Dubrovnik

Another day, another country… 

The crossing from Montenegro into Croatia took us a little longer, as we were finally entering (gasp!) the European Union! This requires us to be fingerprinted. There is a queue of traffic waiting at the border, but only one fingerprint machine, so this is a long, slow process. Eventually we got through and sped off into Croatia.

We reached our hotel, the originally named Hotel Dubrovnik, a little after midday. We dumped our baggage, then Danijela took us on an unofficial tour of the Old Town of Dubrovnik. She enjoined us to not refer to her as a guide, as she is not officially registered as a guide in Croatia. The punishment for guiding without a licence in Croatia is a fine of up to €1,000 and deportation, apparently. Seems harsh. We walked along the town walls, which involved a lot of steps (I didn’t count them). One of our group is acrophobic, and as the walls got higher, the side walls got lower, and he was somewhat stressed. At one point we came to a junction where we could either carry on along the walls, or return to ground level, which we opted to do, as beer and pizza were calling to me. Danijela showed us the Rector’s Palace and St Blaise church, and offered us a taste of candied orange peel from the market, before releasing us on our own recognisance. (Incidentally, we've come across St Blaise before!) 

We headed straight to the nearest hostelry for some lunch. The first beer made a hissing sound as it disappeared down the hatch, so I promptly ordered another. Turns out the place we’d picked wasn’t actually a pizzeria, so I had a burger instead.

Danijela had issued us with bus tickets and a Dubrovnik Pass (Multipass!), both valid for 24 hours from activation, which allowed unlimited access to buses, and free entrance to various museums, once only. We’d already used them to climb the walls, as we went to see the Rector’s Palace after lunch. The Rector was the head of state of the Republic of Rugosa, of which Dubrovnik was the capital, between the 14^th and 19^th centuries. It was then conquered by Napoleon, subsumed into Napoleonic Italy, before being amalgamated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire until World War 1.

By this time I was getting museum fatigue, so we headed back to the bus stop, bumping into two of our group along the way. The bus ride back was less comfortable than arriving as we had to stand, but it was at most 15 minutes so we were OK.

In the evening Danijela had organised for us all to go out to Madonna, a local restaurant a couple of minutes’ walk from our hotel. The area we’re in is all pedestrianised and populated by hotels, bars and restaurants. As usual, the two other New Zealanders in our group cried off. (They’ve been a bit weird: they’ve attended most of the daytime tours and included activities, but in the evening we’ve not seen hide nor hair of them. We strongly suspect they’re sitting in their room drinking gin & tonic.) 

Most of our group enjoying dinner

The restaurant had a seafood emphasis so I had the tuna steak, which was cooked properly (seared but not overdone) whilst Nicola had chicken prosciutto. After the dinner I was elected to give a speech for Danijela, thanking her for all her work in keeping us informed and looked after. We then promised undying love and to keep in touch with each other. As you do. We repaired to the hotel bar for a nightcap. Some were leaving early the next morning, either home or onwards in their journeys, so we farewelled them. 

The next morning we packed up, breakfasted, and then headed back to the Old Town to extract further value from our Multipass before it expired. We visited the house of Marin Držić, a Croatian playwright who shares many ideas and plots with Shakespeare – largely because they were referencing the same source material, either from classical Greece and Rome, or around Italy (think how many of Shakespeare’s plays are set in the Mediterranean. It's not like he was from there.) Nicola bought one of his plays and will provide a book report in due course.

 We then went up the cable car. There was quite a queue for this so it took us a little while to get to the front. The cable car was built in 1969 and wasn’t really designed for its current purpose as a tourist attraction – there are only two cars, each on a separate track, going back and forth up the hill. Nevertheless, the views over the Old Town, and wider Dubrovnik area, were spectacular as we ascended. At the top there’s some viewing platforms and a café, but it was a little early for lunch, so after exploring all the photo opportunities we joined the queue for the descent. When we reached the bottom and emerged…no queue! A case of bad timing as we’d hit the mid-morning rush. 

