It started off on the wrong foot. I was semi-cursing myself for choosing Easter Sunday on a daylight savings day no less to do a day trip. I booked it about 2 weeks beforehand, so there was no backing out of the early morning. The bus picked up in front of the Hilton and I was pleasantly surprised to find that a small day group actually meant small. I booked through Viator, which I've used before in Paris and other places. They are usually pretty stock standard - huge bus, live commentary in several languages, long periods in the bus. This one was about 12 people in a van with a separate guide and driver.
The first stop was on the overlook on the way out of town, with views of Dubrovnik. It was pretty overcast after a full night of rain, so the pictures aren't that much better from what I took on the bus from the airport.
After that stop, we got to know our guide a bit better. I'm going to call him Freddie Prinze Jr. or FPJ for short. It's not possible for there to be a closer look-a-like to the real FPJ. The fake FPJ was a jack of all trades. Tour guide by day and probably by night too, DJ, dance party host, etc by night. This Croat had a lot to say and he was going to repeat it as often as he could. His best line was "we stop here and you make photo". It was classic - fake FPJ making photo all over the place.
Anyways, we drove through some of Croatian wine country, which according to fake FPJ, is the most wonderful wine in the world. Hmm....French and Italians might have something to say about that. As we neared the Montenegrin border, he prepped us for what we were going to see. He kept explaining how the landscape in Croatia is the most beautiful land and that Montenegro is "eh, alright, if you like that sort of thing". Come on fake FPJ! I need you to sell this to me! He pointed out that there are 700K Montenegrins and 500K Montenegrin idiots, who all like to drive right in front of tour buses. He also was very astute to point out that if you invest 500K Euros in Montenegro, you automatically become a citizen. He noted that this makes it a playground for Russians, who "how do you say, come to clean their money". I pointed out that generally the term is money laundering, and he said, "yes, wash the money". Sure fake FPJ, whatever you say.
The border was pretty crazy - it reminded me of the border with Mexico. Lots of officers on the Croat side pulling people over to check for drugs. Fake FPJ made us stay quiet and put away our photo machines at the border. We waited at the Croat border for a good 30 minutes, all the while watching a car get completely stripped down for drugs. It was pretty awesome. Fake FPJ noted without prompting that if you are Albanian, your car is automatically thoroughly searched. Yet another unprompted ethnic bash.
Once the Croat immigration guys reviewed our paperwork and passports, we headed into the no man's land before getting to Montenegro. Fake FPJ pointed out some of the old cigarette shops in no man's land that were shut down due to smuggling by Montenegrins. If I didn't know any better, I would say that Croats are completely on the up and up based on fake FPJ's assessment.
At this point, I was a little concerned about the Montenegrin border given fake FPJ's railing against anything non-Croat. Thankfully, he was on his best behavior and got us through fairly quickly. I even heard the sound of a new stamp (music to this traveling girl's ears). We then crossed into Montenegro and it didn't take long to marvel at the fjords and mountains:
Unfortunately, the weather was awful....fog, drizzle and a heavy wind. So none of the pictures (and really even first hand sight do it justice).
We stopped at one look out and then went to a small town where typically if it wasn't Easter Sunday, you could have taken a boat out to a small church on a man made island:
That's one of two island churches, one of which is open to tourists (pictured above) and another that isn't.
That's the church steeple of the town we stopped in. Fake FPJ gave us 30 minutes in the town - but there really wasn't anything to see without the boat to the island. So I climbed a bit, but didn't do anything else. It was at this point that I started to get to know some of the other travelers as we were all thinking about the same thing - was this worth it?
Three of the other travelers were all single women around my age taking advantage of the extra holidays around Easter. I had a great time meeting K, B and G. The three of them had done a trip the day before to Bosnia together, so it took me a bit to get in on the jokes and the laughs, but we all shared our common fascination with fake FPJ.
After fake FPJ picked us up, we then headed to Kotor, which for me was the highlight of the trip (other than making friends).
Makes you want to jump in, right?
After that, we headed to Budva for lunch. At this point, the 4 of us girls (I emphasise that we were acting like girls) were having a hard time not cracking up at fake FPJ. Everything he said was so unintentionally funny. I'm sure he hated us by the end of the trip, but it was really all out of love. He proceeded to talk about how Russians are the worst, Montenegrins don't know how to drive and Montenegro just generally sucks as a country - they are bad at all sports unless the Russians set up a training school (like handball or water polo) and they have no idea how to build roads. And they are so tiny they don't have their own currency. They use the Euro, but they aren't even part of the EU for goodness sakes! He then equated Croatia with the US - a good corruption free democracy. Oh fake FPJ, whatever makes you sleep at night.
Budva was a disappointment. The four of us girls shared a table for lunch. I went with the muscles, which were excellent. Came complete with lobster bib and everything. Classic fun.
Budva pictures:
Waves hitting the cliffs around the old walls.
Next post.......
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