Another early morning to try and get a jump on checking out then picking up a rental car...but didn’t quite go as planned. We couldn’t get in touch with the rental company after many calls to make sure they would be there when it said they opened, then Grace called to share some news, so we talked while we had coffee and breakfast.
Ultimately we left the apartment at 10:00a and walked to the bus/taxi stand. Here is a pic we took of the apartment location when we were across the city in Fort Lawrence.
Another oddity that we noted while around Dubrovnik was that since they have so much stone, rain runs down all the steps until they reach a drain (and it often rains really hard as we learned). To keep the water out of the doors they do this:
We hired a taxi to take us from Old Town Dubrovnik to the city center where we‘d arranged the rental car pickup. When we got there at 10:30a there was no one in the rental office, so we sat in the shade and watched a Netflix show...seemed a lot like our experience In Zagreb. We finally got the car and were on the road by 11:30a, but had to find gas immediately since the car was left on empty :-(.
On the highway it was easy (and beautiful) driving to Croatia’s border with Montenegro and we had no issues at the border crossing (yay!). About an hour from the border we stopped at this little place in the town of Risan to get lunch - Don had a Montenegrin kebab and Tammy had a weiner schnitzel - both were very good.
Of course we had friends at the table...
We realized that we didn’t have a specific address for the apartment, so we spent an hour finding WiFi (no SIM for Montenegro) so we could get a map to the place. In a coffee shop we looked all through out bookings (there have been a lot) but found nothing for Montenegro and no confirmation e-mail...drat. We both remembered looking at the place but somehow it never got booked - luckily the one we looked at was available so we quickly (re?)booked it for the night. The location on the map was pretty close to where we were, so within 10 minutes we were near the mark. Fun fact about Montenegro - like Costa Rica, they don’t really use addresses or house numbers.
Out of pure karmic fortune, when we realized that we couldn’t find the exact building or a sign we pulled into a driveway...then of course a car needed to pull in there too. As it turns out, it was the host who had just gotten our reservation request and sped from the nearby beach to get the place ready. She greeted us by name and said we were at the right place - what timing and coincidence.
We got checked in and are the only guests in the entire building! We took a quick nap, then headed into Old Town Kotor to have a look - here is some of what we saw...
We walked up to the top of the city wall (free here unlike Dubrovnik) and as Don was taking pics of the surround city, this is where he found Tammy
There were three adorable kittens, maybe one week old, running around with a slightly older kitten and (presumably) the momma cat. Look how cute...
Cats are a bit of a thing in Kotor and they have themed some of the cities tourism around them - you can see why!
We walked through all of the town (much smaller than Dubrovnik or Split) and got some all-natural ice cream for a treat. There was some event happening near the church (politician it seemed given the security) and some live performances in one of the squares.
It was getting dark so we started back to the car but had some pretty sights at twilight.
On the way back to the car we stopped in a grocery store and bought food for a late dinner and breakfast in the morning. Oddly, although Croatia is in the European Union they don’t accept Euros and though Montenegro isn’t in the EU, they only accept Euro - fortunately credits cards work in most places since we don’t have Euros.
We got back and made a late dinner, enjoying the nighttime view from the patio and researched our plans for tomorrow.
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