We had a bit of time to kill this morning on account of the fact the car didn’t need to be back until 2pm. We’d planned to drive the utterly batshit Serpentine road into Kotor but we’d done that the previous day to beat the weather and fuck me, I am so glad we did. It would have been horrific in this visibility, plus the fact safe braking distances are a strange and foreign concept here. It wouldn’t have been ideal to take Tarrant down a winding road after she was so poorly last night either lest she redecorate the upholstery with whatever was left of her stomach lining. We tried to go to the national museum in Cetinje but the history section was closed for refurbishment and that was the bit we were interested in. The art gallery was open but I’m not cultured enough to look at art. Well then, sitting in a bakery shovelling things into our chops it would be then. I’d be shovelling things into my chops like I was raised by wolves anyway. Tarrant tentatively introduced solids to her tortured insides. The recovery after you’ve been ill is sometimes as miserable as the illness itself. Fortunately in both our cases it only seemed to be a 12 hour bug of some description and on neither occasion did it really fuck with our plans too much.

It was still drizzling a bit this morning after the Biblical rains last night. I swear it never stopped to draw breath, it just hammered down starting in earnest around 8pm and simply not stopping. I didn’t realise we had that much sky to hold that much fucking water! I worried about floods and closed roads because worrying is my default state but it turned out okay to be fair. The first part of the drive though, that was all a bit bum-clenchy with fuck all visibility as we wound through the mountains. I noticed that a lot of oncoming cars had their hazards on as they crept through the fog so I did the same. The driver behind me kept a surprisingly safe distance away, also utilising the hazards. It did clear a bit as we descended into Budva then we proceeded to get stuck in crawling traffic through the roadworks on the other side of the town. Still preferable to the Serpentine. If Google were sentient it would have rolled its eyes when I chose to add half an hour onto our journey with this route.

We were still too early so we pulled into a roadside restaurant about 20 minutes out of Kotor just as the heavens opened again. Perfect timing, that. I ordered a veal soup which I’d seen several times on menus throughout the country, plus a plate of Njeguški pršut because shut up and give me the cured strips of flesh. Tarrant slowly added chips and bread to her reluctant digestive system, still looking a bit sad, bless her. She was definitely on the mend though. She’d even perked up a bit by the time we pulled up by a petrol station near Kotor where we’d been told we could leave the car. I WhatsApped our contact and he just told us to leave the keys in the glove box and his colleague would be along to fetch the car in about 20 minutes. Well that felt fucking weird, I’m not going to lie. We live in a relatively nice village just outside of Huddersfield and I still wouldn’t go around leaving cars unlocked with the keys actually inside the vehicle. He seemed quite sure it’d be safe, I just had to send him a photo of exactly where the car was, and we walked the last ten minutes into the old town of Kotor where we’d be finishing up our Montenegro adventure.

Tarrant was feeling much more herself by the time we settled into our accommodation so we activated the Rainy Day Plan whereby we do a bit of sightseeing whilst not straying too far from places with roofs that sell beer. You can walk along the old city walls, the bits that don’t suddenly stretch almost vertically up the literal side of a mountain, so that’s what we did. We just pottered, stopped for a drink, pottered some more, saw a couple of churches then wandered outside of the walls to see a spomenik in a park by the water.

We were pretty much done with Montenegrin food by this point, especially Tarrant, but something else the country seems to love is Italian food so we figured that would be a safe bet over the next few days. Can’t go wrong with pasta or pizza, really, can you? There’s a lot of decent food in old town Kotor, obviously you’ll get cheaper eats outside the walls but we’d agreed to sack the budget off whilst we were in this town. It’s the ultimate tourist hub, nothing is cheap here, but fuck it. We’re on holiday, our honeymoon to be specific. Pro tip though, the cruise ships usually bugger off around 6pm which makes the old town a much more pleasant place to be. It’s just a nice place to wander around, getting a bit lost in the narrow streets, being hopelessly tempted by the slew of souvenir shops touting homemade trinkets. I know it’s a tourist trap but I’ll admit it; I really, really like Kotor’s old town.

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Kotor Stari Grad, Kotor, Montenegro

Stayed at: Apartment Sofija, Kotor Stari Grad