I had a little trouble sleeping, tossing and turning that was probably due to sleeping on such a full stomach. The bar/restaurant was right above us and sometimes the scraping of chair legs jolted me awake. Because of that I ended up sleeping in later than usual, but we had plenty of time before our bus departed.

We went back upstairs to get breakfast, and they had a similar spread of food as yesterday. This time I knew I wanted to concentrate on that OJ and coffee. There were also some corn muffins with cheese baked inside and topped with seeds – excellent! We had a different server this time, who was all smiles when talking to me and pretty much ignoring Kuniko. I felt like many times on this trip staff that we met were not used to being treated with smiles/kindness by customers. Speaking of smiles, the mom sitting next to us with her kid was looking miserable as she smoked a cigarette and ignored her son. When her husband showed up they ignored each other – the child was too young to notice the tension. 

After breakfast we organized our luggage and then went and checked out. I was using the elevator with the suitcase and pushed the up button to get out, but the elevator instead went down, and surprised the older Asian couple – they had to wait until I went up again. I was surprised there was a whole other floor below us. 

We did our best to avoid sunlight as we walked back the way we came the day before yesterday, back to the bus station. We had our tickets already, so it was just a matter of finding the right bus. There was a giant digital departures board that was broken, so we asked a security guy and he told us we’d leave from the #4 spot. When we got there, we saw three Japanese people also riding the bus, but they didn’t acknowledge us at all. The bus door was open, and we showed our ticket to the driver who was standing outside. He gestured that we could board the bus, and we sat down inside. With the bus engine off there was no air conditioning, after a few minutes it was too hot for me and I went outside to wait on a bench.

While waiting there I went ahead and bought an eSIM for Kosovo as it was the only country not covered by our data plan. That turned out to be a good decision later on as we would need it to find our next hotel. While waiting many people came up to the driver and asked questions – he was trying to eat and looked like he was sick of answering so many questions. Maybe if the departure boards worked then this would not be an issue? 

Eventually it was time to depart, so we got on the bus as the driver started it up. Another guy jumped into the bus and sat blocking the door, so it looked like we had another copilot situation. As the bus left the terminal we eagerly adjusted the air conditioning vents, but nothing was coming out. Also, the copilot left the bus boarding door open. And then it hit us – there was no air conditioning – we are just going to drive to another country with the doors and windows open.

The bus was pretty old. It looked old from the inside and the outside, with a faded “Free WiFi” decal on my window. I joked with Kuniko how much fun it would be to ask the driver for the WiFi password. We were lucky the bus was even running. The window next to meet had a lot of water trapped between the panes, flowing back and forth with lazy waves. With the door and overhead emergency exit hatch open the drivers fired up their cigarettes, and we were in for an eventful two hour ride.

The driver got on his phone while driving – one hand calling, the other steering and holding the cigarette. Occasionally on the way he suddenly pulled over and someone jumped on the bus. As we passed the Muslim quarter the bus pulled over and a guy passed over a big package of what looked like takeout food. Much further down the road they pulled over and were handed some kind of packages that looked like a courier delivery. I guess that was what the phone calls were about.

As we left the outskirts of Skopje the heat was rising fast. In some of the intersections there were mothers or young women begging cars for money. I couldn’t imagine how hot and stifling it must have been out there, and what it would be like to depend on that activity for your source of income. 

Eventually we got close to the border, and I was eager to see how it was going to work out. Kosovo is a country according to half the world, and a breakaway region according to the other half. But before we got to the border the bus pulled up behind some cars that were decorated, and I think everyone was surprised when a bunch of people got out of the cars and started dancing. 

It felt like a Bollywood musical but I noticed that the car right in front of us had a “Just Married” sticker covering their license plate. The cars were blasting music, drivers were getting in and out, the women were shaking bangles, waving Albanian flags, and it felt like we were truly in a completely different country now. The drivers honked their horn but it just blended into the celebratory honking ahead of us. Behind me a local woman was talking loudly on her phone to her friend and holding the phone to show her friend what was happening – the phone was right next to my ear as she did it.

I took a few photos and a video too, but we had to be careful because the background was an international border and the guards who would have to sort all this out. 

As we inched forward I could see the guards processing the wedding party members, and they didn’t seem like any of this was abnormal. Eventually we got to the front, and a border guard got on the bus and started scanning passports. Kuniko’s scanned correctly and she could keep her passport. Mine didn’t scan correctly so the guard kept it. It went like that with the other passengers, and the guard took about half of our passports with him out the door. The bus started moving forward and there was a tiny flare of panic, but he pulled over to wait. 

Behind me the lady asked Kuniko something in Albanian, and Kuniko explained that she didn’t understand, then the lady said, “Italian? Spanish?”, and Kuniko told her that I spoke Spanish. So I talked to her a bit in Spanish but she clearly didn’t understand me. She tried a little Italian with me but I couldn’t understand her, but I got the feeling like she just wanted to reassure us that the passports were coming back. 

And sure enough the copilot came back with all of our passports. I retrieved mine from the pile, and we were back in business. The bus started towards Pristina and we were in our sixth country of the trip. 

The road in Kosovo that we used was pretty nice. It was a big elevated expressway, in perhaps the best condition of any road during this trip. Below us we could see that they were building a new railway, and the expressway and the railway both followed a narrow river towards the city. Some capital was being invested here.

Somehow the driver knew that some passengers would want to get off earlier than the others, so he pulled over now and then. During one of these stops a car pulled out in front of us and I thought that it was all over for our crappy bus. But the brakes worked and disaster was averted. Farther on we saw police pulling over cars with a similar method to what we experienced in Albania. The copilot closed the door when we passed the police and then opened it again once we were safely past. 

Finally we arrived at the bus terminal and parked out front. We got out and retrieved our suitcase, and then headed over towards a long line of taxis waiting right next to the terminal. But something was off, and Kuniko figured it out – they weren’t taxis but cars for student drivers, and we were hoping to catch a ride from a driving school. The cars had a board on top that said “Autoskola”.

So we walked through the terminal and noticed right away how it looked cleaner and more modern. There were signs and digital displays and comfortable seating. We then went out the other side, until a guy approached us and offered us a taxi ride. We took him up on it, loaded the suitcase into his car and we were off to central Pristina.

On the ride to the hotel the guy chatted with us, he recommended a “bear experience”, which was some kind of bear sanctuary outside of town that didn’t sound that appealing to us. Looking around us the city looked a little cleaner than the previous cities, but basically the same architectural style and now and then a few American brands were advertised. It cost 15 Euros to get close to our hotel, but the entranceway wasn’t immediately clear. We walked around until Kuniko saw it – without the GPS or internet it might have taken a lot longer.

I waited downstairs while Kuniko confirmed the location, and then once we were checked in I lugged the suitcase up some stairs and into our room. This room was nicely designed and looked comfortable – it was my favorite room of the trip, I think. After dropping off our stuff we went out to catch a drink – the main pedestrian street outside was wide and lined with cafes and restaurants. We had a little trouble finding one that had the right combination of shade, credit card acceptance, and boozy menu, but eventually we landed on a place near our hotel. 

I had a Peju beer, and Kuniko tried her luck on a margarita (this was her third attempt). I said that the third time would be a charm but in fact the margarita sucked. I promised to make a better one for her once we got home. 

Nearby we found a supermarket called Maxi. According to my map there were a lot of Maxi stores in the area – ours was Maxi 3, but nearby was Maxi 18, so it is a big chain. We liked the market – lots of different products and all the price tags had the flag of the country that produced the item, so it was great for souvenir shopping. We came back here often, and we started calling it “our Maxi”.

We bought some snacks, water, and some airplane bottles of local wine to try.  While waiting to check out a guy approached and I think he was asking to cut in front of us, not sure but since we didn’t understand he waited instead. The clerk was clearly someone who hated her job – she looked ready to quit any moment.

Back in our room we went into siesta mode, along with a little wine tasting, eating the Tuc crackers that we had received all the way back in Sarajevo from the hotel, and laughing about the wild bus ride to get here. Eventually our hunger got the best of us and we decided to go out for an early dinner. We are always eating early, unlike most Europeans who head out for dinner at 8 or 9 pm. We are usually asleep by then. 

I had two possible restaurants to try. We walked by and checked the menu at the first one, but it looked a little snobby and I didn’t see many traditional dishes on their menu. So we went next door to the other one on my list, and it was perfect. The restaurant was called Shpija e Vjeter. It was a narrow restaurant under the shade of some trees and an awning, with a stylish homey vibe thanks to the decorations and lighting. We got a good table sort of half inside and half outside.

We ordered some beer and wine, and while waiting for our food an apple fell from the tree high above us, luckily missed my head but rolled across the floor towards some other customers. I was about 30 centimeters from re-discovering gravity.

The food arrived, and it was awesome. We had shrimp buzara (“buzara” is a kind of cooking style we saw throughout the Balkans), and a beef muscle casserole which tasted a lot better than it sounds. Everything was tender and delicious, and we were very happy to be where we were.n

Behind us the staff put a little edelweiss aroma into the big fan blowing through the area. Kuniko was surprised to see the staff smoking and chilling right out in front of the customers, something you’d never see in Japan.

After dinner we walked along the big pedestrian street – it was apparent that there was some kind of festival or event happening. There were food stands and booths to buy souvenirs, a small Ferris wheel, and a carousel. Lots of young people were stepping out and there was a lively vibe. 