One day I'll learn how to hold a camera straight

We also located the gate we should have taken to get to the cable car, and returned to the Old Town. There, we chanced upon a restaurant that sold pizza! Who’d'a thought it? We lunched on pizza and salad, the inevitable beer, and then wandered the streets a bit. When we tired of that we caught the bus back to Hotel Dubrovnik. Our 24-hour tickets had expired by then so we had to negotiate the vagaries of Dubrovnik’s public transportation system. They’re quite simple, really: you can buy a ticket for cash on the bus for €2.50, or get an advance ticket for a mere €1.73, which lasts an hour from when you first activate it. We’d just missed a bus, which was packed to the rafters, but by the time we’d sorted out our tickets another one came along, and we became true Croatians by jostling to the front (“use your elbows!” as Danijela had advised us) to secure a seat for the, yes, 15 minute journey back.

We were waylaid by an ice cream parlour for a few minutes, then collected our suitcases, ordered an Uber, and took ourselves off to the Hotel Dubrovnik Palace, which is substantially more palatial than our previous accommodation.

Kotor

There’s not much in Tivat, so today we took an excursion into Kotor, which is just around the corner and along the coast. To get there we needed to take public transport, which required us to walk 15 minutes up the road. W eassembled at 0830 and walked to the bus station, where the bus was, remarkably, on time. It’s a small bus, which is why Danijela didn’t want to catch it a couple of stops down the road, as it may hav been full by then. As it was it accommodated us comfortably.

One of the things that appears regularly in our blurbs about what to do in the day is “swap stories with locals”, maybe over a rakia or a coffee. The likelihood of this happening is remote but, lo and behold, Tim was engaged in conversation with the woman sat next to him for most of the journey! OK, turned out she wasn’t quite local, she was visiting from Turkey, but even so! We can’t wait to swap stories with someone who has swapped stories with a local!

The bus journey took an hour and by the time we got to Kotor the bus was packed with standing passengers. The road along the coast is very narrow and at some points there had to be some negotiation with oncoming traffic. When we got there, Danijela told us where and when to get the bus back to the hotel.

We had a few minutes before meeting our local guide, so we had a look around the market by the main entrance to the Old Town, the Marine Gate. We also found someone to sell us a gelato, which usefully broke a €50 note for us.

Sculptor: "Yes, of course I know what a lion looks like!"

We met our guide, Boyan, who showed us around the Old Town, stopping at various churches, the cathedral, school, clock tower leaning over because of earthquake, cat museum, etc. I’m sure it’s all very interesting but he didn’t fill us with enthusiasm and passion in the way that Clint had in Tirana. The town was quite crowded as there were not one, but two cruise ships moored at the dock, so there were tour groups a-plenty walking around the town. At the end of the tour, We went for gelato (again) with the rest of the group, before we all split up, as we had different plans for the day. Ours wasn’t too energetic: the temperature was climbing past 30°, so we stopped in a restaurant and had a simple lunch of brusketi (you’ll never guess what they are) and mussels.

The leaning clock tower

Narrow, winding streets

Cathedral of St Tryphon

Narrowest street in Kotor...about a metre wide

The cats museum. Contains cats

After lunch we toured the maritime museum, home to many models and paintings of old Montenegrin vessels. 

A very ornate timepiece

Model Montenegrin sailing ship

Globe, containing Nouvelle Hollande and Nouvelle Zelande, but no sign of Antarctica

We looked in a number of souvenir shops, but couldn’t find one that had t-shirts! Have t-shirts gone out of fashion? Eventually we found one that had a unique system: You selected your design from those shown, and they printed it on the spot for you. So now I have a Montenegro t-shirt, to prove I’ve been here.

It was approaching 2pm, so we decided to get the bus home. We waited at the stop…and waited. Danijela had said that they may not always be on time, but around 15 minutes late it show up…packed to the rafters! Well, not quite to the rafters, as many of the locals who’d been waiting squeezed on, but we didn’t fancy an hour of that. As we walked back to the Marine Gate we bumped into fellow Intrepideer Maureen, explained our failings, and between the three of us decided to get a taxi back to the hotel. This we did, and the driver took us by a different route, on a road that worked, and took less than 20 minutes. I feel there’s some work to be done by Intrepid to make this part of the trip a bit more tourist-friendly.

Tonight we’ll take the short walk down to the waterfront to find a suitable venue for dinner.

