Kotor seems like a fairy tale town after the uncertainty of Struga and Shköder and long backbreaking journey to get there.
We spend a lot of
time looking for our hotel on the narrow streets, but it’s worth it.
The little boutique hotel Palazzo Drusko is exactly what our tired bodies and drained minds need. Very cozy, quiet and tasteful. Our rooftop room could even be called luxurious.
Now a year later, while I'm writing this story, I remember that by this time last year I had independently (without Silvia's help) learned how to upload pictues to Blogger. I was up all night uploading pictures, but in the morning they were all gone. At the time I was writing about St. Petersburg - I was a month late. Now a month has become a year.
It is sad though that we only arrive late in the evening and we have to leave in the morning. We try to bargain another night’s stay, but kind-eyed Miloš at the reception tells us that everything has been booked. To make it up for us, he finds us another room at a nearby hotel and
spends half the night drinking rakija (local liquor) with the girls.
The hotel kitchen and Rakija
In the morning I am full of will to go and explore Kotor.
The night before we saw a lit-up pathway that takes one from the town up into the fortress on top of the mountain. We definitely need to go see that.
The girls are not so
enthusiastic. We sit at an outdoor café, I drink my morning coffee and the
girls grab one glass after another - water, Coca Cola, orange juice. My inquisition
only gets “Rakija” as an explanation, as they take another swig of water.
They are not fit to climb a mountain that day so we miss the experience of the fortress, which they started building in the 9th century and finished the protective loop around the city by the 14th century. One can make a 1200m ascent up the fortification via 1350 steps to a height of 260m above sea level.
We take a walk in the old town - around it, above it (on the city walls), and inside churches.
Last six: views of the old town
On the city walls
The view from the city walls towards the sea
The view from the city walls towards the land
The view into the city walls (someone's office?)
The church from the inside
There’s supposed to be a catmuseum here somewhere.
We seem to have found it, but as we enter the door, doubt crawls into our minds – why should a catmuseum be located in the attic of some fairly terrible-looking building, where one has to climb lifethreatening stairs in a dodgy staircase. We almost risk our lives to make sure that there definitely is not a museum here and leave disappointed.
The guards of the cat museum
The next day, we find the museum in the stairway next to where we
were looking for it.
Last 2: exhibits of the museum
We can’t climb the mountain to
visit the fort the next day either, as it is heavily raining. We only get to
run to the cat museum, run to a restaurant to eat some hot soup, and run to the
bus station whilst getting soaking wet.
They offered hot soup from this cauldron at the restaurant
The rain in Kotor was very impressive.
Not a stream, but a river.
As we sit in the bus, dripping and cold, we realize we’ve bought post cards, put postmarks on them and haven’t posted them. Silvia tries to convince the bus driver to let her out at a stop right before crossing the border but he’s not having it. So we stop at the border for a while and see a Mercedes taken apart next to us. I guess they were suspicious of something being smuggled.
Crossing borders went easy for us. I couldn’t imagine the lines we would have had to endure if we were travelling this year.
Dubrovnik bus station is very
windy. The hostess of Adriatic Apartments has promised to pick us up but she is a
little late. Being thoroughly wet and in the cold wind we freeze completely.
Luckily the apartment is warm and cozy. I run to the shop with our hostess and
the girls hang the clothes to dry. There's not a dry spot in sight.
As we wake up the next morning we
see the sun shining so we set out to explore the beautiful historic old town of
Dubrovnik.
About the biggest blunder that
happened on our trip when Silvia booked us a hotel in Prague, not Dubrovnik.
And because she had done so well in booking us inexpensive and nice accommodations
before, we didn’t double check at all. Some Canadians had recommended staying
at a castle, it was supposed to be fun.
Silvia: I entered the words „Castle Apartments“ or somehting like that to the booking website, I found the hotel and booked it. I usually always check how we can get from the bus or train station or airport to our hotel, so naturally I put the bus staion and hotel into Google Maps. It says that by car it will take us 13 hours. What? It can’t be. I check again and I had accidentally booked us a hotel in Prague 1275 km away. Damn! It’s the Canadian’s fault. If he hadn’t told me about a castle hotel, I would have booked one using my regular methods. To be fair, I can’t blame the poor Canadian boy, I was quite an idiot myself. We tried to bargain the hotel room away to someone of Facebook, but we couldn’t (what’s funny is that mum got a message from the hotel owner, asking us what time we would be in Prague, so that they could make up our room. We told them - you know what, we aren’t coming).
The finale of this story is I
ended up giving very high points to the hotel in Prague, because when the time arrived to
rate the accommodation on the booking site, we had already been in a few other
hotels after that so all of them were mixed up. I had remembered that the nice
hotel in Dubrovnik had had a lovely hostess who picked us up from the bus
station, greeted us with wine and tangerines and agreed to drive us around in
the city. And I wrote all that as a review. It wasn’t until later that I
realized I reviewed a hotel I’ve never even been in. So I rewrote the review to
the correct hotel as well. The hotel in Prague hasn’t removed my great review
but they might be in trouble if a future customer demands personal transportation and tangerines.
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