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.