 

Fishte and Tivat

We left our hotel on time and headed to our last stop in Albania, an agrotourism farm, Mrizi i Zanave. They’ve taken a number of different concepts and combined them into one enterprise. There are ostriches, geese, and goats; they take milk from local producers and turn it into cheese; they make wine and rakia; they take all kinds of vegetable and fruit produce and pickle, dry or jam it; and they take pork and turn it into charcuterie. 

Mariella demonstrates wine

The wine cellar

Oo-er, missus! Look at all that sausage!

Jam, jam, jam jam...

The cheese room

Our guide, Mariella, took us around the factory rooms, showing us cheeses in various stages of maturation, as well as sausages and hams, and the smoking rooms. No, not for cigars. 

Afterwards we had a little bit of time as they waited for the lunch service, which started promptly at 12 noon. The lunch was a lavish production of just about everything that they had to offer. We started with a  taste of rose water – exactly what it sounds like, rose petals infused into water. Fortunately without adding sugar, which would have made it too sickly, but instead like Turkish Delight without the sweetness. We had charcuteries and cheese, pickled vegetables, other vegetables including stuffed courgette flowers; mystery meat (may have been goat), beef, and pork skewers. Just as we were saying “we’re stuffed”, they cleared it all away and brought puddings – cheesecake, fruit, chocolate fondant and gelato. The gelato included one made with pine syrup – made by adding a load of sugar to pine cones, then letting it infuse. Not one I’ll be trying at home, tbh. 

We left Albania behind us and crossed the border into Montenegro. Danijela told us on the way that we would be leaving behind “funny money” and entering the Euro zone. Montenegro is not officially a member of the euro, but has universally adopted it anyway. What we were also leaving behind, she told us, was the cheap prices we’d got used to in Macedonia and Albania. Montenegro and Croatia would be exhibiting more “modern” pricing.

We arrived at Hotel Helada at around 6:00pm, so after a quick check-in and moving in to our room, reassembled downstairs for an orientation walk in Tivat. This basically involved taking us down to the waterfront and walking along, pointing out an ATM for those all-important euros, and then some of us had a light dinner at a waterside restaurant, Bokka whilst the rest continued their perambulations. There isn’t much else to Tivat, so tomorrow we’ll be exploring the much larger settlement along the road, Kotor. Why aren’t we staying there then? Danijela explained that the two hotels they’d used in previous seasons had received negative feedback – being too far from the centre, or being too old-fashioned (lack of lifts etc.) and noisy for the one in the Old Quarter. There’s no pleasing some people! Now they’ve decided it’s better to stay in a more modern establishment along the coast instead.

We then headed back to the hotel, taking careful note of where to turn to get back and forth from the waterfront. There’s very little beach as such, and most of it seems to belong to one hotel, so we won’t be doing much beaching here.

 

Leaves And Pyramids

We have a free day in Tirana today. We are away from home for about a month and it may surprise you to learn that we do not travel with a month’s worth of clothing. Today was laundry day. Fortunately there’s a brand new 24 hour laundromat just 200m from our hotel, so after breakfast we took our washing. Unlike in Italy where we faced a similar challenge, this one has helpful instructions in English. The money change machine was unfortunately not working, but we found a grumpy exchange office that gave us 5 ALL100 coins in exchange for a note.

Objective achieved, we then planned an itinerary. First stop was Bunk’Art2, a former bunker which has been converted to a museum showing the history of Albania in the 20^th century. Itt all started out fine and dandy, but then took a turn for the worse under King Ahmet Zogu, before being invaded by the Italians (again!) in World War 2. Where it got really dark was the communist regime under Hoxha from 1945 to 1991. Albanians don’t shy away from their history; only by showing what it was like can they then move on from it.

Inside the bunker

We took a break for lunch at the same place we went yesterday – Café Botanica. Yes, unadventurous, I know, but it was handy. We then took ourselves to the House Of Leaves, the former centre for the Sigurimi, the Albanian secret police; they spied on everyone, with bugs, cameras, films, and intimidation. It’s quite remarkable the lengths they took to spy on their own people. According to Hoxha, private conversations were the property of the state. In what I can only assume is an overload of irony, photography is forbidden inside the museum. There were lists and statistics produced by the Sigurimi, but more importantly there were films of survivors of the prison and torture camps, giving testimony to the conditions they suffered; as well as from ordinary citizens, telling what life was like without being in prison (not much better, in case you hadn’t guessed).

