Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro - July 2017

This morning, we got up extra early and enjoyed the over-the-top breakfast buffet at the Sheraton. A quick swim before hopping in a taxi to the Dubrovnik bus station for our trip to the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. The border line up to get out of Croatia and the line up to get into Montenegro almost doubled our two hour travel time.  We ended up dragging our suitcases almost a kilometre from the bus station  through the 32° heat to our hotel in the walled old town. We are in a lovely hotel that is built into the city walls of the main square. The setting is idyllic. The afternoon and evening was spent wondering the tiny streets of this UNESCO world heritage site. Like many places these parts, every 40-50 years there is an earthquake. And every few hundred years there is a REALLY bad earthquake. Well, in 1979, one of the really bad ones happened in Kotor. Much of the historic center was destroyed, including much of our hotel. The reconstruction has been remarkabl...

I have developed a reputation for being a "one night per town" guy.  I have even been described as someone who tries to "see" a country in one day.  OK OK, those are highly exaggerated claims!  haha  I'd like the record to show that I actually arranged to stay in Dubrovnik for TWO days!  (Maybe I'm getting travel-soft in my old age.) Today, we decided to spend the morning at the hotel's beach and R E L A X.  Too many early mornings made it quite necessary.  The blue sky pics below show that it was a great day, and the temperatures are definitely on the rise in these parts:  it hit 32C today, making it easy to slip into the Adriatic Sea without too much chill pain. We took the 3PM boat taxi to Old Town specifically with the plan to do the city walls. We had read that no visit to Dubrovnik would be complete without a walk around the spectacular city walls, the finest in the world and the city’s main claim to fame. From the top, the view over...

It was another 5AM rise, this time to get a bus from Mostar to Dubrovnik.  The bus was a half an hour late leaving and it was looking like, despite reservations made a month ago, we would not get on.  But alas, it was all resolved and off we went.  We passed border checkpoints three times, as we left Bosnia, entered Croatia, and then went back into Bosnia, and then into Croatia again.  We are used to borders being somewhat seamless in Europe since the EU was formed, but I guess we have to realize that Bosnia and Croatia were at war with each other just 25 years ago, so tensions remain somewhat high.  Hence no free-flowing borders.  As well, the recent waves of refugees from Syria have necessitated that things be tightened up. In any case, the scenery was breath-taking, especially as we reached the Adriatic Sea and started driving south to Dubrovnik. Dubrovnic itself only has 28,000 residents.  But the numbers swell incredibly in the summe...