We stopped for a drink at a bar that looked relaxed and comfortable. Inside a couple of guys were sitting at a table, and one of them had a cat on his lap. So cute! After we ordered our drinks and went back outside to wait for them we saw the two guys walking away, and the guy was bringing the cat with them, holding it in a strange way. Hmm…

I had some red wine and Kuniko went for another cocktail, this time a sex on the beach. It was another strikeout, with an odd artificial taste to it. No more cocktails in Europe, I think. When paying the bill the staff said that it was cash only, and I realized I only had a 100 Euro bill in my wallet. I told him the bad news, but he had good news for me and he was able to break the bill and make our life easier the rest of our stay in Pristina. 

We walked to the other end of the pedestrian boulevard and they had a big stage set up for some kind of live music later tonight. Hopefully we’d be able to sleep! There was also a statue of Skanderbeg on a horse – he does get around.

We made a final visit to our Maxi for water, wine, souvenirs, and deodorant, and then back to our hotel to get to bed. As I was falling asleep I could hear the faint sound of live music but it didn’t stop me from conking out.

We had a nice sleep in this morning. The shower in the room turned out to be a good one, and when I got out I opened up the window to hear the river streaming by outside – it was a nice background noise. 

We went upstairs to get breakfast, and they had a pretty good setup. There were some things set out – cold cuts, cheeses, fruits, yogurt, and a big jug of fresh-squeezed OJ – nice! Once we got those we sat down and the staff came by and asked us about eggs: omelette? Scrambled? Fried? With or without bacon? Big decisions. The friendly waiter also took our coffee order and made our cappuccinos from a big espresso machine behind the counter. The lady making the coffees looked really unhappy – I hope she was OK.

Also there was an older Asian couple, Japanese? We saw them now and then. 

Today we set out to take a look at some of the details and sightseeing spots around Skopje. We started with the square that we visited last night. I realized that there were casinos on the square – two of them on opposite sides, and that felt a little odd for such a central cultural location. The big fountain with Alex the Great looked a little bit more dignified in the daylight without all the LEDs. I could see more details at the base of the statue, where Macedonian soldiers stood in a circle facing a ring of lions that sprayed water from their mouths. We saw a few more statues in each corner of the square. They are big on statues in this city!  We noticed another boat on the river – that would make it boat #3 – we wondered if that was also converted into a hotel?

Beyond the square we spied an interesting tower, so we went to take a look and discovered a memorial house for Mother Theresa, and next to that the very impressive Church of Saints Constantine and Helena. The architecture was beautiful, coupled with a golden rooftop on each section, and the tall tower that had brought us there.

Seeing that church reminded us that we had passed a fairly dramatic church when we came in on the bus yesterday, so we set off to look for it. It was a nice walk across town, again with the shaded avenues, and small storefronts that were aimed at regular residents rather than tourists. The trees provided shade but also a buffer from the cars running on the street – it was a nice touch for pedestrians.

Finally we reached the building we were looking for, the Church of Saint Clement of Ohrid. The design was rounded and eye-catching, and we stepped inside the foyer to look around. Since I was wearing shorts I gestured to one of the staff to figure out if it was OK for me to be in there, and the guy gave a sort of resigned nod – I guess I should have been more prepared. We poked our heads into the main church, and the interior was simple but beautiful. There was a ceremony in progress so we didn’t stay long. As we left we passed a friendly beggar at the gates, who didn’t seem surprised that we weren’t giving out any cash.

Continuing our exploration we walked a ways towards the fortress on the hillside, doing our best to avoid the sunny side of the street when possible. Already it was getting hot. We crossed a bridge with two lion statues done in a traditional style on one end, and two more lions in a modern art style at the other end. Continuing on a pathway that led around the fortress walls we climbed a bit of a hill. We passed a Greek restaurant, all white and blue, and then passed a woman who was being followed by a dog. She turned and tried to get the dog to leave her alone but the dog wanted to hang out with her and I think it wasn’t going to give up.

We turned and walked through a warren of bars and nightclubs, all shut down in this morning hour, and then walked around the old town area. There were lots of restaurants here but it was way too early for anything to be open. We poked around, found a street with umbrellas arranged above, and I took some pictures of some good tile work that was done near some staircases in the area.

We followed the streets to the bazaar area, and maybe we missed it but were soon surrounded by locals, mostly around the mosque nearby. The shops took a more Turkish and Muslim slant here. Since it getting time to get something cold and alcoholic to drink we felt the Muslim quarter was not the right place to look. 

Consulting our maps we walked alongside a busy street filled with cars and traffic, doing our best to avoid the sun as we went. Finally we reached the river and the broken ship, so we knew we were close to our hotel. Then just before reaching our hotel we stopped at a restaurant and sat outside at a nice table in the shade of the trees, to drink some white wine and the local beer, Shokoko smooth. Kuniko’s white wine came with a chaser of water, and we enjoyed cooler temperatures while watching people walk by. The restaurant was playing some old, traditional music despite the staff mostly being quite young. 

After our drinks we walked over one of the nearby bridges to take a look at the statues. One bridge to the west of our hotel was lined with famous ancient people with roots in this country, and the bridge to the east of our hotel was lined with statues of famous modern people that were apparently Macedonians. Strangely about half of the name plates at the bottom of each statue had been stolen or removed. On the other side of the river a hired tour guide was explaining some more statues in detail, while a stray dog lay in the shade near him with its head on its paws. 

The shopping center that was all closed up the night before was open for business so next we went to check it out. There was a supermarket inside, and we scored a bottle of local sparkling wine to try out later, and bought a few souvenirs to hand out when we get back to Japan. The cashier at the supermarket was really kind and spoke perfect English – I wondered that she was working at a supermarket and not in international business somewhere.

Elsewhere in the shopping center we saw a bank that had people lined up outside it, and wondered what was going on. The timing felt weird, and the staff were metering people inside. Hmm… 

We also saw an interesting souvenir shop, so after some hesitation we went in. There was a customer already there talking about football (soccer) scarves, and the shopkeeper walked him through the options that she had available. I had no idea that it was sort of a collector item. We scored a good keychain to hang on our Christmas tree, and then went on back to our hotel. The room wasn’t cleaned yet, but we popped the bubbles into the fridge and dropped off our souvenirs. On our way back out we asked the desk staff to clean our room, and then went right across the street to have lunch at a Cuban restaurant.

So far this trip we have been really good about focusing on food that is local and traditional. But finding a Cuban restaurant is pretty rare – I don’t even know if there is a Cuban restaurant in Japan. This might be the closest we were going to get without going back to Cuba so we jumped on the chance. Right across from our hotel, it was a no-brainer.

We sat on the porch of the restaurant in the shade, and perused the menu. We ended up ordering ropa vieja and Cuban sandwiches with pulled pork. I had a beer, Zlaften Dab, and Kuniko took a chance on another cocktail, this time a piña colada. Turned out that everything was great – the ropa vieja was a little more tomatoey than what we had in Havana, but the flavors were great and even the cocktail was a solid choice. 

Our waitress, a tall blond with yellow fingernails, was working alone and very busy trying to keep people in food and drinks. Later someone else came and helped out. We enjoyed chilling on the porch with some great food, and it made a nice break from the Balkan food that we had been eating for the last week or so.

By the time we finished lunch and came back to our room it was all cleaned up. The sparkling wine was already cold in the fridge but I took a nap first, following our siesta protocol. Once I woke up we popped the cork and sipped the bubbles while I caught up on journaling. The sparkling was really good – our third local sparkling wine that we had tried. While sipping we also considered where to go and what to eat for dinner – always an important decision.

We ended up heading back to the old town area, which should be open by this time. We walked across town on a different course, trying to avoid the fiery sun that was heating all the cement around us. There were more statues on this path – including another large Alexander the Great, this time without the horse. He was standing doing a power salute with a raised fist, but mostly we saw the statue from what Kuniko called its “butt side”. 

The restaurant that I was looking for showed as being in the center of a square block of the old town. We couldn’t find how to get in, walking back and forth and finally I saw an alley. I couldn’t believe that this narrow alley would lead to a gastronomic revelation, but I checked anyway. In fact the restaurant was back there, but it was completely deserted, with one waiter sleeping with his head down on one of the tables. Not a great omen, so I went back to Kuniko and we went with out backup selection. 

The backup was called “Destan”. We sat at a table that recently was in the sun but was starting to cool down in the newly arrived shade. Across the walkway from our table was a big spice shop, and the scent of cinnamon was all around us as we ate. We ordered the signature beef sausages, a shopska salad, and they came with a basket of bread, some onions and a large, pale grilled pepper that the staff warned was quite spicy. We had some red wine from airplane bottles, made by Alexandria the biggest winery in the country I am guessing, because we saw the brand everywhere.

The food was excellent – we ate the grilled sausages like potato chips, sometimes wrapped in bread with onion. They were addictive and I kind of wish we ordered another plate of ten sausages. The shopska salad was also refreshing and I think it might be my favorite kind of salad ever – perfect in its simplicity. We were sweating when we finished the food – we left only some bread and most of the spicy pepper behind. When I came back to the table after paying our bill, the staff was cleaning up and a beggar was taking our leftover bread – he was holding the rest of the pepper in his left hand. I’m glad someone would be able to enjoy it.

