Azur of Montenegro. First class food poisoning.

 

In the morning, it turned out that breakfast was offered a la carte, not as a buffet. We had an omelette (Scott) and an energy breakfast (me) and also wanted croissants (to share). It turned out that you have to pay extra for the third portion. The food arrived at the table in speedy 35 minutes. Good thing we were the only guests. My energy breakfast had to be: corn flakes, raspberries, banana, Plazma bisquits, milk, yogurt, honey. A bowl of muesli and a bottle of milk arrived on the table. When the young man said bon appetit and started to leave, I asked, where is the rest? After that he also brought honey, jam and one banana.

The whole way through Montenegro towards Bosnia and Herzegovina was driving through thick fog. Sometimes it was just between and above the mountains on the side of the road, sometimes you couldn't see further than 10 meters from the car.

There is an incredibly beautiful view of the mountains between the two borders, we took pictures and then drove to Bosnia and Herzegovina. My stomach had already started to hurt, and I blamed some specific circumstances. But a 15 minutes after arriving in the country, I started to feel nauseous, dizzy, sweat was flowing so that my hair was soaked. My stomach hurt even more and my hands started shaking. I didn't feel good at all. Finally we arrived in Trebinje, I went to the first bar we came across and after using their toilet we sat on a piece of wall next to the car. That's where I also left all of my breakfast. Since it seemed to me at that point that I could more or less sit, we started to drive towards Croatia again, because we thought that since I was feeling lousy, I would much rather feel lousy in the European Union, and not in the middle of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Three kilometers later, however, a new stop with the same intention was needed. It seemed that after that the whole mess was more or less over and I felt fine.

The border crossing into Croatia went smoothly and we drove straight to Kupari beach to enjoy the light blue water and white beach.

Our apartment in Dubrovnik is on the fourth floor with a view of the old town, the sea and the sunset. We walked around town, oh my gosh, I didn't remember HOW many stairs there are. And HOW expensive is the food here in the old town.

The Peaceful Pearl. Crossing bridges.

 

Loyal readers surely remember me writing about the rickety bridge we had to cross on the way to the winyard around a week ago. Well, it bothered Scott that we didn't even take a picture of this bridge, and today, driving from North Macedonia through Albania back to Montenegro, we decided to make a quick detour to the said bridge. The pictures and videos speak for themselves.

We made good time while driving and before reaching the border of Montenegro we started to discuss what if we canceled the accommodation in Montenegro and went through Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Dubrovnik in the same go. This idea seemed perfectly fine until we reached the border. There was total chaos at the border, and it took more time to cross it than all the previous ones combined. We decided to stay in Podgorica for the night afterall.

In the evening, we walked around in the capital - the only capital of this trip, we saw some awesome bridges and finally went back to the hotel.

Albanian Riviera. Are we still on the right track?

 

I went for a run in the morning. Since the beach is not very long and I don't particularly want to run where cars drive, the first part of the trail did not take me to a picturesque beach with turquoise water, but to the top of the hill behind the hotel. From there I ran back and along the other side on the beach to the next beach. In any case, my legs are not used to mountain running and I'm looking forward to see what they think about all this tomorrow.

After breakfast, we started our way to Albania. I had the map and Scott was driving. When we had driven for about half an hour on a road with the width of one car somewhere in the middle of bushes, Scott began to slightly doubt that we might be lost. But already an hour and a half later, the first 65 kilometers had been covered and the border crossed. On the Albanian side, the road also got a little wider. Soon we also reached the highway, where every now and then, in addition to usual 50 km/h, even 80 km/h was permitted.

Our first stop was the Duka Winery and Vineyard. We turned off of the highway into the fields and soon we were driving again on a one car wide or slightly narrower road between the fields. We drove until we reached Gramëz Bridge. Scott stopped the car in front of the bridge and tried to figure out if it was meant for cars and if our Opel could fit through there. I walked onto the bridge and decided that I didn't want to walk over all those flagging and sometimes missing slats. I got back in the car and started looking for an alternative route. At the same moment, a car came from the opposite direction and crossed the bridge - the bridge swayed and waved, but the car reached the other bank. We decided it was now or never and drove over. We only scratched the mirror.

The winery itself turned out to be an extremely popular place for Albanians, and we got the last free spot in the parking lot. We ordered spinach salad with fruit, meatballs, gnocchi with four cheeses and beef medallion with pistachios. And a bottle of wine, of course. Everything was fine until the moment the meat arrived on the table. I have never had just one piece of meat as a main course, without any side dishes. Sorry, there was also a plate full of nuts. It wasn't too much of an inconvenience because we still had some gnocchi left and that helped out. But how they managed to dry out the medium raw beef like that, I don't understand. Not a drop of liquid was left in it.

20 minutes after leaving the winery, we were at the hotel - some went to sleep (not me), some went to the beach. After we watched the sunset we went to eat. The stuffed portobellos were very good, they didn't have the smoked fish carpaccio (or rather, they did, but according to the waiter the fish was no longer in its prime), and the waiter replaced it with gravlax. The said salmon had probably enjoyed the Albanian sun for a few hours beforehand and had dried out properly at the edges. Instead of shrimp and avocado spring rolls, we were brought shrimp in phyllo dough and spring rolls with cabbage. Since this was not our vision of the spring rolls we wanted, we sent them back. To make up for this inconvenience, they brought us a tray full of fruit.

Azur of Montenegro. Life like in Catholic Germany

At six o'clock in the morning, we woke up to the fact that the steeple in a nearby church is broken. Or how else to explain the fact that on Saturday morning before even the roosters and way before the dawn, the church bells chime for several minutes. Well, like they do in eerie hours in Munich, but longer. Much longer.

Today we had planned to go to Lovcen park and do a 10km hike there. Since the morning still seemed a little suspicious in terms of the weather, we decided to see how it felt when we reached the trailhead - whether we would go for a hike or not. We started driving up, stopping every three minutes or so to admire the breathtaking views. There are 25 switchbacks in the serpentine of Kotor, and there were also plenty of views on the serpentine. Each time we stopped the temperature had also dropped by at least one degree. When we reached the clouds, the temperature dropped by two degrees every time, and a light layer of water started to form on the clothes. We canceled the hike, but we still went to the top of the highest mountain. To enjoy the views or something. The view was there of a steady layer of clouds. One also see a person about 10 meters away, but anything further than that was gray as a seal.

We started moving towards the beach and since the road went through Cetinje and I hadn't had coffee yet today, we parked the car and walked to a cafe. We decided to walk a bit more in this relatively deserted city, looked at 10-euro branded goods like Karl Lagerfeld in the shops, and ran into the German dude again, who was riding a bicycle through the Balkans, and who, among other things, informed us that Cetinje is the former capital of Montenegro.

In the afternoon we finally arrived in Petrovic, checked into the hotel and went for a walk on the beach promenade. We managed to go to the neighboring beach, climb a bearby mountain and watch the sunset. A quick visit to the SPA, two saunas and a few laps in the swimming pool and we were so ready for dinner. As always, we ordered too much food (everything was very tasty, by the way) and as if this too much wasn't enough, we also opted for desserts. It turned out that the Ambassador restaurant and I have completely different ideas about a good dessert. And also about whether it is appropriate to serve a chocolate sponge cake as the chocolate mousse.