful town of Trebinje for a short time and discovered to our delight that there had just been a wedding in the "Orthodox Cathedral Temple of Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord" there. The bridal party were all outside the church with music and singing from an accordian" band. The bride was having a great time singing along.
We were very lucky to be able to be in the church which had been cleared and prepared for the wedding. The icons were beautiful and the little table was set out with two coronets, some wine, a bible, some oil for anointing and a candle. The brass double headed eagle is the symbol of the Orthodox church.
The extra is also partly of Trebinje, Colin in the entrance to the old walled town, again lots of damage visible, remnants of the civil war in the '90s. I liked the juxtaposition of the eyes to ward off evil and the Christian souvenirs -try any option seemed the suggestion! The black and white wall painting was in the square at Trebinje, I felt it might be a memorial but don't really know. I liked the faces though.
The two landscapes were taken on our journey, the river is the Neretva which flows the length of the country (it's the river we saw in Mostar too) the mountains are typical of the countryside we drove through to get to Montenegro.
Out of Bosnia Herzegovina through two sets of customs posts again - including a 3km stretch of no-mans land between the two countries. We are here in Montenegro for the next 9 days before we travel back to Dubrovnik, in Croatia.
My first stop in tonight's hotel was the beach, on the Bay of Kotor, it's so lovely to get into the water again for a swim. The temperature has been around 24-26 the last couple of days, not sunny, but so lovely to be warm again.