We walked back towards the main square, the streets more lively now that the sun was almost set. For kicks we walked down to ship #3. It wasn’t a hotel, just empty, but in much better shape than ship #1. We went back to the gold-roofed church to take more pictures as the sun was lighting up the gold as it set. 

We were still able to eat a little bit, not 100% full but not super hungry, so we elected to stop at one more place for a snack and some wine. Right on the square was Pelister, a restaurant that I had marked as a possible dinner place. It is a pretty historic restaurant/hotel, and a little more upscale than the places we’d visited before. Since we were still pretty hot we sat at a table that was in the path of a big misting fan, and that helped a lot. 

While we waited for our (second) dinner to arrive we enjoyed the atmosphere of the place. Next to our table a solo diner powered through three big plates of food, while his waiter chatted with him between bites. The table beyond him had a child breaking a glass – the second time we’ve seen it happen this trip. 

For food we started with an appetizer of roasted eggplant with tahini cream and goat cheese. We also ordered some zucchini moussaka, and it had a big dollop of cream on top. Then we each had a glass of white wine – I had Lazar Grashevina, and Kuniko had the Berovo Sauvignon Blanc. The wines were quite good, I thought Kuniko’s Sauvignon Blanc was the best of the trip. The food was a lot – both were delicious but each had a lot of cream involved and I think they filled us up. We did our best but had to leave a little bit of the moussaka behind.

With our bellies full beyond capacity we walked back towards our hotel, past the now fully LED illuminated Alexander the Great plus horse fountain. There were a lot more people in the square, with vendors grilling corn on the cob, and some of the casinos opening up for business. But we were off to bed. Another travel day tomorrow as we leave for Kosovo by bus.

Up early today, no time for breakfast at the hotel – we checked out and had the hotel call a taxi for us to take us to the bus terminal. In Tirana the East Bus Terminal is pretty far outside of the city, and it took about 15 minutes by taxi to get there. The terminal is attached to a rather large shopping mall, which was closed because of the early hour. 

But the bus station was active, with quite a few buses of different sizes coming and going. There were no signs or markings about where to take our bus, even though we were already holding tickets that we purchased in advance over the internet. As we walked through some burly guy asked me where I want to go, and I kind of avoided answering because it sounded like he was trying to get us to go with him somewhere. We kept walking, and checking our phone, but there was no information to be found.

Kuniko went to look at a place on our Google map, but that turned out to be unmarked, and finally when walking on another sweep a woman asked me what I was looking for. The woman was in her 50s, dressed in regular clothes and seemed a little brusque, but I told her and she pointed to a travel office, saying that company had a partnership for buses to our destination. It was a precise answer and then I realized that people like us get lost here all the time – the man and the lady were either paid employees or volunteering to help out travelers. My initial instinct was that they were trying to steer business in a particular direction, but they were just trying to help.

Once the travel agent office opened up we showed him our ticket printouts, and he wrote down the information on a sheet along with our passport info. He said we could wait on the sofa that was in the office, and since it was air conditioned and comfortable we took him up on that. I noticed with a little alarm that the bookshelf next to the sofa also had a half-empty bottle of whisky displayed, maybe for particularly stressful days.

A few other people came and checked in, fewer than I expected, and by overhearing their conversations with the staff we learned that our bus would be 15 minutes late. Par for the course, though – we expected difficult connections on this trip. When the bus did come it was a smaller bus, perhaps 16 people capacity. Kuniko grabbed two prime seats in front – there were already some passengers from some other place in there. Our suitcase fit in the back (luckily) and then we were off.

It was an interesting ride. The driver had a co-pilot who sat up front with him, and together they chatted (in Albanian?). The bus looked great on the outside but the interior was pretty beat up. There was a sign that showed a WiFi password, but no network was available. They played some traditional music via CD, sometimes the radio, and kept a running conversation going. The driver was a little deaf, so throughout the two hour ride to Ohrid we heard him say “Eh?!?” about a million times.

The driver was a good driver, though and we made pretty good progress. We passed lots of small villages, roadside fruit stands, and a lot of nature. Much of the drive was alongside a river that would appear and then hide in the trees. I noticed a lot of roadside fountains that drivers would pull over and use to refill their bottles. It was fun to sit with Kuniko and munch on snacks while watching the scenery go by. There was a brief pit stop at a rest area up in the mountains, but after that we made good time.

There were some things we couldn’t figure out. At one point some cars in front of us started weaving in and out of their lane with their blinkers on. I thought maybe they wanted to overtake other cars, but they stayed behind. Some cars had streamers that they let run outside their window, which made us think that maybe it was some kind of celebratory event. As we got close to the border to North Macedonia many houses had water hoses set up to spray the water up in the air – not a permanent thing but something set up for a special occasion? Mysterious!

The border crossing process was a little longer because of the number of passengers on our minibus. The driver collected our passports and went into the office, while we could just sit in the vehicle. Soon the driver came out with all our passports – he dropped them a few times and struggled to get them all together in his hands – but then handed them out in the bus. A very cursory customs inspection in the back of the bus and then we were off. We were disappointed that the border guards weren’t beautiful ladies like when we entered the country.

Once we crossed into North Macedonia, our 4th country of the trip, the buildings initially looked really nice. But that didn’t last and as we get closer to Ohrid it evened out to a mixture of stylish and run-down homes. Ohrid is next to a big lake and so we drove along the lake as we approached the town. Once inside town the drivers did a loop and appeared to be lost. Eventually the copilot got us figured out and dropped us off at the main bus station in the north of town. But that was a problem…

Our plan (as dreamed up by me) was to take the bus into Ohrid, stop there for a while to look around and have lunch, and then take another bus on to Skopje where we would be staying the night. As it turned out we needed to use two different bus companies – one to get to Ohrid and another to leave and get to Skopje. The tickets I bought for the first company showed the bus destination to be that company’s offices in Ohrid, in the south near our sightseeing spots. However, that isn’t where the bus dropped us off – this was a completely different terminal. I tried to point this out to the driver but he pleaded “No English” and told me to take it up with the terminal staff. It became clear that we were not going to be going to where our ticket said we would go.

So this change in arrival location made an impact on our plans, and we had to shift things quickly. First, we needed some North Macedonian dinars, so I went over and was able to get some from an ATM nearby. Then we went looking for a taxi. The first one we found said our destination was impossible, but we changed our strategy and chose a nearby restaurant, and the next taxi driver said he could do it. We threw our suitcase into the trunk and hit the road.

Our driver was really friendly, and asked how many days we’d be staying in Ohrid. I told him it was actually a matter of hours. We were only in town for the next few hours, but from what I saw of the town it was pretty nice and would have been a good place to stay for longer. The driver took us towards the south, near where we would have started if the bus arrived where it was supposed to. 

Then we started up a narrow street, barely two-way, we got stuck in some traffic. The driver assured us that it was very unusual – in his career of driving in Ohrid he had never seen this. Soon we got gridlocked into the traffic on the very narrow street, and nothing was moving. I started thinking about what time our bus would leave and wondering if we’d be able to make it back in time. 

Meanwhile our driver was chatting with the locals walking down the road, and criticizing the other drivers in the local language. He said it was jammed because it was a bunch of tourists renting cars and not knowing how to drive the narrow streets of Ohrid. And also that it was Sunday, and everyone was leaving the churches at the top of the hill. 

Which happened to be our actual destination.

Planning the trip I never thought about the day that we would be there – Sunday – and how that would affect seeing the famous churches in the area. Big oversight!

We were still not moving in traffic and we were getting more and more nervous in the back of the cab. Finally we inched a bit farther up, and we were able to get out at the foot of some steps that led to the gate at the top of the hill. This was as far as cars could go unless they were local residents. I paid the driver 500 dinars, and then he wished us luck and drove off – he was a cool guy for getting us this far.

There was nothing to do then but carry our suitcase up to the mountaintop – more hot weather sweat incoming!

Kuniko navigated on her phone for us and I just concentrated on getting the bag up the hill. It wasn’t too far, just physical labor, and once we got to the top I could roll the suitcase through the main gate and over the cobblestone steps. Our poor suitcase wheel was still rotating and seemed to be holding up but we were really putting it through some extreme wear and tear.

Everyone else was walking hands-free and the rumble of our suitcase being pulled uphill over cobblestones sort of echoed through the neighborhood. But there were plenty of beautiful views to see. The houses and road that we traveled was looking over a steep drop with the lake and beautiful churches down below. I wanted to stop for photos but also wanted to make sure we didn’t miss our bus out of town, so it was a little stressful.

We passed some kids selling local honey at booth and I waved at them, but they watched us go by with curious stares. Sometimes cars would pass, people who lived in the neighborhood. Finally at the top we found the entrance to the Church of Saints Clement of Ohrid & Panteleimon, located on the mountaintop overlooking the lake. I stopped to rest in the shade, while Kuniko went farther to take some photos of the church. Because it was Sunday they were not charging admission to enter the grounds – and we could hear the sound of a church service taking place inside. It was a short visit, but I’m glad we made it.

Then, after a rest we headed right back down to where we started. Rumble-rumble past the houses and lake view and honey-selling kids (they waved back this time) and then we were going down the long stair path (easier than going up), but what we found when we arrived at the bottom surprised us. No cars, no traffic, just a smooth road back into town. 

So I guess the church crowd leaving had thinned out enough for the traffic to resolve itself, and we would have plenty of time to get back to the bus terminal. What a relief!

