We had a sleep in for the morning, and after a nice breakfast headed into Bar. Bar is interesting as the old town is far inland and the town is now centered on the port and waterfront. Unlike other towns Bar is not on the tourist map, and does not have much of an old town to attract people. The harbor is primarily focused on commercial shipping and while it is well protected it is not scenic. In a coastline of beautiful scenic cities, Bar is definitely blue collar.
We had a good time today watching the workers in the Marina hoisting boats in out of the water.
A lot of the town infrastructure seems to still be from development during the communist era. There are a lot of concrete block apartments, and a couple of communist brutalist buildings that were probably built as attractions, but now seem ungainly and strange. It would be interesting to look back on the opening to see what the intent of these buildings were.
This building has a prominent position in the city. It is concrete block circular building resembling a sombrero. We couldn’t figure what it was built to be originally. Now it has a grocery store and some nondescript shops on the lower floors. The upper floors appear to be empty.
In the afternoon Tito picked us up and took us about 30km down the coast to Ulcinj which is an old fortress built on top of another spectacular harbor. We enjoyed the walk around town and the fort but Tito was disappointed when the museum of the fort was closed because he wanted to walk us thru it.
Looking down the coast from the walls in Ulcinj.
Our next planned stop was a seafood restaurant recommended by our friends Cory and Ovi in Ulcinj, but it was also closed. Tito than said he knew a great restaurant on top of a mountain overlooking Bar, that had both good food and a spectacular view of Bar and the coat line. The drive up was an adventure as most of the time the road was a single track with either walls or a steep drop off on one side. Every time we met another vehicle someone had to give way or back up. I enjoyed the ride mostly because it wasn’t me dealing with the problems. Unfortunately when we arrived at the restaurant it was also closed. In the end we returned to the same restaurant as last night to enjoy another excellent and low cost meal.
Tito and I enjoying our meal and a couple of beers.
Today was about taking care of two bits of business, we needed to see if we could get our Carte Grise from France, and find a place to look at François’ headlights. Tito had arranged to pick us up at 3pm to take us around town so I had the morning to get things figured out.
At first it was a frustrating start as we were having a hard time with the internet which made it tough to call France. We eventually worked the internet out and after a couple of emails and phone calls we learned that our Carte Grise was still being processed but they could provide us with an official document telling the border guards that it was not our fault we had a copy but the French Governments. It seemed just weird and French enough to be true so we are going to proceed with our two new documents.
I also spent the morning trying to figure out what was going on with François’ headlights. I could not get them to work and most of the evidence pointed to a bad switch which would require a part. More research showed that the only Fiat dealer in Montenegro was in Podgorica which is about 80 kilometers from here. There was one mechanics shop in Bar that specialized in Italian Cars and had good reviews so our plan was to take it by tomorrow.
When Tito came at 3 I told him about our plan for the lights and he recommended we go by now to make sure he could take us tomorrow. He also said he could explain the problem to them in Serbo-Croat in case they did not speak English. When we arrived weirdly the guy did not speak either Serbo-Croat or English, but only Italian. This did not phase Tito who seamlessly switched to Italian and explained the problem. After some tinkering around it turns out that somehow both low beam light bulbs had burned out simultaneously, so the fix was easy.
What had started as a potentially frustrating and hectic day turned out to be relatively easy. The day ended with Tito taking us to a very good and inexpensive restaurant where we all enjoyed a good meal with some excellent local wine.
We added our 6th country of the trip today. We are now parked in the marina in Bar Montenegro with a nice view of most of the Montenegrin Navy (4 ships). Our second border crossing was not as uneventful as the first, but it is our fault.
We are supposed to be traveling with a document for François called a Carte Grise. Our original Carte Grise went missing during Covid and the location we use for storing François changed so we needed to modify our Societe Civile and after that was complete change the address on the Carte Grise to reflect the new address. For a lot of reasons the documents were not ready when we arrived. We discussed our options with Eurocampingcar and decided to go with copies, it was not ideal but we thought with explanation the copies would work.
Our first stop in Montenegro was Kotor.
The first border crossing in Croatia was a non-event as they did not even look at our passports or vehicle documents. Today in Montenegro we pulled up to a very quiet border crossing and handed the guard our passports, and he asked for the vehicle documents. He typed our passport information in, and then looked at the documents and said: “Montenegro requires original documents”. There was a pause while he looked at me, then he stamped our passports and handed back our documents and our copies and repeated “Montenegro requires original documents.”; but pointed into Montenegro. I asked may we enter, and he replied “Have a good day.” So we are in Montenegro trying to track down our original documents from Eurocampingcar, before we go to Albania.
The border crossing was slightly tense but it was worth it to be rewarded with views like this.
The other issue from yesterday was every time we entered a tunnel Ton would tell me to turn on the headlights as it was very dark, and every time I would look at the dash and the little headlights on icon was shining brightly. When we arrived in Bar for the night we moved into our spot after dark and Ton was right the headlights are not on despite the nicely lit icons, the running lights work, the high beams work, but the low beams don’t. So we will be spending some time trying to iron that out.
We enjoyed today, because tomorrow is going to be a work day and not one for visiting.
In between the drama we visited Kotor. Kotor is on an incredible body of water that looks a lot like a Fjord, but is technically not a Fjord but a flooded river valley. Still it is beautiful and Ton enjoyed the views while I was busy driving a very twisty, but wide road. As we pulled into Kotor it looked very interesting but we knew it was going to be crowded because there was a giant cruise ship looming over the town.
Up close these things are immense. We guessed that this would hold around 4000 people.
Kotor had the most impressive ruins of an immense wall and fort running up a nearly vertical mountainside. It was quite a feat of engineering when they built it. The town walls connect to the mountainside walls. We walked the town walls, and while it is possible to climb to the top, we passed on the opportunity.
Part of the city walls going up to the mountain above the city.
Kotor has a thriving cat population and has latched onto that as a tourist trade opportunity. The cats are cute and act like it is their town and we are lucky we let them use it. Everywhere we have visited in the Balkans the town and campground cats have been well treated. Since we are now cat people thanks to our sons cat Dottie we have enjoyed watching them play and beg for food with a dignity that only a cat can muster, while they are asking for food they make it clear that it is our privilege to feed them.
The town has embraced their cat population as a way to sell merchandise.
Kotor was the first city we have visited in Europe that is primarily Orthodox Christian. We took a look inside to get an impression of the difference in the art and layout of the churches. Our initial impression is that the art work is a little more austere and stylized than in Catholic and Protestant churches.
The altar of the Orthodox church in Kotor, most of the art is from the 1990’s after the fall of the communist government.
We enjoyed Kotor it is less developed as a tourist destination and feels more “authentic”. But it has recently hit a lot of lists as the new hot destination in the Adriatic, so already most of the storefronts are now set up to meet the needs of tourists and not the locals. It feels like a mini-Dubrovnik which is not all bad.
The main square in Kotor.
We are now parked in the Marina in Bar, Montenegro. Our friends Cory and Ovi kept their boat here during Covid and recommended that we stay here, they even introduced us to a friend of theirs who set us up with our own space with electricity. After we arrived Tito met us at the marina and directed us to our spot. As he was on duty for the night we got to spend a couple of hours talking to him.
