Best laid plans...

 

 10 a.m. we were outside and ready to make the most of a sunny warm morning. Our hosts wanted photos for their web site and neighbours assisted taking group shots. Two hours later we were entering the built up area around Dubrovnic. What doesn't show on a road map is the terrain. This was all on the side of a mountain, with houses piled on top of each other and narrow medieval roads. To cope with modern traffic an extensive one-way system had developed. I had this naieve idea that we would park the car and saunter to pleasant restaurant and have a leisurely meal before heading on. Not possible. We tried various turnings indicating parking to find them chock solid and had to back out into traffic, that let us know in no uncertain terms we were performing a dangerous maneover and being classic 2CV was no excuse. At this point I made an executive decsion and we gave Dubrovnic a miss. 

 

Saddened, and after about 10 kilometres down the road, we turned right in search of a beach front and some food. Success - a car park, several restaurants and a pleasant beach and promenade. The reason being, there was a huge plate glass Sheraton Hotel. Two hundred rooms at a rough guess, closed for the winter. The whole area must have been thriving in the season, with three jetties, obviously for trip boats to take tourists round to Dubrovnik by water. Thinking about it as we ate a delicious local pasta dish, this was by far the best solution. Modern traffic and medieval towns don't mix well and entering Dubrovnik with its huge fortress walls from the sea has got to be the best way to see it. 

Onwards and upwards from one World Heritage site, across the border into Montenegro. This proved a problem. The young border guard insisted that our papers were not correct. We only had a photo-copy of the car papers and not the originals. After several appeals from me he removed himself to seek guidance from a superior. My suspicion was he was about to corpse - i.e.break out laughing and needed an excuse to compose himself. He returned and handed me our documents and said 'Montenegro respected our return journey to our residence in Greece and wished us well.' I skiddadled asap.

Kotor is a medieval fortified town with the addition of the longest city wall, that actually surrounds the mountain behind, preventing assailants from chucking projectiles into the town from the vantage point of the hill behind. We were looking forward to finding somewhere in the old town. Well we were. That is before google and the Dalmatian coast had their wicked way with us. 

the drive from Dubrovnik to Kotor should have taken four hours give or take, but this is Dalmatian coast line. Dalmatian geography features sets of parallel hills/mountains where the sea has flooded behind looking like long parallel islands. There is a ferry service that connects two of these islands at a critical point, saving a very long drive round. Well google didn't like it and we were tired and missed it and were even more tired after an additional two hours of normally pretty driving around the long way. We settled for a rather dog eared apartment outside the old town. I am not sure what the owner made of us, I think my eye balls were revolving like a slot machine and all I wanted to do was fall into bed. So much for forward planning. We returned to our tried and tested method of finding accommodation a hour before we needed it.

Chris

In my quest for small countries, sadly we missed Bosnia Hertzegovnia. I was hopeful when I saw that it too had a tiny sliver of coast, mainly around a town called Neom. I thought we would pass through, But since Croatia continues on the other side, there is a fancy bridge that whisks vehicles over to an island and back. It's a very fancy and at a tiny seaside town called Komarna, with just 170 registered residents.

The bridge was built by a Chinese company and 85 per cent financed by the EU to the tune of 420 million Euros. It's the first time the two parts of Croatia has been connected for more than three hundred years.

 

It was spectacular driving over the bridge but just a short while later, we see the Walls of Ston, in the distance. This coast has a lot of history. This is a huge fortification system, in the shape of an irregular pentangle 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) long, that surrounded and protected the city of Ston. Their construction was begun in 1358.^[On the Field Gate of the Walls there is a Latin inscription which dates from 1506. Today, it is one of the longest preserved fortification systems in the world. It had forty towers and five fortresses. Had we researched in advance, we might have planned some time there.

The Walls of Ston were known as the European Great Wall of China and built to protect the precious salt pans that contributed to Dubrovnik's wealth, which are still being worked today. As we approach by car, the road swings round and takes us to the side of the mountain, displaying the full scale and skill of the buildings.

Jacky