Since we had plenty of time at that point, we decided to walk down a road near the old town that seemed to have a lot of restaurants. Most of them were Turkish restaurants, but since we’d be in Turkey soon it seemed like we should try something else. We found a good looking place that took credit cards with outdoor seating in the shade, so we sat down for lunch. 

The cold beer went down well after the mountain climbing, and the owner was really nice to us. We both had skewers – we shared chicken and veal kebabs. Kuniko had some wine and we were able to catch our breath. While eating a young woman walking by said “konnichiwa” to Kuniko, which was a first for our travels. The street had some people walking by but it was much quieter than the streets in the past few towns. It was great to relax.

While relaxing we started to make a plan for the next step. Our departure terminal for the next leg was the same one we arrived at, and since we had plenty of time Kuniko thought that we could probably start walking and then if we felt too hot or tired we could hail a cab for the rest of the way. So after using the clean restroom of the restaurant we set off. 

Kuniko guided us through the back streets of Ohrid with her GPS, and as long as we stayed in the shade it wasn’t too hot. Some of the roads reminded me of the backstreets of Okubo back home. At one point we passed a group of guys painting inside a building. They saw Kuniko first and gave a boisterous “Hey, how are you?” In English, and then I walked past behind her and called out “Hey, what’s up?” in my American English and they went wild laughing and cheering. We kept walking but could hear them still calling after us.

Finally we could see the bus terminal ahead – we had made it without the taxi. We were still pretty hot, so we went to the adjacent shopping center and had a couple of gelatos to cool down. Kuniko had Ohrid pear flavor, and I had espresso. Hers was not so flavorful but I liked the caramel ribbon running through it. Since the shopping center was air conditioned we killed more time looking through the drug store DM, and then finally went out to the bus terminal. 

We had pre-purchased the next bus leg’s tickets online, and so I showed my printouts to the terminal staff. She looked confused for a while but apparently she found our info. She said we needed to pay a station tax (this sounded kind of dodgy – was it real?) but since it was really cheap and they accepted credit cards I went ahead and did it. They printed out tickets and said we could go ahead and board the bus – it was the only one in the parking lot. I put our poor suitcase in the storage bay under the bus, then we got on board. Our bus filled up and they lined up another one to take the overflow – thanks to that our bus left 10 minutes early. I was relieved we weren’t still stuck on a taxi somewhere on that hillside.

This bus leg was entirely within one country and we were on a full size bus this time. The scenery wasn’t quite as pretty as the last leg. We did pass a national forest that looked quite lush even in summer, and I noticed that we saw a lot of mosques that anchored towns, rather than in Western Europe where a church would be the anchor. We sat a few rows back from the driver, and at one point I noticed that he was smoking – what the hell? 

As we approached the outskirts of Skopje, a couple of old ladies arranged to get dropped off near their homes instead of going all the way into town, which seemed convenient for them. As we passed over the central river on the way to the terminal I saw a ship on the water below – sort of docked in the river. And then we turned again past some more churches and found the bus terminal. 

Since we had plans to leave the country by bus in a few days we decided to go ahead and buy our tickets while we were here. The lady at the info desk was hard to hear, and she had to say it a few times before I got the message – but we both smiled at the goofy situation. At the correct booth we asked about tickets for the day after tomorrow, and the lady working there had good English and seemed really happy. She was very helpful but her boobs were a little distracting – low necklines are pretty common here.

With our tickets purchased we walked through a very hot stretch that had no shade on the way to our hotel. Kuniko’s phone had died this time, so she used mine. We were tired and snapping at each other a little about it, but we were on the right track and getting close to our hotel. This hotel was a special one – it was actually the ship on the river that I had seen before. I have never stayed on a ship that was a hotel, so it was going to be a novel experience.

Soon we saw the ship on the river, but as we got closer and closer something looked off about it. There was spray painted messages on the stern, and the hull was broken open. The wood was faded and damaged, and a group of birds had pooped all over the side. It was also abandoned.

Uh oh.

Kuniko said something like “Is this it?” and since she was holding my phone I didn’t really have an answer for her. I hoped it wasn’t it. 

But up ahead in the distance there was another ship, and it was with great relief that we observed that it was in much better condition. Confirmed on my phone, we were at the wrong ship, and we should keep on walking. The walk was quite nice here, under the shade of the trees the walkway widened into a broad pedestrian avenue, with some stylish restaurants on our left and the river flowing merrily on our right. 

The correct ship was nicely decorated, with flowers flowing from flowerpots tastefully arranged in front, and a shiny wood service that looked like it was well-taken care of. The top of the ship was converted into what looked like a restaurant, and there was an open terrace with comfortable seating near the front. Kuniko’s comment was “Very nice, I guess.”

And when we entered it was nice. There was nobody at the check-in desk but after ringing a bell the staff came out of the restroom to help us. We joked about the first ship we saw and he said that some customers were sure they had been scammed. We got two keycards and then took the tiny elevator down one floor. The hallway and rooms were all wood and carpet and looked quite nice – they really went in for the nautical theme. Inside our room were windows that opened out onto the lake with dramatic views of the regal buildings on the other side of the river. It was a great view and location.

We freshened up and went up to the deck to get some drinks. The sun was still out but dropping rapidly, and I had a beer while Kuniko took another shot at a margarita. This one was just as bad as the last one – two bum margaritas in a row! While we were wrapping up an attractive woman sat at the table across from us, she was alone but she gave us a nice smile. 

Feeling hungry we decided to go across the street to one of the restaurants, and we chose “Soul Kitchen”, mainly because their big menu had some local cuisine in addition to the usual pasta, pizza and burgers. We had some sarska pleskavica (cheese-stuffed beef patties) and also some beans served with a big smoked sausage – so delicious! We went through a few glasses of great red wine, and just watched people strolling by with our ship/hotel in the background. 

After dinner we strolled around a bit for some photos. There were two bridges, each with some kind of cheesy statues. They seemed like a recent addition – maybe a quick way to try to borrow some prestige for this country. A little cheese is fine, but maybe they went a little too far here. We also walked through a big square with a gigantic statue/fountain with a mounted Alexander the Great on top. Plus lots of LED accents – hmm…

Finally we walked through a closed down shopping center on the way back, and lucked into an open convenience store where we could buy some water and drinkable yogurt.

Finally it was back to the hotel. It was quite a travel day – looking forward to relaxing in Skopje all day tomorrow and doing some exploring.

We rolled out of bed pretty well rested. The shower in our hotel was interesting: super hot water for a while, then cold, then back to hot. It was an unpredictable dance but at least there was plenty of space to dodge scalding water when necessary.

We pushed the “-1” button on the elevator to arrive at the basement breakfast floor. The room reminded me of a place where I imagine AA meetings would be held – no windows, and there was an industrial chemical smell. But there was a big espresso machine in the corner, and we made a beeline for that right away-

…only to be rebuffed by the hotel staff, who steered us to the other side of the room where they had a big hot pot of Americano coffee. Around it was a breakfast buffet, and the message we got was: this is for you. The breakfast buffet was pretty good – I liked how they cooked some salty cheese chunks into the scrambled eggs – and there were plenty of breads, yogurts and jams, and fruits, cheeses and cold cuts. 

After we sat down to our breakfast and coffee, an Italian couple entered the breakfast room, and the staff right away started brewing them espressos. 

What the fuck?

Kuniko did a little research on the signs on the walls, and apparently the Italians were members of a medical tourism group, who had some kind of special agreement with the hotel. They got the espressos and they had some croissants and rolls, but that was it for them. I still was bummed out we didn’t get a proper cappuccino.

After breakfast we went up to the room to get organized and then we went out to do some more sightseeing of the city. We started by searching out the “Pyramid”, a special structure in the center of the city offering 360 degree views. It was a little hard to find – the structure of the pyramid was integrated into a shopping center, and the direction from which we approached made the shape unclear. Later we circled around and then we could see (and climb) the pyramid. Kuniko is not a big fan of steps (especially going down) but she did a good job getting to the top and back. And the views were quite nice, including a few mosques – we’ve seen a lot this trip.

Next we walked back to the north towards the big square. We crossed a bridge that had life-size figures that reminded me of the Talos Principle characters – a little spooky. Tirana was full of art exhibits, not only in museums but on street corners as well. We continued on to check out BunkArt2 – a museum/modern art exhibit built in an underground bunker. The purpose of the museum was to call attention to the lengths the authoritarian government had gone to keep tabs on the citizens. The bunker was used to move soldiers and politicians between key buildings in the city, and to spy on citizens to root out any sort of dissent or resistance to the government in power.

It was a pretty heavy topic, and I was impressed with the creativity with which they tackled it. One room showed various illusions – ways to make people question what they see with their own eyes and introduce self-doubt. One example was an illusion that looked like a perfect star, but upon further examination you started to find flaws in its structure – the exhibit compared it to a perfect Communist, but looking deeper always finds flaws. 

It was pretty hot in the tunnels down there, but it was worth the visit. We emerged from the other end of the tunnel into the heat, and then walked a short distance to the square. Sticking to the shade we went over to take a selfie in front of the “I heart Tirana” sign, then ran back into the shade. There were quite a few tour groups also in the shade – I can’t imagine leading a tour group through this kind of heat in the summer.

