Tanya's Travels: Onto Croatia!

Our bus doesn't leave for Dubrovnik, Croatia until 3pm so we have practically the entire day in Kotor. We head back to the old city after leaving our bags in the bus station (we had to check out of our apartment and for 1 euro the bus station kept our bags in a room). We wanted to hike up the mountain to the old castle/fortress but unfortunately it was raining pretty hard. We decided to cafe hop for awhile in the old city, spending time with the locals and drinking a lot of coffee. We visited one of the churches in the old city and bought much needed umbrellas. Around 1pm we decided we better brave the rain if we wanted to go on our hike so we started up the stone stairs that had been built into the mountain.

The view from our apartment

Kotor Stari Grad and mountain

Kim and Oscar in the rain on our hike

The view of the bay

The view of Kotor Stari Grad

We hiked for maybe a half an hour and had made it to a group of ruins just below the actual fortress. From the side of the hill you could see all the way out into the bay. We were debating on whether we had enough time to climb the rest of the way when a kind of scraggly looking man emerged from the ruins. His english was pretty good and he seemed nice but he was dirty and wore really odd mismatched clothes and we decided not to risk it. He invited us for coffee but we politely declined with the excuse that we had to catch our bus. So we headed back down the side of the mountian, grabbed a snack, and went to the bus station to wait for our bus.

The bus ride to Dubrovnik took about 2 hours and was a beautiful ride first along the bay and then along the coast. Unfortunately it was also very windy and I got a little car sick. The border patrol officer at the border into Croatia was trying to make small talk with me about Bruce Springsteen but I was sure I was going to throw up all over him. When we pulled into the bus station in Dubrovnik who should be waiting for us but Nikola. He took us and another guy to the rooms he rents out to travelers. He had just bought and refinished a new building so we got another little apartment with two rooms, an entry, and a bathroom. Nikola said that during the tourist season the town of Dubrovnik doubles in size on the weekends because of the cruise ships that stop here.

After we put our stuff in the rooms Nikola drove us to the Old City of Dubrovnik. This old city has a very different feel from the old cities in Montenegro. Everything was bigger - the streets, the shops, the restaurants. You enter the city by a bridge over a moat and are greeted by a plethora of different shops. At the far end of the main street is an old clock tower and further down are a couple churches. We ate dinner at a restaurant recommended to us by Let's Go! Eastern Europe. We had wonderful seafood. I split cuttlefish risotto and grilled octopus with Oscar and Kim had a huge pan of shrimp. Then we walked around and decided to grab a drink in the Irish Pub (I swear there's an Irish Pub in every Balkan city). It was smokey inside so we only stayed for about a half an hour inside then called Nikola, who came and picked us up.