Moving on to Kotor

From Budva our adventure continued to another famous Montegrin city, Kotor. Kotor is one of the UNESCO world heritage sites and rightfully so. The old town, the Kotor bay and the green and rocky hills around together form something very unique and very beautiful. Add the very helpful and kind Montenegrin people to the mix and it feels like you could live there forever!

There was no place for our tent in Kotor, but already at the bus station an elderly man approached us offering a homestay. The price wasn't too bad so we agreed to go with him to check the place out. The house wasn't as close to the center as we would have liked, but the view over the beautiful Kotor bay was great, and we even had a kitchen for cooking, so we decided to stay there.

I can't remember exactly how, but somehow we knew that there was a hiking route going up to the hills over Kotor, and we actually found road signs for it not far from the house where we were staying. We followed the signed road for who knows how long and eventually got back to the main road without finding any hiking route or path going up to the hills, and to be honest the rocky hill looked a bit too steep there for any hiking. Back at the main road there was again the same sign we had already seen on the other end, so we decided to give it another go. On the way back we tried the only route that looked something like a path, but eventually we ended up in some dense and insanely spiky bushes and turned around.

The hiking route is that way...right.

We don't usually give up with Inna, and this was no exception. Two days after our first try we managed to find the starting point of the hiking route, and it wasn't even close to the place where the first signs had pointed to! I'm happy we didn't give up though because the route up was really pleasant and the views over the Kotor bay and all the way to the sea were absolutely amazing. Towards the end Inna got quite tired, but we were really lucky to find a friendly French(as far as I remember) couple on top of the hiking route who gave us a lift back down along the gnarly mountain roads.

Sometimes the world feels a lot smaller than we think, and our visit to Kotor was one of these times. A year before we had met Bartek and his girlfriend from Poland on our way down from Hoverla, the highest mountain of Ukraine. Then a year later we happened to be in Montenegro at the same time and were able to arrange a short meeting, which was nice of course :).

Kotor is very well known to anyone who is familiar with Montenegro and for a good reason I must say. Go there if you are anywhere close to it!