Thies Family Adventure: Four days, four boats.

Montenegro, take two.

Our first stop was a little town called Virpazar, which is really just an old fishing village on Shkodra Lake that now gets all of its business giving boat rides to tourists. So we decided to think way outside the box as tourists and book a boat ride. Carol switched our accomodations at the last second so we could stay right in Virpazar the night before, instead of a second night back in Shkodër, and thereby beat all the rest of the tourists to one of the six or seven parking spots in the whole town. My wife is a genius. The traffic jams were epic that morning, but we weren’t in them. The last second booking was in a camp setting, where we had three little wooden A-frame cabins for the six of us. There was only one toilet and one shower in a separate “building” serving the eight cabins on the property, and the shower was more of a trickle. But I loved the whole arrangement. It reminded me of summers past at family camp. I can do rustic. It is my jam. The Allens all just decided to wait for our next spot to shower. Oh well. You can’t please everyone every time. At least we got parking for the boat ride. That was no small thing. Truly.

I thought the cabins were cute.

The boat ride itself was pretty chill. Lots of bird watching. Dozens of species. Everyone but me and Michelle braved the freezing water and did some swimming right off the boat. Judging by their reactions to the water temperature, I am not second guessing my choice. But they all said it was fun as they got back into the boat, shivering. We stopped at a secluded island monastery that is home to one monk. Mostly we just enjoyed the nature and the donuts and wine provided by the boat captain. Carol couldn’t stop giggling at the captain’s approach to guiding us across the lake. The picture below tells it all.

Just got on the boat.

Our captain hard at work.

Lake Shkodra looked like this for much of the ride, perfect place for birdwatching.

Swimming in the lake.

View from the monastery.

The drive to Budva was easy, and we docked Luka in a lot well outside the danger zone for vehicles in town. The twenty minute walk to the old town wasn’t too bad, and we were greeted by an incredibly friendly couple at our next place, the Sailor House, smack dab in the middle of the walled city. The place was good, but the location was fantastic. And so was Budva. The old town was a total maze. No need for right angles at any intersection of the roads. You could never see more than two or three buildings down before the path curved off in another direction. We climbed the fortress wall to get a bird’s eye view and all you could see was a hodgepodge of roofs within the walls. But the bay was gorgeous and the sunset was perfect.

Sveti Stefan from the road on the way into Budva.

Typical building inside the walls of old town Budva.

Outside the walls, headed to the promenade.

Hawaii island from Budva castle.

Looking down on old town from the castle.

The official logo of the town of Budva.

Inside the castle.

The next day we took another boat cruise. But this one was in a much larger boat and with at least fifty other passengers. We went to Sveti Stefan, an island, turned into a peninsula, so that it is land accessible, and a jumble of buildings rivaling the old town for quaintest spot around. We jumped off the ship and swam in the crystal clear waters of the Adriatic, not once, but twice. The second swim stop was in a cave on the coast of the island they call Hawaii. No pics from inside the cave because we were all in the water, and didn’t wan o ruin our phones.

View from the tour boat.

Sveti Stefan from the boat.

Swimming in the Adriatic

Sveti Stefan from a different angle.

Cool cave that we swam in from the tour boat on the back of Hawaii Island

Some of us swimming.

A different "cave" that we saw from the boat.

Proof that I was actually in the water as well this time.

Remy and Michelle didn't go on the boat tour with us. Their loss.

We did spend some time outside the walls of Budva, mostly on the beach. I had some surprisingly good Korean food while exploring up in the hills on the edge of town. But Budva was really about the old town. On our last morning in Budva, Carol and I rented a spot in a raft, pulled by a speed boat. It was only about ten minutes of bouncing up and down on the tiny waves of the Adriatic, but it was enough of an adrenalin rush that neither of us felt the ride was too short. Super fun, and we had to keep our boat streak alive while in Montenegro.

Typical Budva beach scene.

The must-have shot of Budva with the iconic ballerina sculpture in the foreground.

We had a lot more fun doing this than it looks like from the photo.

