Tuesday, we were up at 5:00 to go and meet our 6:40 bus for our tour to Montenegro, meeting at the bottom of the 200+ stairs by Pile Gate. (Never occurred to me that Montenegro means, literally "black mountain", but it sure should have.) Anyway, it was a big bus tour, so, while we got moving pretty much on time from there, there were lots of other stops at hotels and roadside rendezvous with minivan shuttles before we finally headed out around 7:40 towards the border. Now I had heard horror stories about getting through this land border, but there were only a few buses in front of us and the police weren't making every passenger present their passports individually (which they sometimes do) but just took the whole pile and scanned them. Interestingly, all the delay is on the Croatian side, going OUT of the country. It seems the Montenegro authorities are quite happy to let the Croatians do all the work and just accept the printout that the Croatians generate and basically wave everyone through. Anyway, after a brief rest stop just across the border, we headed on and made our way around the Bay of Kotor, to our first stop, Perast. We just had an hour to explore the town, so we passed on the optional boat ride across to "Our Lady of the Rocks", a church/shrine on a man-made island created, according to legend, by seamen throwing rocks over the centuries into the spot after every successful voyage, after finding an icon of Madonna and Child on a rock in the sea there. Perast is a very pretty little seaside town with some interesting buildings and lots of little restaurants and bars--and apparently lots of money! We enjoyed a leisurely stroll along the waterfront main street (which has no cars).
Then back on the bus and around the bay a little further to the town of Kotor, which has a nice Old Town and some spectacular mountain backdrops. In fact the whole Bay of Kotor is surrounded by spectacular mountain ranges. On the other hand, there was a huge Norwegian Lines cruise ship docked literally across the street from the Old Town gate. But we had a fun time wandering and looking for photo ops and stopped for drinks in a couple of spots to do some people-watching.
After 2 hours, we were back on the bus to head for Budva, southeast on the Adriatic coast. Budva is a bustling city that has a distinctly "South Florida" feel--lots of highrise condos (existing and under construction) and crowded beaches. We had 2 hours there and our main task was to get lunch, as it was already 3 pm by the time we got there. So we had a leisurely lunch of mussels and black risotto at a beachfront restaurant. OK, but the mussels weren't as good as the mussels that we had in Dubrovnik (that come from Ston). There is an Old Town down at the end of the beach but we didn't really have time to visit it by the time we finished lunch. We wandered down to the edge of the walls and then headed back towards the bus, stopping for an ice cream cone along the way.
On the way back, the bus took a little ferry across the narrows of Kotor Bay, which cuts about an hour off the trip compared to going all the way around the bay. The trip back went smoothly and the border was pretty quick, though we still had to get all the passports scanned (again on the Croatian side), but there were no buses in front of us. Traffic was good and we made it home by around 8 pm, which was better than I expected. And we managed to get them to drop us off on Pera Bakića street which is just above our main street of Zagrebačka, so it was a gentle downhill walk rather than climbing all the stairs from Pile gate. So, a long day, but a good day. Always good to check out new places!
2025-02-11