I jumped on a bus in Split to head down to Kotor in Montenegro, to catch up with a good friend of mine, who guided Lesley and I along the Silk Road from Istanbul to Beijing back in 2018. Interesting side fact, I’ve caught up with all the members of that tour in 2023!
It was a 7 hour bus ride, crossing the EU border from Croatia to Montenegro (this took some time!) and then a winding drive around the Bay of Kotor to get to Anya. It was close to 11:30pm when I got in, but to see Anya in the car park, it was like no time had passed at all! After an hour of chatting, I desperately needed a shower and sleep!
Anya’s house is in the village of Prčanj on the Bay of Kotor. It was dark when I arrived, so I had no concept of the bay or the surrounding hills. I woke to this and it blew me away!
Breakfast was due and it was time to meet Anya’s son Ljosha (Aleksei). As all two year olds are, he was shy to see a stranger in his house and hid behind mums legs. But I had a solution for this issue! For the past 5 weeks I have been carrying deep in my luggage, a plush kookaburra that laughs when you squeeze it! One might call it a bribe, I call it an ice breaker and it did the job, smiles all round, plus a question “there are really birds that sound like this?!”
In the morning, we dropped Ljosha off at Kindy and then headed into the Old Town of Kotor, behind the city walls.
It was a good time to walk the Old Town, because there was still shade to walk in, so it wasn’t too hot and there was only 1 cruise ship in town at that time. After the obligatory ice cream (basil and lemon, you should definitely try it!), we headed around the Bay of Kotor.
With one road around the bay (and it is also often the only road in some of the villages, traffic can get hectic! I was appreciating that Anya was driving! Tight roads, one way streets, and reversing for trucks/busses etc, a professional was needed and it wasn’t me!
After a well timed ferry across the bay, a quick stroll and lunch was required in Percast, an UNESCO city on the shoreline.
It was time to pick Ljosha up from kindy and head home for a well deserved swim in the bay, literally out Anya’s doorstep! Before heading up the hills behind Kotor (mountains really, they are taller than Ben Nevis!) for sunset.
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