We left Budva in the morning and headed to Kotor.
Kotor is located in the secluded part of the Bay of Kotor which is on the Adriatic Sea, surrounded by mountains. We found ourselves a paid park up right on the bay. It was €15 as out of season, usually €20. It is just a guarded park up, no facilities but it is definitely worth it for the location.
We arrived on a really lovely sunny day. The first one in ages where there was no rain forecast!
The view was amazing, this is what I was referring to, when in my last post I mentioned that the photos I’d seen of Montenegro reminded me of New Zealand! This was definitely it!
As you can imagine I couldn’t wait to swim here!
We arrived around 10am in the morning so decided to go and see Kotor Old Town first. It was about a 10 minute walk away.
It is a medieval town inside a walled city that dates back to the Romans who founded the town in 168 BC. There is a great number of monuments, cathedrals, churches, palaces and museums all inside the walls. The streets are narrow and there are many squares. There are also many shops and cafes and restaurants. You could easily spend the day exploring here.
After having a walk around and a coffee we decided to do the climb up to the castle. It’s called Castel St John’s and is a fortress. To get there meant walking up 1400 steps! I’m not sure who counted them! During the high season it costs €8 to walk up there but as we were there out of season it was free.
It was a long walk up, but there are plenty of places to stop and rest on the way and even take a few photos. There is also a church to stop and have a look at on the way up.
Here are some photos of us on the way up and on the way down and of course at the top. It was of course totally worth the climb up. We were both glad that we did it.
When we reached the bottom we went and had a well deserved late lunch of sushi outside at one of the restaurants. As you can see I quite liked the plaques they had on the wall!
After a fabulous day seeing Kotor in the sun we woke up to a grey wet day! We had to leave at 10am unless we were staying for another day. We decided to leave. We would have stayed an extra day if the weather had been nice again, but we decided that we didn’t need to pay to sit in the van on a rainy day!
Before we left I did of course manage to get a swim just before the rain got heavy!
We left Kotor and drove to Risan which is a very small village on the coast.
We tried Perast first as there seemed to be a bit more there, but we didn’t manage to find parking.
At Risan there was a large paved car park right by the sea. We did manage to cross over and have a quick look at the village in between the rain but it mostly rained solidly for the whole day. It was a van day, catching up with the blog mainly.
The following morning the rain had finally stopped. We decided to head for Tivat. It was a marina and the Irish guy we’d met in the pub in Budva had told us to go there.
It was certainly an interesting place. My best description is Montenegro’s answer to Monte Carlo!
It reminded me of Brighton Marina back home, but on a much bigger, posher scale!
The marina was filled with large expensive boats, and surrounded by designer shops and expensive looking restaurants. It was interesting to have a walk round but not really a place that we felt at home in!
Here I am outside one of the many designer shops!
Petrovac
After a walk around Tivat we decided it was time to move on. Our next destination was Petrovac, a coastal town between Budva and Bar.
There was a great free park up in the centre of town, close to a supermarket and 5 minutes walk from the beach.
Petrovac was a nice place, it was a big bay really, once you got down to the beach. It had a nice feel to it, smaller than Budva and more intimate.
We took it easy for a couple of days, I swam a both days and we walked right round the bay, we had lunch out one day and generally enjoyed the dry weather.
After 2 nights, it was probably time to move on. We weighed up our options and decided it was time to head back to Albania.
Our next post will start in Albania.
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Our Life on the Road 