From Budva, we drove to Kotor in the afternoon, on what should be only about an hour long drive. But did we take the easy way? Of course not. First we sat in a traffic jam for over an hour. But we felt so good about finally getting through that, that we thought, hey, why not see the much hyped town of Tivat first, before heading to Kotor. And as Tivat was on the opposite side of a peninsula from Kotor, we thought it would be fun to drive around the peninsula and take in the Boka Bay views. Oops.

The town of Tivat was dead. Which is weird, as it is peak season everywhere else around here.

The most interesting thing we found walking around Tivat.

First off, Tivat is a tourist town with no soul. It is as sterile as a hospital and not worth visiting. I am sure many of the rich people who stay there feel differently, but we found it completely without character and were disappointed to have wasted our precious time visiting it. Secondly, the entire drive around the peninsula is a one lane road that is used as a two-way road. It felt like we were back in Ireland, with our inability to drive more than 100 meters without having to pull over and stop so that someone going the other way could actually go the other way. At one point Michelle basically played chicken with a dude until we were stopped, staring head on, nose to nose, with another car daring the other to flinch. This lasted for over a minute. He had no intention of backing up. We had no ability to back up, with cars behind us and a van wider than a house.

Okay, this ship was docked in Tivat. I have to admit, it was pretty cool.

Eventually Michelle and I had to switch places, and I had to ask the drivers behind us to back up and then back the van a good hundred meters in order to let the dude in his tiny car pass. He basically tailgated (more like nose-gated) me the whole way as I backed it up. I had to suppress the urge to hit the brakes and have him collide with me. His puny car would have taken the brunt of that encounter for sure. And Luka is a rental with the premium insurance package. So a fender bender wouldn’t set me back a nickel. I so badly wanted to teach this guy a lesson. Michelle wanted it even more than me, and Michelle wouldn’t hurt a fly. But I resisted. We eventually got through the mess that now involved a few dozen cars. Making it around that peninsula was a freaking miracle. But we eventually did, in about four times the expected amount of time. Parking in Kotor was almost as difficult as the drive to get there. When we finally did find parking, it was about seven hours after we had left Budva. Two of those hours were wasted walking around and eating lunch in Tivat. But still, needless to say, when we finally did leave Luka for the next two days we were happy to be rid of him.

As wiped as we were, Kotor beckoned immediately. Another walled city, but with a very different feel. The looming mountains in the background had a lot to do with it, but the streets just felt different than in Budva. Not better, necessarily. But definitely not worse either. It is hard to describe the difference. More open squares, with large seating areas for restaurants. More open in general, I guess. The tight-knit buildings in Budva didn’t make you feel claustrophobic in any way, but you did feel a sense of everything looming over you. The streets there were narrow and windy. In Kotor, the streets were often lined with tables and chairs and benches and fountains because there was simply more room.

The view of Kotor Bay from the front balcony of our apartment. What!!!!????

The view of one of many old town squares from the back window in our apartment. What!!!!?????

Typical old town Kotor shot.

The cats were everywhere in Kotor.

The walls of old town Kotor were impressive.

Kotor walls and moat with part of the climb to the citadel far above.

We somehow managed to be in Kotor on the exact two nights of the annual national festival. That meant even bigger crowds and even louder celebrations. Dueling music venues from around every corner made for a club like atmosphere, only outside in the open air. We endured it as long as we could, being fifty-somethings, and hid away in our glorious apartment most of the time at night. But by day, the old town streets were far more manageable, and we enjoyed them considerably. Carol and I braved the 1500 steps up the mountain to the fortress in the sky. The views were tremendous. We couldn’t get over the guys selling ice cold drinks along the way, and even at the top. How did they get all that up there? We didn’t see any helicopter drop-offs. But it still didn’t detract from our feeling proud of completing the hike all the way up and then all the way back down again. None of the Allens had any interest in making that trek. We can’t blame them. It was hot, and the Adriatic beckoned.

Early on in the climb (not sweaty messes yet).

View from near the top.

View including walls of the citadel.

If you are gonna go up, then you gotta climb all the way back down too.

