WEDNESDAY, MAY 22
BUS FROM DUBROVNIK TO KOTOR
The bus from Dubrovnik to Kotor is supposed to take a little under two hours. It took us about four hours, not that it mattered to us. We aren’t rushing anywhere. And sometimes it is as amusing to be part of a “travel” experience as to arrive. The bus arrived at the Dubrovnik station nearly an hour late. That was the start. We boarded with a pack of other travelers, many of them pushy. As Chloe said when the bus pulled up and everyone angled for the door — “The hunger games begin.”
At the border both in Croatia and Montenegro, everyone had to exit the bus, walk to a customs window, have his or her passport stamped, and then wait by the roadside. We tagged a few of our fellow characters and built amusing stories around them…a youngish, clearly-entitled woman traveling alone who nearly got into a fist fight with the driver when he made her move from the front seat; a mysterious, elegant, grey-haired woman in all natural cotton garb, including a cream-colored dress, slit at the side, pale green pants, a soft mustard pull-over (under the dress) and a vivid, yellow, oversized raw silk scarf (maybe a spy?), and our favorite, an older woman, clearly traveling alone with the most sour, pinched expression that expressed just the opposite of her clothing choices — a grey pullover with sequins that spelled “Wanderlust” and a jacket, also grey, with a wolf face and the word, “Wild.”
The bus wound into the mountains and along the ocean, which looks more like a gigantic lake. The water is serene, changing colors constantly; the land lush with flowers and orange trees, oak and evergreens. The rocky, steep mountains rise in stark contrast to the placid water.
REACHING KOTOR
Kotor, a small village with UNESCO designation, is the jewel in the crown of towns along the way, tucked as it is in a valley along side the ocean inlet, mountains rising on all sides. It is yet another place that I would say is the most stunning place I’ve visited. I sound repetitive.
We are staying in Myo, a twenty minute walk along the lakeside road. The smells were different than in Dubrovnik… the same perfume of flowers, mostly similar to honeysuckle , but mixed with greener smells of mountain air. In the Old Town, which we visited briefly, it is dirtier than in Dubrovnik. Cats walked and slept in the narrow passages and courtyards as they do in Croatia, but the smell of cat urine lingered in the air unlike in Croatia.
