Our first stop, the Island of Mljet

Croatian is a quite bewildering language. Yes, the spelling above is correct. Two rules make it at least manageable, although unlike French, Italian, Spanish, etc., one can not figure out a word from the looks of it. For example, in French lake is lac; in Croatian lake is Jezero. The rules, though, are: (1) every letter is pronounced and (2) the accent is almost always on the first syllable. Also, a good thing to know is that the letter J is pronounced YE. So Mljet is pronounced MEEL-yet, more or less. As in any language, a foreigner can never speak with the same facility as a native speaker. The pictures here are the approach to Mljet and also the ruins of a monastery that we visited which is located on a salt water lake within the larger island. There are two such "lakes" on this island, but as we were told, they are not actually lakes but rather the sea feeds into small inlets which create the two larger bodies of water inland. The situation and the approach to the monastery is spectacular but the ruins themselves are not very well kept and the effect is disappointing.