The
plan was to sleep well last night and long in the morning. The plan
didn't work out. It was probably the hard bed for me and the room being
too hot for Scott. How it was so hot on his side, while on my side I
pulled the blanket up to my nose, probably remains an unsolved mystery.
The
first thing in the morning we started our way to Montenegro - a 15
minutes drive on the narrow mountain road, and two border crossings
later we were there. At the first resort town on the way, we drove up
the hill to enjoy the beautiful views and see Tivat, which was only
about 15 km away from us as the crow flies, but about an hour and a
quarter to reach it by car.
With Google Maps in hand, we made our
way through the city and still managed to miss one left turn, because
we just didn't recognise the narrow footpath as a street. We then took
the next one left and moved along the narrow and winding streets
practically vertically back to where we originally needed to go.
Our
plan was to go to Red Lobster for lunch, but when we got there it
turned out that this bistro was closed without a single word of
explanation. Being starving, we just went to the next restaurant on the
same street, which offered a wide variety of burgers and a couple of
traditional meat dishes. Scott chose a cheese and ham stuffed burger and
I took fried meat with cheese filling. A giant burger patty with fries,
a bit of tomato and a huge pile of raw onions was placed in front of
Scott. I got something that resembled a Kiev cutlet, but the size would
have been suitable for feeding a smaller African village. When I cut
through the crispy breading, the liquid, delicious cheese filling flowed
out from inside the tender chicken meat. Apparently all the cheese had
been put into my meat roll, because there was no sign of ham or cheese
on Scott's patty. When the waiter came to ask if everything was alright,
the following conversation happened at the table:
Scott: It's all good, but I ordered a ham and cheese filled burger
Waiter: But we don't have that at all, see, here in Montenegrin it says tomato and onion only
Scott: In English it says stuffed burger with cheese and ham
Waiter: I'll see, but they don't know English here, probably translated incorrectly
And
that's where it was left, because the next time we saw the waiter, he
already came to take the payment. While counting the return, he asked if
we would like to add something for his service. We didn't really.
We
drove to Kotor and carried our things to the apartment. As well
prepared tourists, we had chosen a place for dinner and walked into town
to book a table in Astoria for the evening. We also walked around the
city a little more, went to a couple of grocery stores and bought some
food for tomorrow's hike, and came back to the apartment. This time, our
apartment is 10 minutes' walk from the city center on the hillside and
the balcony offers absolutely wonderful views of the Bay of Kotor. The
street to here is lined with pomegranate trees.
We sat on the
balcony and watched the gray clouds gather over the bay. We quickly got
dressed so that we could hurry to Astoria before the heavy rain (because
I couldn't find a taxi service). We stood on the balcony and looked at
this visually so amazing weather and thought about the cheeses and hams
we have in the fridge and put on our home clothes again, served dinner
on our balcony and stayed in to watch the spectacle created by the
thunder.