But where would our streak of boat rides be if we didn’t spend the afternoon on the water? So we did just that, hiring a private tour/taxi ride in a speedboat. The idea was to cruise around 5e bay and see the sights from the water, and then get dropped off in Perast, a much hyped destination that you can’t really drive to because there is no parking available unless you are a resident. So either you go by water, or you take the bus. We chose the water route there and the cheaper bus on the way back.

Group shot on the speedboat with Perast in the background.

Perast is famous because of the two islands in the bay just off shore from the little town. One is a beautiful natural island that is entirely a 14th century cemetery, and is illegal for casual visitors to step foot on. This didn’t stop a few dozen sunbathers from partaking, but we steered clear. The other is a man-made island with nothing but a church on top. But that island comes with a story worth sharing. It is called “Our Lady of the Rocks”. Apparently a ship sank there which was carrying a valuable painting of the Virgin Mary. The painting was recovered and brought back to Perast for safe keeping. But every night, after the painting was sealed tight in the church on land, it somehow disappeared and reappeared on the shipwreck. After this happened multiple times, with no logical explanation for it, the townspeople finally decided to build a church on top of the shipwreck and store the painting there instead. The townspeople all pitched in for years, dumping rocks on top of the wrecked ship, to build up the “island” enough for it to support a sufficiently sized church to house the masterpiece and do it justice. The people of the town have a festival every year, at the end of July, where they continue to drop rocks there as a symbol of their respect for the miracle that happened there. We were about one week late to witness that.

Our Lady of the Rocks island.

The cemetary island.

The speed boat captain told us this story and also explained how Perast was constantly being attacked by pirates in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their first response was to keep building churches in town to attempt to get God on their side and to protect them from harm. There are 22 churches in a town that has less than 300 permanent residents. Finally, they decided to take a different tack, and build a chain that was strung from one side of the bottleneck in the bay to the other. It was pulled tight via a winch system whenever a pirate ship tried to enter the Perast side of the bay. It sank many a ship and eventually Boka Bay became known as an impassable waterway, allowing Perast to flourish once again. Cool story. One side of the bottleneck is called Fort Verige on the Bay of Kotor if you are curious enough to look it up on Google Maps and find the skinny bottleneck two thirds of the way into the crazy shaped bay.

We were dropped off by our tour guide and we wandered the tiny town, climbing the steep hillside to check out all of the tiny churches. We ate dinner right on the water in the oldest and best (according to the El Capitán) restaurant in town, called Conté. It was a five-star meal with a six-star view and a hilarious waiter with a dad-joke schtick an a flare for comedic timing in a language that obviously wasn’t his first. The bus ride back was a bit of an adventure, due to a traffic jam that had us stopped for at least ten minutes, a bus so crowded that people at later stops could not board, even with us squished in like sardines. We blame the festival in Kotor. There was a parade for which they closed off the street (yes, there is only one street that goes through Kotor.) It is a good thing we boarded the bus when we did, because the next one may never have made it through. But we got back safely and spent another night playing cards and dice and bananagrams and having cocktails on our balcony from heaven, with views of the bay that were better than any point on the city wall itself. Kotor is all about the fantastic scenery where mountains meet crystal clear waters. We soaked it up as much as possible.

The view from our dinner table in Perast.

Walking the Perast promenade.

Climbing the hillside in Perast looking for itty-bitty churches.

Leaving Kotor was hard, not because of Luka’s considerable girth, but because we didn’t want to go. But at least the first hour of driving was right along the edge of the bay, and almost all the way around it. Not a bad picture to be had for miles. But when we finally left the bay and headed north to the border with Croatia, we got stuck in the border traffic line from hell. A full two hours it took before we finally made it across. The wait wiped me out for some reason, and I had a headache despite significant amounts of medication for the rest of the afternoon and evening and into the night. I slept about eighteen hours, with only a quick break for dinner. Dubrovnik and Croatia at large would have to wait. And so will you, to hear about that leg of the journey. Spoiler alert, another boat! Do sljedećeg puta!