The lakes
 

All these lakes are very nice to ride around

Came back from the trip last night (bike's back some time next week). Will try to do a ride report, but here's a quick review:

It's definitely an interesting place - a good detour between Zadar and Plitvice. While the rest of Croatia in those parts is pretty green, Pag is entirely a moonscape, almost entirely devoid of vegetation, just sun-bleached rocks. Can be windy. But nice roads, especially north of the main town and towards the ferry terminal.

Postojna cave was an absolute highlight.

Indeed, did the loop - up from Kotor via the Serpentine, up towards Lovcen NP and the hilltop memorial to the old prince who unified Montenegro, down to the old capital Cetinje that was very nice to walk around, and down towards Budva, and back to my guesthouse near Kotor. Very nice loop that was doable in half a day after seeing Kotor old town itself.

I didn't make it all the way to Sarajevo, but did go to Mostar, and I agree - BiH was a very pleasant surprise. The smaller roads are great, Mostar itself is amazing (make sure you go on the Sheva walking tour!), I also saw Vjetrenica cave and Kravnica waterfall.

The part of BiH I saw was definitely much cheaper than Croatia and much nicer than the non-cruiseshipy bits of Montenegro. The country still has a lot of problems that affect its residents, but for visitors, it's great. Honestly, the only downside is that it's not in the EU roam-like-home scheme yet, so I needed a tourist sim. :)

In practice, the airbase has an active visible presence by both the Croatian police and their border guard... but they absolutely could not give less of a damn about tourists - they're only there because it's right on the BiH border and they're worried about illegal crossings into the Schengen area. The DC-3 is not just cleared of vegetation, but there's now a summer cafe set up next to it. :)


I respected the speed camera warnings, but once you start paying a bit of attention, you'll realize they put speed camera boxes everywhere. Almost all of them are empty and just have stickers to look like lenses!

I ended up skipping Trieste and instead doing Dolomites - up the Soca river valley in Slovenia, across the Vrsic Pass to Kranjska Gora, then over towards Stelvio pass.