Montenegro is pretty flash!

Our first night in Montenegro wasn’t all that great. The apartment was about as bad as it gets and we had an ok meal but nothing special. So far so good-hum. 

What’s worse, we couldn’t find a Montenegrin flag anywhere. Don’t these people like the country they made independent only 16 years ago?

However, as we moved along the coast, everything has improved - although, they made us work for it. There were steep climbs to ride up and a 32°C temperature. Neither of these were extreme, but I was sweating as much as I ever have on the ride today. 

We had a lovely lunch by the marina in Budva, we’re we’d stopped by the marina in the hope of find a chandlery selling flags. It turned out there was no chandlery, but we did get a tip that there was one 15km up the road. 

Unfortunately, that was the other side of a steep hill. An hour of climbing later, we could descend towards Kotor and the chandler came up trumps with two Montenegrin flags. 

We’d made a late decision to detour to Kotor today, and what a good decision. We approached the town through a tunnel, with the fjord-like river valley revealed as we emerged, a dramatic limestone cleft with a terracotta tiled stone Town perched on its bank. We had to dismount the Strawberry to make our way through the labyrinthine stone streets to get to our apartment, although Tiger showed the cruise tourists his bike skills as he made progress through the alleyways with track stands and slow cycling tricks. 

An amazing walled city, like a mini Dubrovnik I think, looking very much as if it had been built for a medieval drama.