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Published: September 19th 2018
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Last night was an accommodation fail. The apartment is over a hostel bar where they played music so loud the walls vibrated and then shouted to be heard over the music until 2 am. By 7 am the church bells are ringing and the neighbour is back in the alleyway singing. The bed is uncomfortable and there’s no hot water. Lack of sleep and a cold shower has made me grumpy. To make matters worse, the old man decides against the cold shower so the apartment smells of sweaty old man.
Breakfast is ‘included’ – this means the owner has left some eggs and jam in the fridge. There’s no bread but we can go and collect some from his mother’s shop.
After we have cooked our eggs we pack and trek back to the car. Leaving Kotor is hard work. The Queen Victoria has just docked. It’s a cruise ship literally bigger than the town its thousands of disembarking passengers are simultaneously attempting to cram themselves into and we are fighting against the tide.
We only have a 57 mile drive today across the border to Croatia and the city of Dubrovnik. The first 30 miles hug
the Bay of Kotor; a beautiful kind of figure of 8 kink in the Adriatic. At the Croatian border there’s an element of schadenfreude, having been queue jumped by so many Albanians yesterday, the Albanian in front of us today gets denied entry.
It’s a relief to be back in the EU where my phone works for free (it cost £4 to send a text in Montenegro), we can buy petrol that doesn’t make the car sad and it’s compulsory to label allergens in food. Meals will no longer involve poking and prodding unidentifiable ingredients trying to determine if it might be nuts. My normal routine, if I am unsure, is to ask the old man to taste it. This is not a failsafe way to avoid anaphylactic shock as; (1) he isn’t very good at determining the contents (this morning almond pastries were identified as cream cheese) and (2) if it tastes good, he says it contains nuts so he doesn’t have to share. At least if I do get ill, health care is free. It’s sad to think that this is my last visit to the EU as a member.
We reach Dubrovnik and try and
find somewhere to park. It’s the hardest place I’ve ever tried to park and I’ve lived in 3 capital cities. We do a full circuit of the one way system. All the parking is for residents only. On our 2nd circuit we find public parking but it’s 1000 Kuna. That’s £120. We stop by the ticket barrier while I google if I’ve actually got the exchange rate right (I have) and so we go round a third time. We finally find a hotel that will let non residents park for a mere £15. It only a kilometre to our apartment, but it is all up steps. Hundreds of steps. In 31 degrees. With luggage. By the time we arrive we are very sweaty. But the owner is there with very welcome glasses of cold orange juice. It’s a small apartment but it opens onto a balcony overlooking the old city.
We sit for a while admiring Dubrovnik from above, then set forth to explore. This requires many requires more steps. Dubrovnik is very pretty but very expensive. It is peppered with more cashpoints than a Vegas casino. We wander around admiring the quaint narrow streets and old buildings, take
a cooling walk along the seafront overlooking the forested island of Lokrum and stop for a while to admire a surfing dog.
Then it’s time to ascend the hundreds of steps a second time, stopping at the supermarket to purchase a healthy supper of sausage rolls and beer, which is consumed on the balcony watching the sun set over Dubrovnik and Lokrum.
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