Middle-aged flash packers

What a day!

It was another restless night with me finishing and posting the blog at 3am. I just couldn’t sleep.

We were up early and after some croissants from the bakery across the road (very average) we were on the road by 9.

Whoever made the post on trip advisor re driving the coast road to Montenegro – thank you.

One stunning view after another. I drove Steve nuts with wanting to stop and take pictures. The coastal villages are immaculate and look so beautiful against the sapphire blue of the sea. 

I think many of the people from the interior of the country have relocated to the coast. We passed many locals holding “apartmenti ” signs, and are making their money providing accommodation to tourists.

We bypassed Dubrovnik (too busy) but got a stunning view looking down on the old city from the road that climbs into the hillside. We ate our picnic looking across the bay to Dubrovnik. 

As we headed towards Montenegro, the land scape changed to flat lands with canals running through. Along the roadside were stalls selling fresh fruit and olive oil. This reminded me of the abundance of produce in Turkey . In fact much of the geography of The coastline of Croatia reminds me of Turkey, but Turkey is scruffier!

When planning this trip, I saw a photo of Kotor in Montenegro. Surrounded by a circle of mountains, looking on to the Adriatic Sea , it went straight on my “must visit” list. A couple of nights ago, Steve looked at some reviews of it and they were awful. Dirty, noisy, over-run – it sounded like hell. Too late, we had to go through Montenegro anyway. We booked an apartment outside of Kotor near Perast in the hope it would be a bit quieter.

Our introduction to Montenegro was a 25 minute wait at border control, the longest wait so far. As we crossed the border, there were neglected old “duty free” shops, obviously not needed anymore. Don’t bother demolishing them then, just leave them looking unappealing for your visitors. Not a great first impression.

As we drove on, the feeling was of a much poorer country than the Croatian Coastal area with shabby,unpainted buildings and a sense that function was more important than style. However the natural scenery was another thing altogether. The sea was ringed by mountains that looked like they had crashed into it. Fabulous. 

We drove on, looking out for our apartment building. The picture on the website showed some unprepossessing buildings looking towards the sea. We passed where we thought it might be but no luck. Eventually we rang the owner who told us to drive back towards the bus stop we had recently passed. We unloaded the car and she took us down some steep steps to the apartments.

 Oh my word. Talk about lucked out. Our apartment is right on a little cove, looking out over the bay. The view is world class in fact it is a world heritage site and it’s not hard to see why.

Our apartment is gorgeous, beautifully furnished and equipped. Our host has lived here all her life and her brother is going to be catching our dinner!

It was very interesting talking to Nada – she sees the fall of communism in Yugoslavia as a bad thing. People were happy and stable she says. Now there is a great disparity between rich and poor and it has caused dissatisfaction among many people and some breakdown in law and order. Interesting. 

For dinner we had freshly caught mussels followed by grilled fish and salad. Very healthy and delicious. We met a German couple who had come to eat too and it was very nice to chat to them. They were probably in their late sixties/early seventies and were fascinated by our travel plans. They had to come Montenegro because the lady had been here with her family when it was Yugoslavia. She even had an old Yugoslavian map. The capital used to be called Titograd. Nada came and chatted too so it was a very pleasant end to a fab day.

 View from the Croatian coast road