By this time we were pretty hot so we decided to go visit a shaded cafe on the street that we passed near our hotel. We took a table at the edge of the area, as far away from smokers as we could manage. The staff came by and just from looking at us predicted what we would order – a cold beer and a glass of white wine. She was right! As we sipped our drinks people walked by on the street. Some would glance at our drinks – we were enjoying alcohol on a workday at 10 am – but I didn’t feel like we were breaking any major moral codes. 

One little girl came to us and begged for money, and when we refused to give her some she gave Kuniko the side-eye as she walked away. Near us a little kid sitting with their family managed to knock a glass of the table, shattering it into pieces. The family moved to another table so that staff could come and sweep it up. Finally I took my bill in to pay it off, but the bill said only one coffee – they staff had apparently given us the wrong tag, so we corrected the issue and paid.

We stopped on the street to buy a keychain, and then went on to another area past our hotel that felt a little older. There was a large city bazaar there, under a modern structure with open sides to let the breeze come through. They were selling lots of items, including fresh tobacco(!) clumps, but most of the stuff looked like junk to us. 

By this point the heat was getting oppressive. We decided to walk the five minutes back to our hotel and avoid it. We were pleasantly surprised to find the room already had been cleaned, so we waited until we were hungry enough for lunch. The first place we had picked from Google Maps, and it looked really good. Unfortunately due to a lot of construction in the area it proved hard to find. When we did find the restaurant it looked abandoned. We went downstairs and found a cleaning lady, who then went to search for a restaurant staff member. She wanted us to wait, but looking around at the empty tables we decided to duck out and find somewhere else.

We ended up not far away from the bazaar, at a place called Kings Pil, a beer place. We sat outside under the misters and shade, but we could still feel the heat through the awning. Besides cold beer and white wine we also had kofte in sauce, and a dish of stuffed eggplants (really good!). 

While we ate a large group of young people went into the restaurant for lunch. Outside one of their friends asked us if the food was good. It was, and we told him so, but what would he do if we said it wasn’t? Abandon his friends inside? For us it was fun to watch the various people walk by – Tirana had a wide variety of people, tattooed, wild fashions, grizzled old people. Lots of interesting things to see.

At this point the heat was just too much (38 degrees C), and so we followed siesta protocol and went back to the room for a nap, with the AC blowing hard. I fell asleep with the TV on – most of the channels were unavailable with the cryptic message “No Camera Mod” showing. The hotel WiFi was also dropping constantly – apparently we were on the top floor and just out of range of their WiFi router.

Once things cooled down we went back out for the evening. We started at a big shopping mall nearby, hoping to visit the supermarket in the basement and see what an Albanian supermarket was like. Unfortunately it turned out to be an Italian shopping mall, and an Italian supermarket with only Italian product. It seemed wildly expensive as well – who shops here?

We decided to go back to what we know and visited the same wine bar that we had visited the previous day. The same staff helped us, we enjoyed more sparkling wine, and then moved on to try two of the winery’s white wines. The staff was happy that we were interested, and he enjoyed explaining – it felt like we were in a tasting room. At the table in front of the wine bar two guys came in and ordered cold beers, which seemed an odd thing to get at a wine bar. 

As we were paying the bill the staff asked us if we like red wine, and he said that if we stop by tomorrow he’d introduce a great red wine that the winery makes. We said that love red wine but we leave Albania tomorrow morning. So the staff said, “Just a moment..”, and came back and poured us a big glass of red wine (on the house) for us to try. He poured more than a taste – it was a generous glass. We thanked him and he went back inside while we enjoyed the wine – it was really good. Afterwards we struggled with how to repay his generosity… a big tip? Do they tip here? A hug? But in the end he was busy inside for so long that we thought our thanks would probably be enough.

Down the street we found another restaurant that looked interesting and we had dinner at “Dehun”. It was a newer place, and we ate “patell xhan pikant” (spicy eggplant), “pllaqi me suxhuk” (beans and sausage with tomato), and “tigania” (sautéed beef). We washed it down with two glasses of merlot. Everything was good, the plates were smaller, sort of like a tapas style. Across the street was the restaurant we had visited the night before, and we waved at our waiter who seemed to remember us.

After dinner we took a walk across town to visit an outdoor library that had an interesting structure – and the area around it was full of modern and quirky architecture. Especially near the city stadium there were big squares and stylish restaurants – Indonesian, Japanese and Malaysian. It felt like a rapidly developing area. 

Once more we hit the Tirana Castle street to grab some cocktails before heading back. The place gave us some free shots while we waited – vodka, Bailey’s, strawberry liqueur and Kahlua. The cocktails were a little disappointing – my daiquiri was OK, but Kuniko’s margarita was tangy and not so balanced. 

Around us things were livening up and there was more of a nightlife vibe happening. We walked towards the big square and took more pictures, including the big apartment building that was designed to look like a human silhouette. The square was much more comfortable in the cooler weather – it was a good night to be in Tirana.

On our way back we passed a trash truck collecting bins. The bin was actually attached to a deep pit, and the whole thing could be lifted out by the garbage truck. I watched as the process happened – there was a huge capacity under that single bin that was all underground. The truck operator saw me gaping and we waved to each other.

Near the hotel we stopped at a minimart to buy some water and banana kefir. Back out on the street I commented on the contrast of watching a woman in an ultra-mini skirt and high heels walking past Muslim women completely covered up. Apparently this contrast is perfectly normal here.

It was a fun day in Tirana, but we have to hit the road tomorrow and do a travel day. It should be our last big ambitious travel day of the trip.  

We were up around 6 am and were able to chill out in our room until the hotel breakfast was served at 7:30. There were more guests this time, and I enjoyed a big breakfast of eggs, yogurt and burek. After breakfast we finished packing and checked out, receiving a little refrigerator magnet as a present when we left. We rolled our suitcase out the city gates and took a left – taking a new direction for us. 

On our left under the city walls were many little shops and stands in what looked like a historic market. Mostly there were fruits and souvenirs, maybe to sell to the cruise ship passengers that stream in and out of Kotor. We kept walking, past the remains of a moat that had a guy in scuba gear doing some sort of work (cleaning?) beneath the water. Then we arrived at the IDEA market, a small market where we had arranged to meet our driver to take us to Tirana. I sent him a message to tell him that we had arrived, but my internet connection wasn’t great and the message just sat in my outbox. Kuniko went inside and did some shopping for bottled water, and then we waited patiently. After I walked into the parking lot to check there our driver approached Kuniko and asked if she was Bryan, and the connection was made.

Our driver for this leg, Milos, was a friendly guy with a very comfortable luxury sedan. He set us up in the back with a couple of cold waters and then he did some impressive driving to get us out of Kotor. It was impressive because even now the traffic was getting intense, and there were a lot of buses hauling cruise ship passengers to activities around the area. But Milos pulled out and did a nice U-turn to get us out of town quickly. 

It was our first chance to see something of Montenegro beyond the touristy area of Kotor. We had plenty of time to check out the scenery as we went. The first town we passed was Budva, which was a coastal city that seemed lively – looking like a mini-Miami, Honolulu, or Barcelona. It looked like a place for people who enjoy nightclubs, dancing – not really our scene. Outside Budva we passed an abandoned waterslide park baking in the sun, but the slides looked like a giant albino octopus.

Milos had some good music playing on his radio as we drove – Play Radio Budva. With his left hand on the steering wheel his right hand floated out in front of the air conditioner vents in the center of the car, occasionally changing gestures like he was casting magic spells to affect the traffic around him.

We drove south of Budva, stopping for a quick look at a resort island called Sveti Stefan island. Our driver told us all about the history and the prices there – he sounded kind of impressed. It certainly looked like there was a lot of privacy there.

The next stop was a lunch stop at Virpazar. I had picked this location because it seemed like a quiet place sort of on the way, it was famous for river fish as it sat alongside Lake Shkodra, a huge lake spanning two countries. Milos had recommended going for a boat ride on the lake, but I just wanted to get some lunch, stretch our legs, and keep moving. We got there pretty quickly, and Milos dropped us off and gave us instructions to meet back in about an hour. 

We walked down some wooden platform that ran under the bridge and next to a pretty green river, and then came up on the other side in the town of Virpazar. I was expecting a small town, this was a little bit bigger and touristy than what I had imagined. Lining the street were many stands advertising boat journeys and other local activities, but to me it looked like there were not many customers. The staff looked bored and none of them called out to us as we passed.

There were only a few restaurants, so the choice was relatively easy, and because of the heat we decided to sit inside a glassed in terrace that had air conditioning running. The staff spoke fair English and we negotiated lunch and drinks, and in the meantime watched boat expeditions coming and going on the neon green river below us – it looked like a scene from the Disney Jungle Cruise. It was only after I ordered the grilled trout from the menu that Kuniko pointed out how brave I was to eat a fish that came from this water. Yes, good point! Kuniko ordered “grilled turkey” from the menu, which sounded intriguing. We had some local wines, a red and a white. 

Lunch turned out to be quite good – my trout was the right color and I tried not to think about contaminants. Kuniko’s grilled turkey was great – I had pictured dry turkey breast but this was cooked perfectly and so juicy. The wines weren’t half bad either. We were able to pay by credit card here, and there was a clean restroom nearby which was also a relief.

