I’ll have to do a backdated post on Dubrovnik’s undeniable charm, but first. The drive to Kotor, Montenegro. It started with one of the very few tense moments I’ve had while driving. Aboard the short, tall bus (the kind that seem inherently unstable), I looked down at the beautiful blue of the Adriatic, with nothing but a guardrail that didn’t even begin to reach the bottom of my feet and 300-odd meters of sheer cliff separating us. Incredible view, but the rocking, brake-burning pace that the driver set was not particularly confidence inspiring. For the first time in my life, I wished I knew more engineering physics, so I could calculate more precisely when the brakes would fail, and how far we’d sail over the edge, and other related details. Sadly, this didn’t last, and the drive morphed into a mostly pretty cruise beside fertile valleys and adorable little terracotta roofed villages at the feet of small, grey mountains, it became something else entirely when we reached the bay. Though I’ve also heard it referred to as a Gulf, which seems much more appropriate. It took a solid hour to wend our way around the nooks and crannies of the water, and Kotor is not that close to the far side. But what an hour. The sun had just disappeared behind the mountains on one side, casting the others in a gentle purple which contrasted with their harshness. Too steep and too dry to support anything but the occasionally scraggly push, the mountains around the gulf are slate grey in normal light, and though not jagged like the newer Rockies, manage to look entirely inhospitable. They tumble almost straight down until the last few hundred meters before the water, where things level out a little, and evergreens manage to gain a foothold. And among these fledgling forests, villages. We passed a dozen or so as we sped along the winding road, of varying sizes and eras. A larger centre managed to be more striking that it might have thanks to a large abandoned structure, roof collapsed, on its outskirts, perched on a small hill and silhouetted by the fading sun. The next bend brought a 500 year old monastery, smoke trailing from a chimney, and the next the ancient looking village of Perast. Two almost crumbling stone church spires towered above the dozens of impossibly picturesque roofs and scattered remnants of stone pillars, coated in thick ivy. Round a corner and an island chapel is revealed, floating inches above the golden water on a high tide, turquoise dome brilliant against the darkening mountains behind. One more bend and the big mountains reappear, beyond the far edge of the gulf, capped in snow and tearing ribbons from the clouds.

No picture or description can really do it justice. I appreciate good scenery as much as the next person, but rarely does something’s mere appearance really move me. But this was different. It is visual ecstasy, a constant heightening ride of the quaint, the stunning, and the fantastically picturesque. After all of this, the town of Kotor could almost be a disappointment, slightly overdeveloped and lacking a waterbourne, church, but the snaking walls of the fortress stuck somehow to the mountain towering over the town, looming in their floodlights are still striking. Even a short stroll through the tiny winding streets to the 700-plus year old building that houses the hostel convinces me that it will be a lovely few days.