You may have heard about the country Montenegro via Casino Royale, the first Daniel Craig James Bond film. Well, none of it was filmed here but it’s an amazing country. I know, I know! Everything is so amazing here. I’ll consult the thesaurus and get some new words.
We stayed right outside of Kotor, a big port town. We saw several huge cruise ships, including a Holland America ship when we left this morning. We had our first disaster of the trip when we went to the wrong neighborhood for our apartment. This was not our fault but the fault of the Hotels.com map. Going to the wrong neighborhood wasn’t bad but getting a flat tire on top of a very narrow and hilly street was. We decided that it could have been a lot worse than it was. The woman’s driveway we stopped into spoke English and told us that there was an auto repair shop just down the hill. When we got down the hill the man didn’t have tires so sent us down the street. Oh ya, the kids and I got out of the car so that there wouldn’t be extra weight on the flattened tire/rim. Something ripped a huge hole on the side of the tire. I don’t think anyone could have patched that! So down the street we go looking for another auto shop. “400 meters then right then another right.” Seriously I have no idea how far 400 meters is. I barely know how far 400 feet is. So, down I go, stopped at a restaurant to ask again, kids in tow. “200 meters then right and 20 meters.” Ok!! We found it! They put the spare on for us and, yaaayy, they can order a tire from the capital and have it here in the morning. But, English is definitely not as widely spoken here and thank goodness there was a guy there that spoke broken English. He was so nice and so helpful! And guess what, our apartment was literally 5 minutes from the garage. Ugfffgggh!! We got a great lunch before setting into the apartment.
Justin and I walked down to the old town and had a (or more) drink. We ended up getting home at about 1:30. We were supposed to get an early start the next day but we were both hungover. At least we had a date night. Old town was so so cute! Again, how do people live in here. Wonder what it would be like to live here. We wanted to climb up to the top lookout tower but didn’t get to. Again, we will have to come back!
Next day we headed out, late, to the Ostrog Monastery. It’s sometimes called the Balkan Petra. It’s built into the rocky face of a mountain about 1 km from the valley. How the heck did they get the resources up there!! Many of you know that we are not a religious family but this is all very impressive and special. It’s a Serbian Orthodox Church.
We then set out to find a mausoleum on the top of a mountain. We didn’t really even know who is buried there but wanted to go. It’s supposed to be about 3 hours from town and in a National Park. Boy, the Montenegrins know how to build roads. We assume they were widening the road up to the mausoleum due to its gaining popularity. So we drove about 10 km in bumpy road but we made it. We saw a soldier at a gate and thought he was going to tell us to head back. Instead he needed to collect the fees for the Lovcen National Park. The mausoleum is for the Montenegrin ruler and poet Petar II Petrovic Niegos. We climbed 461 steps up to the huge structure. It was definitely grand. The view is beautiful. They say that you can see almost all of Montenegro on a clear day. We believe it.
That was our day in Montenegro. Sometimes it did feel like we were driving into no where. Lots of elevation, lots of switchbacks, dirt/rock roads sometimes blocked by heavy moving equipment. But, we did see some key sites and were definitely impressed.
Oh, apparently Kotor is a cat city. Lots of 🐱 around. There’s even a cat museum. I haven’t had time to look what why but kids were very excited about seeing the cats. The locals seem to take care of them and feed them. Just hope they spay and neuter them.
We are heading into Albania now as I type this in the car. See you tomorrow!!
Higman Travels 