Across the river were quite a few people visiting for boat rides, and it was hard to imagine this place being as popular a destination as it was. But again as we left there were no takers on our side of the river for all the boat trips being advertised on the street. We went again under the bridge on the wood platform, and came up on the other side just as an old train departed from a station that we didn’t even notice coming in. I didn’t know a train was even an option here, but unless it goes across the border it wouldn’t have worked for us. 

We met Milos and then we were back on our way. He said that he’d drive us through a part of “real Montenegro” as a sort of diversion to get a real feel for the country. It was cool to go down some backroads and see the different kinds of houses. Some were really elaborate, others simple, but all had a lot of space around them and most had fruit trees growing on the property. We did see a lot of roadside fruit stands during this leg. 

Soon we reached the Albanian border, and there was a lot of cars jockeying for position. Milos asked for our passports and he handed them over to the border guards along with his ID card. The booth was on the opposite side of the car from the driver, so both border guards were checking us out – I was surprised to see that they were two beautiful women in guard uniforms. I almost winked at them but thought it might get us into trouble.

Once we were in Albania we traveled through wetlands, with Lake Shkodra still on our right. This area had a lot of birds, and Milos said it was popular for birdwatchers. Then we passed through the city of Shkoder, which had a big castle up on the hill above the city. Here we ran into a bunch of traffic, and passed through some pretty run-down areas. I didn’t get a good impression of this place – glad we weren’t staying. We got delayed quite a bit in the traffic, and Milos complained that he was going to have to fight his way back through this on his return. I didn’t know what to say to that. I did share his opinion that Albanians were really bad drivers – they were way more aggressive and sloppy than what we had seen so far.

Finally leaving Shkoder we saw more vineyards, some of them quite large, but they were mixed in with regular shops and small homes. The home designs were a little wild – some had balconies on the front of the house without a door to access them, others had two floors with a front doors on each floor, without any access to the second floor door. It was as if the balconies and doors were a status symbol more than a practical feature.

Eventually we reached the outskirts of Tirana. We passed a huge gothic style building that according to our driver used to be a museum, and then was converted to a casino, because “casinos make more money than museums”. It was a long straight road on an expressway into the center of the city. 

But just as we were getting close to the city center, we were surprised to be pulled over by the Albanian police. Our driver was shocked, and we were shocked too – how was this going to affect our trip? The police pointed to the side and stopped us behind another car in front of us – apparently we were both busted. Interesting how they parked a police car behind us but otherwise we were still stopped in an active driving lane – not curbside. A policeman walked back to talk to Milos, and it really was a “holy shit” moment.

Apparently Milos and the Albanian policeman have to speak English to communicate. So as an English teacher it was really interesting to watch their interactions. There was a lot at stake here – Milos’ job, license, evaluation, and his customer’s happiness were all on the line. The policeman said that we had run a red light back there, and Milos pleaded ignorance – saying that as a visitor to Albania he is very careful to obey traffic signals. The policeman said the penalty was up to 400 Euros, and maybe this was a shakedown – I have no idea as this is my first experience with the Albanian police department, or any Albanian for that matter.

Then a supervisor car pulled up and they had a conference with the officers on the scene. Milos asked me if I thought he had run a red light and I told him that I think he was OK, but honestly what do I know about Albanian traffic laws? Finally the supervisor walked back to look at Milos’ license, checked us out in the back, and then asked what his job was. Milos said he was a driver – the supervisor asked what kind of driver and our very clever driver said “Tourism”. Combined with the two wide-eyed tourists in the back seat that turned out to be the magic word. The supervisor let us off with a warning, and we were able to continue. The car in front of us had to stick around. Wow – welcome to Albania!

Milos was able to find our hotel soon afterwards, and he was stressed when he finally let us off. He asked us to give him a good review and we did – I thought he was a very skilled driver and I’m not sure I believe he ran a red light. We gave him a tip and said thanks – he really earned his paycheck today. I felt a little bad for him having to drive all the way back through that traffic to get home. 

We entered the lobby of our hotel, and it had an interesting retro feel and the smell was a little like a grandmother’s house. But it was clean and the staff was very nice when checking us in. He even said “arigatou gozaimasu” to Kuniko when she was finished. We got into the small and slightly shaky elevator (the elevator music was a little odd) to get to the fifth floor, and found our room – room 502. The room itself was a little old – it reminded me of our rooms in Minsk. But it was very clean, spacious, and the air conditioner worked just fine.

After a short bit of unpacking we decided to go take a look at Tirana. We went out of our room and pushed the elevator button, and as the elevator approached we could hear the music getting louder – it was a spooky effect. 

The first order of business was to find an ATM to get some Albanian lek. There was an ATM right outside our hotel but it was for credit cards only, not bank cards. But it wasn’t far until we found a regular ATM. My Japanese bank card didn’t work, but luckily my US card did. Now we had 10,000 lek, woo-hoo!

We started at the main square in town – Skanderbeg Square. Surrounding us were statues and unique buildings, and it was a good place to start off. We walked around and took pictures of interesting architecture, there was a lot to see. People around us seemed friendly, quite a few smokers, but mostly it was a young crowd here. Maybe because of the experience with the police and the older hotel we were a little scared at first, but the town brightened things up for us. 

Kuniko guided us to a new tourist-centered food street called Tirana Castle. There was no castle, just an outer wall, but there were many restaurants that seemed stylish, and everywhere took credit cards so we didn’t have to worry about managing our lek. Right off the bat we found a wine bar named Shendever, operated by a winery in southern Albania called Çobo. There we had our first sparkling wine by the glass and it was really good. The staff was really nice and he gave us some free olives and kept our glasses full. There was a misting system there so we could stay cool in the shade – today was another hot day.

We were getting hungry so we walked down the street and found a great restaurant called “lezete”. We started with rice dolmas in a yogurt/mint sauce, then firgase e Tiranese (a baked yogurt dish with garlic and meat) and also tave kosi – baked egg and yogurt with mutton and rice. The mutton on top was cooked perfectly – I loved this dish. We enjoyed beer, red and white wines by the glass, and lots of water to stay hydrated. The waiter was a nice guy with big smiles, very attentive and full of funny comments. At our feet cats occasionally ran by, and around us the restaurant started to really get busy. It was a great vibe, and we were feeling pretty happy about where we were.

Finally we walked back to the square to see it after the sun had set, and then on back to our hotel. This was another big travel day, which means that tomorrow we can explore the city at our leisure.

We slept soundly through the night, but had decided in advance to get up early and try to explore the city before the cruise ships and tour buses brought their tourists in. The temperature was nice and cool, and it felt like we had the city to ourselves, and of course the cats. We visited quite a few, most of them sleeping here and there, on dinner tables and seats from the cafes and restaurants. Many shops had set out food and water for the cats – I’m sure they attract potential shoppers – so it was sort of a feline paradise. 

Again from outside the city we saw the domes again – it was tough to pinpoint the building location because of the narrow twisty streets inside the city. Eventually we got our fill of photos and went back to the hotel to have breakfast. The coffee was not bad – an automatic machine dispensed cappuccinos, and there was a decent selection of different foods to try, along with hot eggs and sausages. The other hotel guests were eager for breakfast and waiting outside the entrance until it opened. Seemed like they were part of a group traveling together, speaking a language I didn’t recognize. 

Our priority for the day was to arrange a boat ride across the bay to Perast, and the Our Lady of Peace church built on an island in the bay. We went back outside the city to see if we could arrange a boat ride at the harbor, and we were surprised to see already a gigantic cruise ship docked, and huge crowds of tourists streaming off the ship. By the time we got to the harbor (which was empty an hour before when we were walking around) most of the boats were booked up until late, and we finally made a reservation on a boat for the last ride of the day, at 6:30 pm. We paid in advance (25 Euros each) and the lady working the booth took my WhatsApp info and promised to send me a message. After we left and were walking back I realized that until I got that message I had exactly zero proof that we had a reservation, and she already was holding our money. Luckily the message came pretty soon after – whew!

Since we suddenly had all day ahead of us before the boat ride, we decided to go have some mimosas somewhere. Nothing like a morning cocktail on vacation! The first place we tried didn’t even know what a mimosa was, but the next cafe featured a cocktail menu that was available even at this early hour. We sat at a table outside, near the end of the cafe’s area – Kuniko had a regular chair but my seat was really a table – the three ladies next to me had switched the table for an extra chair for themselves, and they tittered with laughter as I made use of the table as a stool.

The mimosas went down well, and we enjoyed sitting in the shade until the sun started to come over the mountain and shine down on my head. Luckily the three ladies moved off somewhere else, so we grabbed their table next to the wall and remained in the shade the rest of our stay. Our old table came under full sunlight, but still people took the seats – the cafes were becoming more popular. We were enjoying the vibe so much we ordered a few more cocktails – I had a Hugo spritz (first time for me – it was great) and Kuniko had a sunset passion martini (powerful!). This was our agenda: sip cocktails, watch tourists walk by, play with cats when they wandered by.

Later we went out to lunch at a place I had found called Konoba Scala Santa. We were lucky enough to get a table without reservations – we watched group after group get rejected after we sat down. Kuniko ordered a fish fillet, and I had the grilled octopus. The fish fillet was much better than the one in Dubrovnik, and the grilled octopus was fantastic. This coming from people who live in Akashi, the octopus capital of Japan. It was a big portion of octopus – what a luxury. I drank a Pinot Blanc which was just OK, but Kuniko had a Malvasia that was much better. There was also bread and some garlic in butter – dangerous to snack on. Behind us a group of large black American women had ordered big glasses of red sparkling wine – I didn’t even know that was an option. It was an interesting choice. 

