Kotor, Budva and Podgorica – Sleepover at the Monastery

Set off for Kotor this morning just as the tour buses were starting to arrive in the car park. Lovely old walled town, a bit overrun with touristy shops and cats! Satellite dishes and air con units everywhere making it almost impossible to get a photo without them in. We then drove over the top of the hills to Budva rather than going through the tunnel and arrived to find Torremolinos/Skeggy! So many apartment blocks -although the billboards advertising them as your dream home in the sun didn’t bear any resemblance to the reality. Everything looked and sounded Russian ..could’ve just been the local dialect, but we’ve been told there are a lot of Russian people here. Still can’t get over all the pomegranate trees everywhere and I forgot to say, we saw a biggish black snake on the campsite the other day….I thought it was a hosepipe till it wriggled away!! Took the long and winding (and sometimes scary) road inland to Podgorica next. We crossed over Lake Skadar (full of Storks) and suddenly realised how close we were to Albania. Podgorica certainly felt different; it was like driving into the Wild West – we needed “the good, the bad and the ugly” playing. Rubbish and rusting cars, scrap metal everywhere – I wouldn’t have stayed there if they’d paid me. 😖We had to carry on, but the driver was getting tired & I’d be too terrified on these roads. Didn’t seem to be any campsites around but it’s so much more difficult without the internet. We came across a monastery and pulled into the car park. After a wander round we plucked up courage and asked one of the monks if it would be possible to stay in the car park – he said it would be a blessing! We paid two euros then to go into the tiny chapel where there was a monk chanting – the sound was phenomenal to say there were no microphones. He was then joined by a priest …I think, who continued with the singing. We stood and listened till the end then he came up and shook our hands and laughed as he said ‘that’s the third time today!’ He kindly explained all the paintings in the chapel but unfortunately we didn’t understand a word…other than ‘John the Baptist’!! 😀