Rocking all over Podgorica

Wednesday 9^th May.

Last night we had walked into the old walled city of Kotor, a splendid medieval fortified town which is lived in and we thought crowd free compared with Dubrovnik. Lots of back streets and alley ways with open squares where you can sit and have a coffee or wine or beer. Much more reasonably priced then the Croatian equivalent.  This morning our illusions about an unfound gem were shattered by a Thompsons large cruise ship heaving up in the harbour and depositing a few hundred to thousand or more people to mill around our quiet medieval town. 

Kotor town

Kotor town

Kotor side street.

Cetinje 

Montenegrin village off tne beaten track

As we were about to leave another thunder storm hit with torrential rain as we set off to Cetinje, although this was a main road progress was very slow due to road works and tunnel repairs. Cetinje appeared as a sleepy small town still in a lot of ways unchanged from the mid twentieth century and it is difficult to imagine this was originally the capital city of Montenegro. We walked around and stopped for coffee Turkish stile much to Liz’s disgust. I had suggested we visited one of the mountain monasteries but was vetoed on that. Leaving Cetinje, we saw a brown tourist sign pointing towards what we thought was a monastery. Six miles along a stone track we had found no evidence of anything remotely like a monastery we re-joined the main road and continued to Podgorica the current capital.  His is quite a sprawling city for a comparatively small population. We found camping at a hostel that had been taken over by 60 workmen constructing a new road tunnel. In spite of this it was a delightful setting with a river running in a small gorge below and the railway track on the far side of the river and mountains all around. The friendly receptionist who had originally said we could eat in her restaurant was overwhelmed by the workman who normally prepare their own food deciding to “eat out” as well. She kindly called us a taxi to take us into the city where we eat on the main square Trg. Republica. There was a light show with music taking place in the square, which we were told was to celebrate the national team winning something like Balkan Basketball championship and basket ball is very big in all the Balkan Nations. By the time we had finished our meal there was a live band on stage with 6 members playing what sounded like local folk rock music a kin to Fleetwood Mac. A real fun evening all by accident as we were just going to vegetate back at the hostel.