Kotor - 10th October

As we already said Croatia is breaking our budget, so it is time to move onto the cheaper countries in the region.  First stop Montenegro.  The bus journey to get there is pretty standard, the only three items of note are the great views of Dubrovnik as we leave, the border crossing which actually stamps our passports (and therefore is much longer than the Bosnian borders) and the amazing views as we go around Kotor Bay to get to our first stop, Kotor.

The Bay of Kotor is incorrectly said to be the only fjord on the Mediterranean but in fact is it just a drowned river valley.  Well actually it doesn’t really matter, it is still one of the most unusual bays in Europe.  A drive that is about 15km as the crow flies is over 50km and an hour as we weave in and out of all of these little coves with massive mountains looming over us.  It is quite simply breath-taking.

We arrive in Kotor and for the first time our policy of viewing rooms from the bus terminal fails us.  We are shown two pretty poor pieces of accommodation outside the old town, with no real facilities.  So after a not very helpful chat with the tourist advice people we are sitting down considering our options when a passing couple see us and ask are we looking for somewhere to stay.  After a brief conversation they show us this place in the old town, and while it is a bit more expensive than the places we had seen, when you subtract the laundry and Wi-Fi costs (this place has both) it is almost as cheap. So we take it.

After that we try to sort out what we will be doing during our stay.  Again this proves tricky.  The official tourist information is no help, the local agencies are not much better.  Our plans to hire bikes are thwarted by the fact that there only seems to be one rental place in town, and they have 7 of their 8 bikes out on hire.  And nobody is running excursions on the bay.  In fact our requests are greeted with looks of people thinking “why would you want to do that?”  The season here is well and truly over, and we may struggle to fill our 3 days here.