Montenegro

After a morning in a cafe in Foča (Bosnia and Herzegovina), where we ordered a steady supply of coffees and Palatschinke (crepes filled with apple and caramel), we took a 5 hour bus journey to Podgorica (Montenegro's capital city). The bus journey was incredible, winding high above a gorge with amazing views of the river below and mountains above. We arrived in Podgorica quite late, and settled into our AirBnB. The next morning we went to explore Podgorica. We found it to be quite a strange and soulless city. It had been heavily bombed during WW2, meaning that there wasn't an old part of town or historic centre, and even the newer parts were quite ugly and uninteresting. We decided one morning was enough there, and after some lunch took a bus to Virpazar in Lake Skadar National Park. 

Virpazar is a very small town on the edge of the Skadar Lake, which is famous for bird watching and boat trips. We soon relaxed into the laid back feel of the place, and decided to spend 3 nights there. Due to having had such an amazing time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we were very behind on our sailing course theory, and decided to focus on that for a couple of days. After a solid few hours of study the next day, we headed for a wine tasting paired with local food. It was a lovely family run business, who had been producing wine for 14 generations! The tasting was led by the daughter, with her brother and father busy that day with grape harvesting on their vineyard 3km away. It was a very relaxed setting, surrounded by bottles of wine going back to the 1970s and delicious food grown by the family. We drank 4 different types of wine and 2 or 3 types of Rakija (fruit liquor) so were very tipsy by the end (thanks to Seb for the honeymoon gift)! We spent the next day doing more sailing course theory, and in the late afternoon we went into town to rent a double kayak to take out onto the lake for a couple of hours. We paddled along a small river to reach the lake, which had reeds on either side that were full of birds. When we made it onto the lake we were greeted by amazing views of the lake and the surrounding mountains. We paddled to a bridge, which had more marshes and wetlands on the other side. We saw lots of birds, but sadly our bird identification knowledge is very limited! We think we saw kingfishers, egrets, herons and cranes amongst many others. Sadly no Dalmatian Pelicans, which the lake is famous for. We paddled back to the town, and went for dinner in a lovely local restaurant overlooking the water. 

We took an early morning bus from Virpazar to a historic town on Montenegro's coastline - Kotor. We stayed in the old town, which is surrounded by historic wall fortifications and full of quaint old buildings. Despite being quite touristy, we really liked the feel of it and spent some time exploring. We discovered that it considers itself a cat city, with hundreds of cats roaming the streets and being well cared for by residents. In a central square there was a cat food dispenser and lots of little shelters for the cats! After stroking many of them, we found a local restaurant for lunch. We explored some more, then went back to our Air BnB for a chilled afternoon and home cooked dinner. We awoke to the sound of church bells ringing enthusiastically at 7am. Our AirBnB was by a church and they loudly announced each hour, with longer bell ringing at intervals throughout the day. After a morning of sailing course theory, we decided to head on a hike to a viewpoint and bar overlooking the city. It turned out to be a very long climb up a steep hill in the heat of the day, lengthened by the fact that we got lost and took the wrong trail! A few hours later we made it to the bar, which had beautiful views over the bay and hills below (thanks to Sonia for the honeymoon gift). We realised it would get dark during our hike down, so managed to hitch a lift with a friendly Russian guy (an engineer who moved to Montenegro due to disagreeing with the situation in Ukraine - he also used to be a freediver for the national Russian team!) We then went out for dinner, and met an Indian traveller who we immediately got on well with. He invited us back to his hostel for a drink and to join them on their pub crawl. We had a fun time but after a couple of drinks excused ourselves due to having an early bus the next morning - to our next country, Albania!