We cheered ourselves up afterwards with a visit to the Orthodox Cathedral of Resurrection, which was much nicer than the American church we visited yesterday (the one with the dodgy window).

A much nicer church

Our final stop for the afternoon was the Pyramid. This was originally a memorial for Hoxha and family, but has since been remodelled and now serves an entirely different purpose. There are 120 steps to get to the top as you literally stomp down on communism. The view from the top, unfortunately, is of Tirana, which is not the most edifying of spectacles.

View from the base: 114 steps to go!

Zero steps to go!

 

Namazgah mosque

Tirana skyline

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the park we'd passed yesterday, to take pictures of statues of Stalin and Lenin.

Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

Tonight we’re going up the Sky Tower, a revolving restaurant with views of the city, for cocktails.

 

Tiranë

We set off at the usual 9am start, and drove to Tiranë, as they style it. It’s not a long drive, around two hours, and we did it non-stop. On the way we passed a NATO airfield, which has a MiG-19 on the roundabout outside.

We’d arrived a little after 11:00, well before our check-in time, so we wandered the vicinity of our hotel fairly aimlessly for a bit, found a snack place for a spot of lunch, before checking in properly to the Metro Hotel. All this not doing anything is really tiring, so we had a rest, then reassembled at 4:00pm for our walking tour of Tiranë with the improbably-named Clinteast. Apparently his mother had a crush on Clint Eastwood at the time, so named him after the actor.

Clint, as he enjoined us to call him, had given up working as a programmer to become a tour guide. He took us around the city, regaled us with stories about the history of the country and city; taught us some important Albanian words which we forgot immediately; pointed out features of the new architecture which is springing up everywhere; and generally entertained us. We saw the statue of Stalin (not many remain, as they were all torn down when Enver Hoxha had his famous falling-out with the Soviet leader.) This one was kept in a forgotten storeroom, and rediscovered when communism ended after the revolution in 1991. It’s currently in a park near our hotel.

We also saw Hoxha’s villa in Tiranë, a piece of the Berlin Wall, one of the ubiquitous bunkers - the paranoid Hoxha was convinced that either China or the USA was going to invade, so built bunkers all around the country. We’ve seen quite a few already. There are, by some estimates, around 750,000 of them, although the official records show only 173,000.

Hoxha's villa

Genuine piece of the Berlin Wall. The reverse side is blank.

A two-man bunker. In a park.

We walked by the Tiranë pyramid, which was an old memorial to Hoxha, but has since been recovered and re-purposed. Clint said that climbing the 120 stairs on the outside symbolised walking all over communism. We may do it tomorrow.

We visited St Paul’s Cathedral, the first catholic church gifted to the newly-independent Albania, then walked through the remains of Tiranë castle, and onwards to Skanderbeg Square, where we (once more) heard the story of Gjergj Kastrioti, also known as Skanderbeg, Albania’s national hero. Clint pointed out features of his statue: his horse has one foot off the ground, meaning he didn’t die in battle - that’s two feet off the ground. All four grounded means death by natural causes, old age etc. The horse’s tail points downward, signifying he never lost in battle. And he’s carrying a sword, signifying that he is a warrior.

 

St. Paul's Cathedral. Yes, they really did make the window in that shape!

We also noted the Ethem Bey mosque , significant because it (a) wasn’t pulled down by Hoxha, but used as a store room for animals, and (b) has depictions of Albanian cities on the walls rather than the usual abstract designs.

 One of Clint’s little gems was about the number of times Albania has been invaded by Italians: three – the Romans, the Byzantines, and Mussolini’s fascists. He then said that as revenge, Albanians have taken three things from Italy and now beat the Italians at their own game: Albanian pizza is better than Italian, Albanian coffee is better – and they linger over it, rather than rushing. They also serve cappuccino after 5pm, just to annoy the Italians. And finally, they’ve taken Italy’s bad driving and turned it into an artform – it’s even worse! He said that cars tooting their horns was the second national anthem of Albania!

