Stunning Ston, Croatia

With a name like Ston, you wouldn’t expect it to be a place worth a visit.  But trust me, Ston is a worthy destination.

I first wanted to stop because of a recommendation to visit the Milos Winery for its Plavac wine.  Unfortunately, they were booked but they did give a taste of the wine that I wanted to purchase, their 2016 Plavac Mali.  It was a bit of a fly-by visit, enough to taste one wine, buy a bottle and take a picture of the brothers.  Their clear, happy, carefree faces kind of make me want to live there and grow grapes.  Or maybe just drink their wine…

Next up was a visit to the Bota Sare restaurant on the waterfront.  Beats me why I was expecting an oyster shack, but I was surprised when this was a very nice, white table cloth restaurant.  They must get lots of people just asking for the bathroom, because before I could even spout the words, “where is the maitre d’,” I was told, “back in the corner. “Oops, I don’t need the bathroom.

And from there, it just got better.  We sat on the terrace, overlooking the harbor and inlet.  When ordering the shellfish, our waiter Ivan confirmed that everything was local.  We were probably looking directly at the source.  The grilled oysters were the best I have ever eaten, and the raw oysters tasted very fresh and not very briny.  The next course was the mussels which were definitely less garlicky than many places, leaving the pure, sea taste of the mussels highlighted by the wine sauce with breadcrumbs.

The surprise of the meal was the Ston Cake dessert.  When Ivan described it as a chocolate cake made with pasta and pastry, I thought the use of the word “pasta” was a language mistake.  But it did, indeed have pasta – macaroni to be exact.  It also had walnuts and pastry and was so good, I am going to hunt for it tomorrow.  It is definitely the only cake that I have had made with pasta.

After lunch, I climbed the stone walls on the hills between Mali Ston and Ston, built in 1358.  It is the second-largest wall in the world, after the Great Wall of China and is actually referred to as the  “European wall of China”.  Unfortunately, my camera battery died so I was unable to capture the views at the top of the salt flats of Ston to the right and the sea and oyster and mussel farms to the right.  It combined two of my favorite things – walking in the footsteps of history and a view of the sea.

And that was my blitz visit to Ston.  I would recommend staying longer in Ston and eating more at Bota Sare.