Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

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Montenegro — 10, day 4, Bay of Kotor to the city of Kotor

2012-07-03

sorties travels resorts sea montenegro bike friends photos tourism mountains cities

We arrived early enough to carry out a long-standing plan — to rush off to the sea for a day. Andrey, in fact, had been dreaming about this with all his might, and before the trip he kept nagging me, saying that Oleg, supposedly, only wants to go to his boring mountains and won't go to the sea. Why he had to bug me with this made-up issue instead of being a man and saying it directly to the rest of the team members is unknown. It's also curious to hear if his opinion has changed, if he's stopped finding the mountains boring and the sea so magical, or if he still feels the same way.

Montenegro day 4 - Kotor


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Personally, I'm thrilled and delighted by the simple fact that I get to see other amazing countries full of unique people, traditions, and ways of life. Whether there's a sea, mountains, or garbage dumps doesn't make that much of a difference, as long as it's interesting. I've seen quite a few seas in my life, I like them, but not enough to strive for them with all my might.

A wide mountain landscape with a large, calm lake dotted with numerous green islands. In the foreground, lush vegetation is visible, through which houses and the ruins of old buildings peek out.

This isn't the sea yet, it's a lake along the way

Sportily dressed people stand by the side of a mountain road stretching into the distance among green hills, where a speed limit sign is visible. A woman in a red t-shirt and cycling shorts has turned around and is looking towards the camera.

While Andrey takes highly artistic photos, Yura takes highly trolling photos

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First things first, we need to fuel up

We chowed down on these huge sandwiches, tasted pretty good. True, we had to spend a while persuading the girl to put more filling in, because she kept warning us that “it'll be too fierce”. Meaning spicy.

A young woman with long brown hair in a lilac blouse looks straight into the camera with a neutral expression. In the blurred background of the bar, a man working behind the counter is visible.

A cheerful and cute girl, but she wasn't too happy when we took her photo

An orange and white Volkswagen T2 minibus drives along a winding road climbing uphill. Light-colored buildings are visible on the left, and on the right is a steep stone wall densely overgrown with greenery and streetlights.

Cool little bus

Methinks this is a Volkswagen_Type_2, also known as the Hippie bus. I can just imagine bands like the Grateful Dead and their enlightened fans cruising around the States in these back in the 70s, fueled by little multi-colored pieces of paper with pictures of Buddha and Shiva. Naturally, these minibuses ended up turning into veritable mobile exhibitions of psychedelic art, kind of like the one in the picture below.

A brightly painted Volkswagen minibus decorated with psychedelic patterns and symbols, such as butterflies, flowers, rainbow lettering, and clouds. A spare tire is mounted on the front, and a woman with red hair stands to the right of the van.

There was also a bus like this in the TV show Lost, belonging to the Dharma Initiative. My thoughts flow smoothly and arrive at the conclusion that Lost is a show about substance abuse, otherwise there wouldn't have been so many foolish childish emotions, screw-ups, and insane actions in it.

However, our story isn't about that, but about the Bay of Kotor, on the shore of which we were standing at that moment. We started from the city of Herceg Novi,  and rolled along at a leisurely pace along the jagged coastline until we rolled over to the other side. There we got on a ferry — and headed back. You can see it all on the track.

A sunny street in an old European city with a little boy in the foreground and cyclists, buildings with a cafe in the background.

A bronze statue of a man in a peaked cap and military uniform on an observation deck overlooking a sea bay, mountains on the horizon, and a parking lot with cars.

A man in a helmet and with a backpack sits on a bicycle, smiling in a busy, sun-drenched cobbled square. People are walking around him, sitting at tables of street cafes under large umbrellas, and old houses with tiled roofs are visible in the background.

Handsome Visla poses against the backdrop of the resort

A picturesque coastal town with light-colored buildings under red tiled roofs is spread out on green hills at the edge of blue water. In the foreground, two small boats sail across the water surface against the backdrop of distant mountain silhouettes under a clear sky.

Bay of Kotor

The contrast with the previous days is striking. One moment we were battling snowy elements, and the next we plunged into the summer heat, diluted by a coastal breeze. The relaxed resort life tempered our furious zeal for pedaling, and we rolled along slowly, often stopping to stare at old yellow-brick walls.

Two cyclists, a man with glasses and a woman in a helmet, are resting on a wooden bench in the shade of a tree, their bicycles are visible in the background. The man is stretching with his arms raised, and the woman is looking down thoughtfully.

One of the stops

Shortly before this spot, some road workers played a joke on us: they showed us a red “Stop” sign, as if to say we couldn't go, and then smiled slyly, like Lenin, and waved the green one.

A statue of a dolphin jumping out of the calm water of a lake is in the foreground. In the background, green mountains with snow-capped peaks and a coastal town under a hazy blue sky are visible.

At first it even seems like it's alive

A picturesque view of a bay with turquoise water, surrounded by steep mountain slopes covered in greenery. In the foreground is a rocky cliff with green shrubs and a flowering tree under a clear sky.

Absolute beauty

A road sign with the word «SCHOOL» and a picture of a walking student with a backpack is set up by the road. In the background stretches an alley with palm trees and conifers.

Signs in Cyrillic aren't frequent, but they happen

A panoramic view of a picturesque bay with clear blue water, framed by green-covered mountains with coastal settlements, and distant gray mountains on the horizon.

Absolute beauty again

A two-lane highway curves around a bay against a backdrop of green-covered hills, and a yellow road sign with the town name «Strp» is set up on the shoulder. In the distance, residential houses by the water's edge and majestic mountain peaks are visible under a clear sky.

Serbo-Croatian is known for this linguistic joke: a name made entirely of consonants

A group of five cyclists in sports gear poses with their bikes by the road sign «Dobrota». In the background, a picturesque mountain landscape, a passing bus, and a large information board are visible.

And this one: a name made entirely of kindness

In the first part of the route, our team split up: the husband-and-wife duo, in the persons of Rob and Olga, went on ahead, while the rest of us lingered, checking out the caves and palm trees.

Coastal landscape with calm bay water, a rocky shore with piers, and houses with orange roofs at the foot of rocky mountains covered in greenery.

 

A narrow cobbled street going uphill between old stone houses with windows and shutters. Several cyclists are moving along it under a clear sky.

I really love such old brick houses and cobbled streets, because we don't have them back home

A traveler from Sweden named Lukas recently visited me (via couchsurfing.org), and to him, Soviet monolithic buildings are beautiful, whereas to me they seem hideous and gray, gloomy and depressing. But for him it's futurism; as he put it, “they'll build things like this on the moon”. I understand his perspective, of course, but I'd rather we didn't have this monstrosity.

On a cobbled street of the old town, several people are riding bicycles uphill past stone houses with green shutters. Mountains are visible in the distance.

There's this song   by the band “Palevo” — the narrow streets of Pakistan. Generally, I'm drawn to Pakistan so badly, it's unbearable.

The waterfront of an old seaside town with stone houses under red tiles and a tall bell tower against the backdrop of majestic mountains by a blue bay. In the foreground, a man with a shoulder bag walks along an asphalt path, and a family rests by the water's edge under a gray beach umbrella.

Another picture straight out of a computer game, like a quest. That dude with the fishing rod is definitely from there

In the next episode, we will see the fortress of the city of Kotor on the mountain, the huge resort liner “New Amsterdam”, me without my underpants, and Doomer in the role of a seal.

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