Now, you know that the rest of this blog can’t match that title. You feel there should be a joke there somehow but it still eludes me.
So, Porto Montenegro (Tivat) where we currently are is pretty sophisticated. It has a Lebanese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, a number of high-end fashion boutiques, a very upscale hotel and a number of very nice apartments. For those of you in Phoenix, think Kierland Commons on the water. As I said before , this place is lining itself up to be a major super-yacht marina and in the medium-term I don’t think small boats like ours will find a place here. They are marketing to super-yachts from the Middle East and the marina is configured in such a way that it can easily switch from “small” to “super”-sizing without any major engineering. But for the short-term it is a South of France experience in the Adriatic. Expensive but quite enjoyable.
We have spent five nights here tinkering with the boat and fixing a few things. I fixed an air-conditioning problem!!! This is more of a big deal than it seems because AC and refrigeration are black arts that need special wizards to come and fix them on boats. It’s much better if you can do triage before they come anywhere near.
Kotor is a whole other experience. This is a town further into the only fjord in the Mediterranean (A not totally geologically-accurate description apparently but the effect is pretty much the same.) This little walled town fits into the same mold as Valletta, Corfu and a couple of places we might visit on our way to Venice. For you Game of Thrones fans, it’s a lot like a mini Dubrovnik.
If Porto Montenegro is manufactured fantasy, Kotor is organically-grown reality. No marina, just a nice little town quay which is separated by a road from one of the best farmers’ markets we have seen. The range and quality of the produce is quite amazing and the prices (even in a tourist spot) remain good. Here you can buy olive oil from the woman who pressed it and cheese from the guy who milked the goats.
We will stay here a few days and make some trips into the Montenegrin mainland. We did a little of this last year and enjoyed it a lot. The other thing that we will do here is climb up to the top of the fortress above the town. The rough path and steps go pretty much straight up about 900 ft to the top of the fortifications. It takes about 30 minutes to get up there and is best done before the heat of the sun reaches the path - 7:00 am departure. We will do this at least twice while we are here.
Perast is the first of our trips. We could conceivably do this in True Colors because it is on the shore of the bay but it is a nice change of pace to visit by taxi and water-taxi. In the process we meet another wonderful taxi driver, Tony. He recommends a restaurant (pretty good), drops us off and arranges to pick us up after lunch. In the process, we sign up for a private tour the next day to the old capital of Montenegro, Cetinje, via “the old road”,
Kotor, as I said, is in a fjord. The mountains round this fjord are about 8000 ft high. To get out of the fjord, the old road zigs and zags its almost single-track way through 25 bends to the top of the mountains. The smell of the pines and the spring flowers is quite special and the views down into the Gulf of Kotor and back to Tivat are sincerely spectacular.
Over the top of the mountains, we end up in a Swiss scene with meadows of hand-cut hay, cows grazing in the fields and little alpine cottages with steep roofs for the snow that falls in the winter. This is the land of cheese, prosciutto and wine - all local. Lunch will allow us to sample that but first we will visit the old capital. Just to be sure, we stop at a restaurant among the hay fields and make our orders for lunch - roast lamb.
Montenegro is a small country that was a monarchy until just before the First World War. On the way we pass the very modest farmstead where the royal family originated. Cetinje is a small town with broad pedestrian areas around the royal palace, a monastery and a few other buildings of the monarchy. Tony says this is the heart of Montenegro - without Cetinje Montenegro would not be Montenegro. It is very special to Montenegrins and it is quite charming to us.
We take the same road back and stop at the restaurant where lunch is ready for us. We sample the cheese, the prosciutto and the fresh bread before the main course of roast lamb and potatoes. All washed down with a couple of glasses of the red wine made at the restaurant. Apparently many Montenegrins, as well as having their own vegetable gardens, have their own vines and make their own wine - a serious amount of self-sufficiency.
And, in the middle of all this, Britain votes to leave the EU. What on earth were they thinking? Montenegrins here are scratching their heads. It’s really hard to turn the clock back in the way that the pro-leave voters seem to want to do. But a history of entrenched positions and no strong appetite for EU reform has clearly been fertile ground for exit. It will stop people asking us about Donald Trump for a while, I suppose.