Day 8 - Old Town Kotor & Driving to Dubrovnik

 

We woke up in Kotor, Montenegro and worked on packing up to head to Dubrovnik, Croatia. The man we rented the apartment from came upstairs and collected the final balance and we were off to Old Town to do a few last minute things. I needed to mail some postcards, had some earrings I Dubrovnik wanted to buy that I had seen the previous day, and wanted an iced coffee and Meredith wanted to see some of the churches that were scattered through the center of Old Town. At that point we assessed our situation and decided we should go ahead and eat lunch and found a tasty place for lunch before hitting the road to Croatia.

Ready to roll!

Eying the candles

Some of the alleys in Kotor

Old town Kotor

Lunch in old town

Daniel with Hannah In the square

Outside of Kotor's city walls

 

On our way out of town a police officer stepped in front of our car holding a hand-held little stop sign. I immediately asked Daniel if his headlights were on and he said "crap!" (It was a law in Bosnia and Montenegro that you have your headlights on at all times. Daniel kept forgetting to turn them on when he would start the car.) The cop checked his driver's license, car registration, and asked Daniel to get out of the car and come with him. He sat in the cop car and the guy evidently told him his lights were off and he was going 15 kilometers over the limit and then asked where we were staying. Daniel told him we were staying in Kotor at Apartment Doncic and the cop said "Doncic? Oh" and then left Daniel with a warning instead of a 30 euro fine for his lights. Sweet! Evidently if he had been ticketed, the cop would have kept his license and we would have had to go to the bank in town to pay the ticket and return with a receipt, then we would receive the license and be able to travel on. Huh? Perhaps there was a corruption issue with cops collecting money from tourists? Regardless, we were really grateful and excited to be able to continue on our way.

Near Perast, Montenegro

 

The view was pretty, scenic, fairly straight (not a car-sickness inducer) and was a pleasant length (1.5 hours...probably closer to 2 if you account for Hannah diaper changes and border control). The one to leave Montenegro took a while...to the right there was a car that was being fully fully searched. Down to the extent that they were x-raying portions of the car, taking the back apart, and they had a whole set of tools out to check other things. It was intense (for them). We found our rental property without a lot of trouble!

 

Villa Lucy was awesome! We rented a villa overlooking the Adriatic Sea that also overlooked Lokrum island and the walled city of Dubrovnik - the view was absolutely stunning and enchanting! It was a three bedroom home with a kitchen, living room, three bathrooms, a large balcony on the main floor, and sea views from every room via window or balcony. Just awesome! We were thrilled! This place was above basic, it was very comfortable and homey and the couple that was renting their rental home was just as sweet as could be. They had lived in California for over 20 years before moving back to Croatia, so we could fully communicate. They were so proud of their place, so excited to liked it, and absolutely loved Hannah. All so very sweet. We were thrilled to have found such a great place.

Meredith enjoying the view in Dubrovnik

Almost ready to roll

 

Once we got settled in we set out for dinner in old town Dubrovnik. We walked down our street and took two large flights of stairs that were built into the hills and then took a more gradual hill down to the old town - not a bad walk at all. And then we were crossing a bridge into the old town fortifications - everything was built of a pretty sandy colored stone and all the buildings had beautiful terracotta roofs. It was similar to Kotor, but much larger and grander and the city walls were far more impressive - it was really beautiful! We managed to find an especially delicious dinner and decided to splurge at a steak house kind of place. Daniel and I got delicious fish and steak, respectively, and split a truffle risotto that was just out of this world amazing. They actually cut the steaks at your table (you picked how much of the slab you wanted and they weighed it in front of you - you pay by gram). It was a fun experience. Hannah was not at her best, but we did each manage to enjoy our dinner.

Dubrovnik at night

 

After that we found a great gelato place - not quite as creamy as Italy, but they had some really fun flavors that had fun things mixed in and their pistachio flavor was incredible. From there we took a taxi back (it was a steep hike back) and splitting a cab between all of us was pretty inexpensive. And from there we spent the evening enjoying a stunning view of a beautifully lit Dubrovnik.

Our evening view of Old Town

 

Posted with Blogsy