Sunday, May 24, 2015
I was up in the wee, wee hours of Sunday morning worrying. Here was the source of my anxiety: Our flight to Athens was Sunday afternoon, and I hadn’t received an email from Croatia Airlines telling me to check in. Nor could I find anything in my travel folder reflecting my confirmation number. I was sure I remembered seeing the charge on my Amex statement before we left. Pretty sure, anyway. The thing was, we just couldn’t miss this flight because there wasn’t another flight from Dubrovnik to Athens for days (literally). The plan I concocted in the middle of the night was that if I had somehow screwed up and we were not actually on this flight, we would fly to Munich or Vienna and get to Athens from there. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Originally I had nixed the idea of a day trip to Montenegro on Sunday, because it was too risky to travel to another country and still get back to Croatia in time for our flight. But at the top of the gondola the day before, I looked down the coast and realized how far south of Dubrovnik the airport is – more than halfway to the Montenegro border. So my new plan, also hatched in the middle of the night, was that we would get up very early and drive south, stopping at the airport to get boarding passes and ease my mind. Maybe we could even check our bag and get rid of it for the day.
We screwed up this plan immediately by not waking up early, all the fault of my iPhone which never had the proper time this entire trip – it was always an hour off from local time no matter where we were. So I thought we were getting on the road at 8, but it was really 9. We did stop at the airport and tried to check in but were told: No, you can’t get boarding passes. No, you can’t check your bag. No, we can’t even confirm that you are on this flight. And you should get here three hours before the flight leaves. None of this was comforting, so I refused to leave the airport until I found someone with different answers at the Croatia Airlines office. (Meanwhile, Grace was exasperated: Stop worrying, Mom! Let’s just get on the road!) But I felt much better once the lady checked her computer and confirmed that yes, we were indeed on that flight and no, we didn’t have to get there three hours early.
So we set off for Montenegro. This was still a very stupid plan. I knew from studying my guidebooks that the border crossing between Croatia and Montenegro could get quite backed up, with as much as an hour’s wait. (Croatia is in the EU but Montenegro is not — but Montenegro uses the euro while Croatia still uses its own currency, the kuna. Go figure.) On the way into Montenegro the wait at the border was only 15 minutes, but even that would be nerve-racking on the way back with a flight to catch, so we took note of the turnoff that Rick Steves’ guidebook recommended for the alternative border crossing.
Some of the drive through Montenegro to the town of Kotor was not particularly attractive. The town of Herceg Novi is pretty ugly, with lots of drab Communist-era apartment buildings that are not in good shape. I almost wish I had photos just for contrast. But further on it got much, much prettier driving through a series of picturesque bayfront towns.
When we got to the town of Kotor I decided to splurge on what the books said was the most expensive parking lot closest to the center of town, because we didn’t have a lot of time to fool around with distant lots. As I pulled in I was a bit shocked at the sign – does that say 90 euros to park? Wow, I thought, that’s expensive even by the standards of a former New Yorker, but we’re here now. (When we left the parking lot I discovered that it was 90 euro-cents per hour, so I felt about $97 richer.)
Kotor was lovely – another old, walled town like Dubrovnik and Split, but this time nestled up tight against a mountainside with the bay on the other side. We ate lunch across from the cathedral (below) then walked all over the town.
Above, Grace checking out the sights on our self-guided walking tour. We were big on self-guided walking tours on this trip. Below, the moat outside the city walls:
Grace amused herself by purchasing strange liquors in small bottles (below, you can barely see her inside the shop).
We were on a strict schedule that required us to leave Kotor by 1:00 pm, but that still left time for a very short visit to the Cat Museum (one euro per person), a very strange little place. (Grace implored me to go in, and I relented because I was hoping they had a bathroom. They did not.) A sample of the Cat Museum’s offerings is below…try to picture rooms and rooms full of postcards involving cats. The theme below was Ladies Holding Cats, but there were many others, like Cat Cartoons and Cats at War. I suspect there were other sights in Kotor that were considerably higher on the can’t-miss list than the Cat Museum, but we missed them.
Above, outside the old city walls of Kotor there is a marina on the bay. On our way back to Croatia we took a different route around the bay, involving a car ferry, which was supposed to save us some time but really didn’t. It was still a good idea because the ferry ride was a nice little break.
After passing through dreary Herceg Novi again, we made the decision to head for the alternative border crossing. As the road got narrower and higher and more rural, I began to regret the idea. What if we kept going for miles and the border crossing was closed? The road looked pretty sketchy. But we got there, and it was just one guy eating strawberries. There you have it below, with the package of the strawberries on the table. I probably wasn’t supposed to be taking a photo of the border control office.
We made it to the Dubrovnik airport only a little later than I had hoped. I was massively relieved to get rid of the car, and especially relieved that the Hertz people did not discover any new dents on it. I didn’t volunteer that there may have been reason to inspect it very carefully. (There was that pole in Split, and the other car’s fender in Makarska, and the smoking engine in Dubrovnik.) But if I did do any damage, it was minor, I’m pretty sure — just saying, for the record.
The flight to Athens was very short, and pretty soon we were at the Central Hotel in the Plaka having a cocktail on the roof looking at the Parthenon. Grainy selfie below with Parthenon in background; not sure where Grace was that moment.
This should have been a nice evening, but the restaurant we chose was crowded and had very loud folk music, which we were not in the mood for, and at a bar after dinner we had a fight. Possibly we had piled too much into one day: Croatia to Montenegro to Croatia to Greece in one day was pushing it. Grace was frustrated that I was being a fussy old lady hung up on details like making our flights, and I was frustrated that she was being a clueless twenty-something, too casual about details like making our flights. So we fought a bit, but she and I are pretty resilient. The Croatia part of our trip was breathtaking in some respects but had some ups and downs — mostly involving the weather and the car. We could not have changed the weather, of course, and with the benefit of hindsight I’m not sure we could have skipped the car. It gave us great flexibility in getting around a country that does not have a great public transportation network.
The car was history! The weather was good! We hoped that the Greece part of our trip would be slightly more relaxing.