Our place in Kotor was quiet and comfortable, so we slept in a little later. After coffee and cereal for breakfast we checked out to head toward Slano in Croatia on our way back along the coast to visit Krka National Park.
Here is the parting view from our terrace...
Rather than retrace our route here, we drove the long way around the Bay of Kotor through narrow twisty streets next to the water. Many, many stops/pullouts to accommodate oncoming traffic.
There was a short car ferry that crossed the bay, but we chose not to take the ferry ride across but instead drove the loop inland through a tunnel instead. Here are a few darling images along the way...
We stopped in Perast for lunch and a sweet treat (Montenegrin cream cake) and watched the boats shuttle people to a pretty monastery on the island in the bay.
While walking back to the parked car, Tammy took a swim in the bay to cool off!
To see more new scenery, we decided to use the less busy border crossing near the southern tip of Croatia on the way back. The border crossing consists of a Montenegro checkpoint and a Croatia checkpoint. We sailed through the border crossing on the way here, and passed back through the small Montenegro checkpoint without issue, but not the Croatia checkpoint. After asking several questions about our upcoming lodging, having a discussion with a supervisor and making a phone call to another superior, they finally told us that we needed a new PCR (COVID) test to renter the country since we’d left Croatia overnight. 🤬
This would have put a huge kink in our up coming plans since we had non refundable hotels room and plane tickets depending on how long the test results took. We didn’t even know where we’d be able to take the test. Needless to say we were stressing quite a bit.
We then drove back to our first border crossing, passing through Montenegro portion again without issue, then sat in line at the Croatia checkpoint. The border office took our passports and vehicle documents, then closed the window and got on the phone...we thought for sure we were going to get the same answer, but they let us through!
We were so glad to avoid the headache of finding where they do tests in Montenegro, waiting to get the tests done then waiting for the results (and paying for it). We weren’t even sure if they did any rapid tests, so it could have been days or more. Researching after we were back in Croatia, it looks like the travel rules had changed since we first entered the country :-(.
Along the drive toward Dubrovnik we stopped in to see the town of Cavtat as we’d seen tours offered to there. This turned out to be another pedestrian-only Old Town with pay-parking so we turned around and continued on (feeling like we’ve seen plenty of old towns by now).
The road is high on the hillside so it was fun to see Dubrovnik and the islands from the high vantage point as we drove. Another 90 minutes and we were in Slano, although the map, address and name of hotel was didn’t match the website, we found it anyway. Once we figured out we were in the right place and parked, we were greeted by a very nice host. They offered a welcome drink and we ended until sitting to have an early dinner snack, then checked in to the room.
The location is wonderful in a quiet inlet with a very nice beach, although the room needed to be teleported from the 70s to present day. Regardless, we took a break then drove into the main part of the village to get drinks for the room. After checking out some of the surrounding area, we called it a night.
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