We finished up in the square, and then Danijela enticed us to Cafe Botanica with promises of beer and truffle fries. We lingered over our drinks, and then retraced our steps back to the hotel, stopping at a restaurant for some traditional Albanian cuisine. I chose…poorly. Think I’ll stick to pizza tomorrow.

 

Alpeta

This morning we had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel. Being a family establishment, there’s no menu, you just get what you’re given…which turns out to be pretty much what we’ve been having anyway, typical Albanian breakfast of cheese, bread, tomatoes, cucumber, olives and eggs – in this case, omelette, which was entirely acceptable. Also, a plate of cherries, which were delicious.

We had a free morning, so we wandered into town. The picturesqueness soon disappeared, so we turned back, crossed the river, and explored the far side further…along the way bumping into some of our fellow Intrepideers. We continued up the hill to the church of St Thomas, but the old man by the door wanted €1 which we didn’t have, so we took pictures of the bells and left. We’ve pretty much done the Old Town now, so we stopped for a coffee and crossed over to our side of the river. There we bumped into Carrie and decided to get some lunch at The Friendly House, which has a terrace overlooking the street. We had musaka and salad, with local beer.

At 1:30pm we assembled again to be driven to the village of Roshnik, for a wine tasting at Alpeta vineyard. We met our guide Adrian, who told us about the history of wine in Albania. Unlike most countries, it doesn’t go back very far, because there was no private property under the communist regime. Wine production really got going once the regime had collapsed, and Alpeta is one of the oldest, starting with just eight hectares. Nowadays they have vines growing in small blocks all around the area.

 Adrian gave us a run-down on the wines and raki that we would be drinking, then took us indoors to our tasting table. We tried the white wine, mainly made from Pulez, a local varietal. As I provided my critique Adrian was clearly listening and assessed me for later purposes. We also tried their rosé, made from 80% winter (a late-ripening varietal), merlot and moscat, with a short skin exposure; and their red, made from more familiar varietals - 65% merlot and 35% cabernet sauvignon. OK, Albanian wine isn’t going to set the world on fire, but they were all very drinkable.

Adrian explains it all

But really, we were here for the raki. Raki is the distilled spirit made from the fermented grapes. Unlike many similar drinks like grappa, they don’t use the leftover grapes (pomace or marc) but use the same stuff they make wine from. As Adrian explained, they don’t add any sugar or even yeast, relying on the wild yeast on the grape skins. Again, we had three types to drink – first, a regular raki, then one made exclusively from Moscat grapes; the third was one aged in French oak barrels for nine months so took on colour and flavour like a whisky or brandy.

 

But here’s where the twist came in! In order to drink raki, there are rules: the must be a dollibash, a table leader, to give the toasts, and…guess who? Reader, I was that dollibash. Adrian poured the drinks, enjoining us to say “Stop!” when it reached the preferred level in the shot glass. Some of us went for full glasses, others just a splash, as it has to be drunk in one go. My training as a Toastmaster kicked in and I raised a first glass of raki, and toasted Methya, who’d celebrated a birthday yesterday. The second, our glorious leader, Danijela. And the third, our host, Adrian.

Adrian had promised me a surprise as dollibash, and after we’d finished the toasts, he told me what it was: to lead the party in singing a song. Again, rules applied: no national anthems, no Happy Birthday, no Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star. What to sing? I went to the obvious, and led the table in a rousing rendition of a song everyone knows, and can join in:

Mamma, just killed a man, Put a gun against his head, Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead

Ah, you know the one!

After a couple more shots, we tried verse two, and then it all started to fall apart. But you get the idea.

After a quick visit to the shop (I bought a book of Albanian toasts and a small bottle of raki) we reboarded our bus. Up till now, our driver has been playing us his music on the speakers, but this time we connected our bluetooths to the bus and took turns playing songs from our phones. Tim, Carrie and myself were the DJs, and tomorrow we have a two hour drive to Tirana to entertain our fellow passengers! I’ve promised Maureen, our Australian, some Midnight Oil.

Later tonight we’re going up on the balcony for further drinks and nibbles with Danijela and the rest of our group. Should be fun!