Hotel Minceta Dubrovnik

... to Thessaloniki, Greece. That will be our connection point to Istanbul, Turkey. We will then return to Greece for the last few weeks of our trip. <br><br>Also, we thought we&#8217;d mention that we haven&#8217;t seen any comments from anyone in weeks. We are beginning to wonder who is even reading our blog&#8230; (We only know of a handful for sure.) So please feel free to leave us notes. We miss hearing from everyone. <br><br>Until next time,<br><br>Michelle and Andre

... had forgotten how gears work didn&#8217;t become apparent until I tried to cycle over Scipan, once of the many beautiful islands scattered charmingly along the coast. Luckily, we were on an organised day trip with a splendid young fellow from Zagreb and he explained to me how the gears worked with an impressive amount of patience and words of one syllable. We had reached the island, not by taking one of your namby-pamby ferries, but ...

... I am glad, it was quite interesting. One thing though, if I were in charge of a city, there is no way prisoners would be housed in my basement!! Okay, now I am heading to the harbor for the 10 minute ride to the island of Lokrum. There is an old monastery and a fort built on the island both of which are no longer in use. No one lives on the island and it has been designated a wilderness area. It is truly a beautiful place, peaceful, calm ...

... their advice. Waiting for us directly outside of the train doors were a flood of old women with signs saying accommodations/rooms/sobes. After a quick round of bargaining with the overly assertive ladies pushing rooms in their guesthouses, we settled on a private room right outside of the old city center for about the same price we would pay for one of us to stay in a smelly 10 bed room in Paris. The next day we left our rooms for ...

... stay for the night. She did not speak much English but we knew we would have a place to stay, a bathroom and pay 15 euros each for the night. She spoke German too but that did not do us much good. We got by with sign language and smiles! It was a little stuffy, but we can handle anything for a night! It was really hot when we arrived into Kotor, so we went to the local "beach" if that is what you want to call it. Basically, the beach was in the back of an old run-down ...

... to eat. Think, the Sahara, or the Alaska tundra, or Ireland. I'll let the pics speak for themselves, but the Montenegrin psyche becomes very clear after surveying their rocky and stubborn homeland. No wonder the Turks didn't make the effort to overcome Montenegro - out of all the other Balkan lands, these were just too hard. Even the Serbs let the Montenegrins go their own way with little fuss.

... I'm sure it'll all change. In ten years it will probably be swamped with tour groups and cruise ships. But for now, it's lovely and a great place to while away a couple days. The location - smack at the foot of a dramatic fjord - only adds to the allure of the place. Kotor's got it going on. It definitely isn't any cooler here though, unfortunately. It's a little less humid than Dubrovnik (thankfully), but that Adriatic sun beats down just as hard. Luckily there are ...

... will see in the thousands of photos we took. We spied a tiny bar clinging to the rocks outside the wall on the sea side of the town and took in the sunset from there with an afternoon bevy. We treated ourselves to dinner in a lovely little square in the center of town and headed back to our 5 star accommodation. The next day we organized a little boating trip for ourselves around three islands off the coastline near Dubrovnik. The boat we chose is currently the oldest boat in the ...

... church and houses/bunkers. We paid, in Euros !!!! As this is their currency !!!!! We climbed, but unlike the St Peters climb, we are now getting fitter, so it was not the bother this time. Halfway up was the church, and the views from here out over the fjord were astonishing, so we moved on, eager to get to the top. Eventually, we made it, looked out, and it is one of the most beautiful things I have seen since I have been travelling ...