Kotor

May 25

I woke up nice and early and got to the bus station no problem. The bus was full so we had to share seats. The bus was fairly uneventful- it stopped a few times for quick breaks. While Split and Dubrovnik are both in Croatia, during the drive we had to pass through Bosnia and Herzegovina, as they control a slice of the coastline. Since we weren’t staying in BiH, border control was easy and the police just boarded and looked at our passports, but didn’t stamp them or anything.

We got to Dubrovnik just before 1pm and there was a bus to Kotor at 3! I bought my ticket for that and then went to have lunch at a restaurant across the street from the bus station. Then I caught the bus at 3 and made it to Kotor around 6. Of course I had a seat mate on this bus as well, but about half the bus got off at the stop before Kotor, leaving a lot of empty seats but of course my seat mate didn’t move. It was a long day spent on the bus, but I’m glad I got all the way to Kotor instead of having to spend a night in Dubrovnik.

The hostel I’m staying at is located in the old town and was only a 5-minute walk from the bus station. I got checked in and met 2 of my roommates. One is working/volunteering at the hostel and the other is from Toronto. Then I headed out to explore the old town a little and find an atm. Montenegro uses the euro, so the conversion is almost 1-1 which is nice.

The hostel has dinner every night at 8pm for €5 so I signed up for that when I arrived. Tonight’s dinner was pork, potatoes, salad, green beans and bread. I hate everything except about 1/2 of the pork which I gave to someone else. But the rest was delicious. After dinner we played beer pong (Montenegrins have some weird rules) and then went on a pub crawl. I went with 3 of my roommates (the girl from Toronto and 2 more girls from Australia) and we only went to the first pub and then headed home. You didn’t have to pay for the pub crawl, but you were supposed to get a shot for every beverage you bought. We never got our shots though and we were all pretty tired so we called it a night early.

May 26

If you bought dinner, you also got free breakfast which consisted of 2 eggs over easy, bread and cream cheese and some ham. For “free” it was actually pretty good.

Today was the day to tackle the fortress. I had been warned about it, so I thought I was prepared. Not quite. It’s over 1300 steps up a mountain in 80 degree heat and very, very little shade. Luckily I had bought a water, but that was pretty much gone by the halfway point. It’s a very pretty hike and was definitely worth it. But it’s not easy. When you get to the top pretty much everyone is sweating and out of breath so it makes you feel better. Going up took just over an hour and I stayed at the top for about 30 minutes and coming down took about 30 minutes. After all this exertion, I was hungry! I found a café and got a Caesar salad. It tasted delicious after that hike!

After lunch I went back to the hostel to rest for a while and while I was there it started to rain, so I’m glad I missed that! I stayed in the hostel about an hour and then, when the rain had finished, decided to take a bus to Budva, another old town south of Kotor. The bus took about 45 minutes. Budva was kind of a let down. It was pretty, obviously, since it’s right on the Adriatic and the old town was nice, but the rest not so much. I probably spent about 1-1.5 hours walking around and then went back to the bus station to go back to Kotor. I arrived at the bus station at 5:58 and thought I had good luck cuz there was a bus at 6pm. Well the bus didn’t arrive until 6:45 because there’s a lot of construction on the main highway right now. So that was annoying, but at least the bus came and I made it back to Kotor. Then I grabbed dinner, went back to the hostel and showered then messed around on my tablet.A section of the fortress at Budva