Ever since moving to Croatia, I’ve done what many Croatians do each summer: escape to the sea for a week or ten days of unapologetic stillness. I call it “the Croatian vacation”, where the goals are simple: tan, eat, nap, repeat. For the past 6 years, I’ve returned to the same spot in Primošten. Same view, same walks, same hobotnica salad and peka, brancin. Comforting. Predictable. Safe.
But last year, something stirred.
Instead of driving home after my week of seaside routine, I decided to take a detour. I thought I would just drive the coast, no plan, no reservations, just me, the old magistrala, and a craving.
During a lunch break, I stopped and thought, Where could I go? And that craving surfaced: kamenice. Today, you can legally find them in just one peculiar place: Neum.
Neum, Bosnia’s slender, curious sliver of coastline, is the only Bosnian town with access to the Adriatic Sea. Vertical by design, the town spills down the hillside like a stack of sun-bleached balconies. Before the Pelješac Bridge opened, everyone heading to Dubrovnik was forced to pass through Neum. These days, most skip it entirely as the bridge lets them stay in Croatia without a border stop.
I booked two nights in a brand-new, twelve-room boutique hotel perched high above the town. It wasn’t by the sea, but it had a panoramic view. Neum below me, the Pelješac Bridge curving like a ribbon across the water. I didn’t need a beach. I gave myself two nights, just to double my odds.
You see, these particular oysters are rare, once harvested in parts of Croatia and Montenegro, they’re now mostly forbidden outside this tiny stretch. So Neum is where you go if you’re hunting for the real thing, briny, fresh, straight from the source. Or so I thought.
But sometimes, the thing you set out for isn’t what you find. I never got the kamenice. Not on night one. Not on night two. What I got instead was a quiet hillside, a bridge lit up at dusk, and the kind of stillness that only shows up when you leave space for it.
Let’s just say… I came for kamenice.
I left with perspective.
And honestly, I’m not sure which was rarer.