The temperature was starting to peak, the streets more and more crowded, and so we again retreated to our room to avoid the heat and crowds. I somehow communicated with a housekeeper that we didn’t need a cleaning but we would like fresh towels, and she was nice enough to provide them, so we were all set until we leave the next day. The housekeeper looked like she worked hard – and it brought to mind the differences between the service workers and the people they are serving in this place.

During our siesta time we relaxed, playing Angry Birds, messaging our driver for tomorrow’s travel day, and confirming our boat trip later in the day. It was nice to be under the air conditioning.

We left early to go catch the boat, and sat in the shade of the park right next to the harbor boarding area. While we sat I watched some workers pushing a big bin to empty the trash cans around the park – they were sweaty and working hard while we had just been lounging under AC playing Angry Birds. Again it brought to mind just how lucky we were to be able to do this trip.

While we waited for our boat to come in, the big cruise ship started blasting its horn, and then it sailed backwards and turned around all on its own, without need of a tugboat. The ships were huge and I was glad that I wasn’t on one of those cruises – it doesn’t look like much fun at all.

When it was time we met our guide how got us on the right boat – a smaller speedboat with a few other passengers, a lesbian couple, two British ladies of Indian extraction, and a family of four with two little girls and a stroller. The boat captain had us sit up front, we turned around and then he started to head across the bay. Once we got away from shore he announced that since we had kids on board he was changing the music selection, and then we hit full throttle across the bay to the sounds of iconic Disney songs blasting from the speakers. It was an absolutely perfect moment. 

It was a fast and bumpy ride, the pilot was making efforts to avoid wake from other boats but still now and then we were jolted. Everyone was keeping an iron grip on their cameras and phones, but most of my photos from that time are blurry and tilted. Across from us the wind was catching one of the lesbian couple’s top and she was having trouble keeping it on – so I thought it best to put away the camera for a while. 

One of the kids wanted to get closer to one of the cruise ships that was nearby, so the captain obliged and we buzzed the ship while the “Try Everything” from Shakira was playing at high volume – I wondered if the cruise ship’s passengers could hear us.

Then we approached the town of Perast, and the captain said that we’d have 50 minutes here on our own before he came back to pick us up. There was some kind of misunderstanding, we had signed up for a 90 minute ride out and back, I had expected only about 15 minutes at Perast, but in these situations it is best to just roll with it. What was on our schedule anyway? We didn’t have any reservations so it was fine. 

Originally in planning the trip I had thought about staying in Perast to avoid the crowds at Kotor, but after walking down the street there for a few minutes I was glad we didn’t. Of course the town was beautiful and there were great views of the bay. To me it had a snobby vibe, with private waterfront lounges and overpriced restaurants and hotels that looked like they wouldn’t want us to stay there. We don’t usually like resorts and this place had that kind of vibe.

All was not lost, however, and we stopped in at a small market and bought two airplane bottles of Prosecco from an unhappy shop owner. We sat on a bench with a view of the bay and enjoyed some bubbles – probably the cheapest bubbles in town by far.

Some kids were playing soccer nearby, and when we walked by it felt like maybe they were aiming for us while kicking. Luckily they suck at soccer and we survived the ordeal. We were able to sit right on the edge of the water with feet dangling in the bay – the cool water felt great. Near us an interesting pair of people – a (perhaps) Swiss blonde lady wearing a white sundress was with a (perhaps) North Korean guy wearing all black. Friends? Something about them was curious.

Finally it was time to get back on our boat, and then we went a short distance to the Our Lady of Peace island. It was a man-made island, built a long time ago and still growing as there is an annual ceremony to cast rocks into the water around the island. The church on the island was beautiful, the sun was setting beyond the mountains, the temperature was perfect, and there was almost nobody else on the island (except for another boat getting an emergency repair). We were so glad that we took the boat at the end of the day rather than our original plan.

Back on our boat we made the long ride back across the bay, with more Disney playing. We passed an old submarine tunnel that was also part of a tour package – I didn’t know the story but I was curious about it. Something to research when we get back. Our boat finally reached the harbor, and we pulled in with the Beatles Yellow Submarine playing loudly. We got off the boat, the captain gave me a high five, and then we were free to go back to the town. Well worth the 25 Euros.

Back in town we walked around, and accidentally solved the mystery of the domed building – it was a landmark church that we had walked by many times, but the facade was so imposing that it was hard to see the domes beyond it. We were glad to finally get to the bottom of it. 

For our last dinner in Kotor we went back to the same restaurant that we started with, La Piazzetta. This was the place where we had a bottle of sparking wine in an ice bucket and meat and cheese – it was such a fun experience that we thought we should bookend it with a last dinner here. The bad news was the veal was sold out on the menu, so Kuniko had chicken with mushroom sauce, and I had saffron risotto with shrimp. I had a local beer and then we shared a glass of white and red wine. 

The same staff that helped us the day before was working at another table but he remembered us and stopped by to say hello. We enjoyed watching all the different people walking around us, and Kuniko made a comment that most of these European tourists can come here easily – it is like a weekend trip for them – whereas we had to fly like 20 hours to get here. 

We had a great dinner, laughing together, sometimes so hard that other diners looked over at us. I threw out a theory that Europeans don’t laugh out loud like that in public, but sometimes we saw some break out in laughter. But I think the whole trip we were laughing out loud and really enjoying our time.

We really enjoyed our stay in Kotor. It was one of the busier tourist zones that we have visited but despite the crowds we were able to get a lot out of it. I’m glad that we had an extra day to relax here before we move on.

We paid a final visit to the “cat park”, found that it was a bit smelly in the evening – maybe they clean it up every morning? Then it was back to our hotel room to have a little dessert and get ready for bed. We found a few ants encroaching on the bathroom and bed – hopefully we don’t wake up with ant bites tomorrow!

We woke up early, and ate some leftover fruits from yesterday for our breakfast while packing up our stuff. Overnight we had found some troubles with our hotel room – the air conditioning had suddenly turned on in the middle of the night (maybe the power had turned off and on?), the WiFi kept dropping out, and the doorknob to the bathroom came right off and fell in pieces to the floor. Luckily we aren’t staying another day.

We checked out of the hotel and then walked down to where we figured the ferry would be moored. We actually hadn’t seen to ferry itself yet, so we walked around a bit until we found someone who knew what we were looking for, and they directed us towards the right boat. We arrived early at the ferry terminal, and soon were in a long line to go through immigration and board. The line continued behind us, extended right outside the building and into the hot sun – we were glad we got there early. The line and the immigration process were not organized, and several times people were cutting ahead for whatever reason. Eventually we got our documents checked and we were able to board, sitting near the window on the starboard side of the boat. 

We looked back and saw that there was still a long line of people waiting for immigration, so we had time to relax. The ferry left a little late (and completely full), but soon gained speed and started heading south along the coastline. Because we were making an international trip the ferry was closed up – just like our ferry between Hong Kong and Macau there was no access to the outside. Kuniko played picture shiritori and enjoyed the views now and then of the coastline to our left and the ocean to our right. 

After an hour or so we turned into the Bay of Kotor, and once we did they opened up the back doors of the ferry so that we could enjoy the fresh air and take photos. Later we went back to our seats – the guy who had been sitting next to us was gone, leaving only a half empty plastic bottle on his seat. This led to a weird situation. 

We sat back in our original seats, and enjoyed the cruise through the bay. A lady came by and asked if the empty seat was occupied, and we said that there was a guy there before, but he left and there was only his bottle remaining. She shrugged and picked up his bottle and threw it in the nearby recycling bin, and then sat down in the now-empty seat. After a few minutes the ship captain announced that we’d be docking soon, and that everyone should take their seats. So the original guy came back and was surprised to see this lady in his seat. He told the lady that it was his seat, and she said that she thought it was available, and then they both looked at us like we were somehow responsible for this situation. WTF?

The guy asked the lady where his bottle was, and she told him that she had dumped it, and then he asked where her original seat was because he needed to be seated for docking, and she motioned somewhere in the back – so off he went. It was so weird.

Once we docked at Kotor, people stood up and started lining up to get off the boat. I grabbed our suitcase and we left the boat near the middle of the group – about half the people were in front of us and half behind. But the system outside was (also) completely disorganized. There was a little shade next to a building, and people were supposed to line up to go through immigration, but the line was chaotically weaving back and forth and nobody seemed to know which way to go. Somehow even though we got off the boat in the middle we were second to last in line. 

Some unlucky people were lined up directly in the sun and just burning. We managed to sidle up to the shade most of the time, but it took 90 minutes of standing around before we were able to get into the immigration building. At no time did the staff of the boat do anything to guide, direct, or assist their passengers. The ferry company, Adriatic Lines, was very poorly staffed and organized.

Finally we got into the building, got our passports stamped, and we were free to enter the walled city of Kotor. By this time the city was packed with tourists, and it was still really hot. We entered the main city gates, and the architecture and layout was similar to Dubrovnik and Zadar, but slightly narrower streets. Above the city on the hillside a fortified wall zigzagged upwards, with people actually hiking up the steep hillside. I’m sure the views were great but there was no way I was hiking up there in this kind of summer heat. 

