May 17, 2023 - Blagaj, BIH

 When we made our room reservation here we ordered breakfast included.  As you can see below, they serve a great breakfast, to order.

We walked from our hotel to the Dervish House, aka, Blagaj Tekija. It is a Sufi monastery built in the 1500s on the cliffs by a freshwater karst spring, with a mausoleum and an old Turkish bath.  Europe has been receiving a lot of rain and you can see from the pictures below this area has been flooded and the river is high and very fast flowing.  

It rained on and off today, but not heavy.  We met two brothers from Austria visiting on their motorcycles.  It was fun talking in English about motorcycle touring and where they have been visiting.

One of the ways this trip has been different than other trips we have taken is that we have no real schedule or route; we basically can go wherever, whenever as long as we don't exceed 90 out of 180 days in the Schengen Area.  We are now trying to decide where we want to go when we leave here in 2 days.  We are probably going to go south into Macedonia on the Adriatic coast, we heard that is a nice place.  We shall see.

This VIDEO shows the fast flowing river near the Dervish House, the primary source of which is a freshwater spring similar to those found in northcentral Florida.

Sooz took this picture of me this morning at breakfast.  I shaved this morning but by the time I finished the breakfast I had a good beard started - it must be due to the good food and fresh air and water.

The Dervish House on the freshwater spring site.  Photo by Sooz.

Another photo of the Dervish House.  You can see a cave in the lower right area of the photo, this is where the freshwater spring is.

Our new Austrian motorcycle friends, who are brothers.  

A duck sitting on a table waiting for service and wondering what all the commotion is about.

Me trying to look calm and collected while crossing a bridge over a madly rushing river.

Sooz doing the same on a rickety boarded section of the bridge.