Not far inside the city gate we found our hotel, Hotel Vardar. It was a really nice hotel, and we dropped off our suitcase in our air conditioned room and then went out to take a look around. Everywhere in town they were selling items related to cats – shirts, magnets, etc. Soon we found out why – there were cats everywhere. More than Istanbul, and they were all friendly. We were always walking by cats in this town.

We were hungry so we found a restaurant and sat down for some food and drink. Our table was in the shade, a fan was hooked up to a mister above us and did a great job of cooling us down. We ordered a plate of local meat and cheese – the smoked prosciutto was awesome, and some of the sheep’s cheese was stored in olive oil, also tasty. We ordered a bottle of local sparkling wine, and our cheerful server managed to get it open and set it in an ice bucket next to the table. We were in heaven – totally blissed out.

Afterwards we walked some more – bought a keychain, had some gelato (not that great), checked out a square that seemed to be cat central, where many kittens lay in the shade, and there was a small care station where volunteers (I guess) took care of cats and made sure they were healthy. Back outside our hotel front entrance the pizza place that had a huge line when we came in was surprisingly empty, so I made a slightly drunken decision to buy a big slice, and we took it up to our room to enjoy it – yum, pizza!

Since it was siesta time I took a nap, Kuniko checked out YouTube, and we waited patiently for the heat to pass. Later that evening we went for a walk outside the city along the waterfront. We sat and enjoyed the view of the bay – it was very peaceful in the evenings with fewer boats and cruise ships. Some guys walked by and a swimmer pointed out that one of them had sat in something – his friend used water to clean the seat of his pants. The swimmer later asked me to take his picture as he treaded water in the bay. We also stopped at a small market nearby to get some water and pear juice. We took them back to our room, hydrated a little, and then went back out to get some dinner. 

One thing we had noticed was that from outside the city you could see a building that had a set of three big domes, almost like a mosque. But once we got into the city the streets were so narrow that we couldn’t find the domed building. We tried several times – where was it? 

For dinner we ate in a big square outside a church, with the sun down it was nice to eat under the sky. We had tuna tartare, and Montenegran bruschetta with soft cheese, tomatoes and dried ham chips. We also had some wine – I had a rosé that was good, Kuniko had a tart white wine. A place nearby was playing some background music and it was a very peaceful dinner. We watched tourists walking by, many stopping to take pictures of the church. At 8 pm the church bells rang, not 8 times but about 50 times, that was unusual. While the bells were ringing the restaurant turned off the background music until they were done – a nice touch.

After dinner we again searched for the domed building but came up empty. There were a lot of cute restaurants, some with people waiting in line. One place that was popular had tacos(!) on the menu – that didn’t sound very traditional. The city was really beautiful at night – it sort of reminded me of Havana in a way, with dark corners and so much history. 

Finally we headed back to our hotel – it is great to be staying inside the city itself. After two travel days we get to have a whole day here in Kotor tomorrow. 

The way we arranged this trip was that we would generally alternate travel days with resting days. Today was one of the big travel days, so we got up early at 5:15 am to get started. We showered, packed up our suitcase and picked up our to-go breakfast from the empty hotel front desk. They had packed us some fruits – apples, nectarines and pears, some ham and cheese sandwiches, and a pack of crackers and some chocolates. On top of that we had the snacks we had bought at the market yesterday, so we were well-supplied for a long travel day. We left our room key with some kitchen staff in the back, and then went outside and found our taxi waiting. It was a very short ride to the train station, and we found that it was slightly busier than yesterday, but still pretty empty.

There was a short line at the ticket counter which we joined, and everybody looked a little anxious to get on the train. Behind us in line a very talkative British lady was telling travel stories to some other people that she just met – it was a lot of chatter for this early in the morning and she was relentless in sharing all the great places she had been this trip. Ahead of us three Chinese people came over and talked to a solo Chinese woman in line, and then they all left the line together and went towards the platform. Maybe they had an extra ticket and invited her to join them?

Just as we reached the front of the line the another station staff showed up and so the ticket seller went back to help them prepare, and ticket sales stopped until they finished. During this time we could feel the anxiety of the longer and longer line forming behind us, and some people came up and were investigating why nothing was happening. But finally we were able to get our handwritten paper tickets, and we walked to the platform. The train was already sitting there, with all the carriages locked. We lined up at one of the rear carriages, and I hoped that when we boarded that orderly affair rather than a free-for-all that we sometimes see in other countries.

After a while the conductor came and started unlocking train cars from the front of the train working backwards. When other cars were unlocked people in front of us ran to the open doors, but that just put us in the front of our line when the conductor unlocked our door. The seats were non-reserved, so we casually walked in and sat on the left side of the train, as advised by Gemini the AI bot, who insisted the scenery is much better from the left side window.

I had read online that the train never sells out and there are always spaces available, so I was surprised to see all the seats filling up. Some couples were separated into single seats, and some people heading to the back of the train had to go back to the front to look for seats. Eventually the conductor unlocked one more train car in the back and apparently the train was full. Glad we got there early!

We always like traveling by train wherever we go, and as it worked out this was the only train ride of this trip. The train runs south, stopping at the city of Mostar before going on – just a few trains a week. The train cars themselves were reasonable modern but a little dirty, the train locomotives on either end looked really old. It felt a little like when we rode the train in Morocco a few years ago.

Soon enough the train started rolling, and we enjoyed some of our breakfast while checking out the view. As usual the outskirts of the city were not so beautiful, with more trash and junk piles than anything. But once we got a little farther we saw more nature. As the train ran they piped in some interesting background music – I liked the selection and sometimes activated my music ID app to make a playlist later on when we get back. Occasionally we stopped at some really small stations, and there were some dramatic bridges to cross. If the windows weren’t so dirty we might have gotten some nice photos.

During the first half of the 2.5 hour train ride it seemed like the best scenery was on the right side, rather than the left. Were we mislead by AI? But in the second half the train started following a beautiful river, and the high mountains with dramatic cliffs combined with the river offered the best views to the left side. As we got closer to Mostar I even saw some fish farms in the river, so the water must have been quite clean.

Finally we reached Mostar station, and it was even more abandoned and spooky than Sarajevo station was. We had a fair journey in the heat to get to Mostar old town, but it was a long straight road and we decided to walk it. Kuniko helped us navigate and I pulled our suitcase along, hoping that the partially damaged wheel would hold up.

We found the old town of Mostar on our right, and then descended some steps to find that the road was historic cobblestone – the enemy of suitcases everywhere. So that was how we first saw the bridge at Mostar, with me carrying our suitcase through the hot summer morning, and freely sweating through my clothes. There were also a ton of people here as the tour buses from other places had already arrived by that time. I carried our suitcase over the historic bridge, and then we parked along the side of the busy tourist street to figure out our best strategy to move forward. We had a car scheduled to pick us up at 3 pm, and here we were at 11:00 am in Mostar.

For now Kuniko searched out a restaurant on the far side of the bridge that had a riverside terrace with a nice bridge view, and so we confirmed that it was OK to sit for drinks for a while. The staff were super-friendly and we got a table with a nice view in the shade. It felt good to cool down a bit – we had some local beer and wine, and let the sweat dry. A couple sat nearby with a tiny chihuahua, the man looked exactly like Michael Peña – a dead ringer!

As for the bridge it was one of the landmarks we both really wanted to see, but we felt like it was less impressive in person. Usually there are divers that stand at the bridge and encourage people to pay into a pot – when they reach a suitable amount they jump off. Nobody was diving on that day. Just a few days before there had been a Red Bull diving event – we had lucked out and missed it. If they had pro divers jumping off I doubt they’d let me carry our suitcase across. 

I took a few more pictures of the bridge before we left, and then we settled up for the drinks and went to go find a place for lunch. I had found a couple of possible restaurants in advance, and we had to again carry the suitcase around while looking for one of them. At one point I rested in the shade while Kuniko did the detective work, and finally we found Restaurant Sadrvan, with tables under a shady arbor and misters that blew cold mist into the hot air intermittently. We snagged a table (without permission) and that turned out to be a great idea because the place was about to get really busy.

The food was a little more touristy than I had hoped. We had japkra and domas, and the red wine that we ordered arrived at a rather warm temperature – the one time that I wouldn’t mind chilled red. While we ate we enjoyed the mist, and watched all the activity around us. The place was busy – the staff had to wear some pretty traditional costumes – the women looked like they were not really happy wearing their version of the uniform. Occasionally a lost dog with a collar would run in looking for something familiar, and run back out again looking somewhere else. When I looked back at the restaurant entrance there was a big line of people waiting for tables.

Despite the arbor and the mist it was really hot – and we couldn’t stay there forever. The restaurant’s women’s bathroom had a broken door that didn’t offer privacy so we decided to make our move. I was able to contact the driver and arrange an earlier pickup – we were done with the crowds and heat of Mostar.

As fate would have it near our meeting point was a drinking hole so we sat in the shade and had some drinks, used the clean bathroom, and waited for Sandi, our driver. The owner of the place was super-chill and didn’t mind us hanging out. Across the way Kuniko spotted a Hilton hotel that was either getting ready to open or recently abandoned. 

Finally the driver came – the first time he drove by he missed us, but the second time we got it right and we jumped into his air conditioned car. It was about 1 pm, luckily he was cool with an early pickup and he told us that it would make crossing the border into Croatia easier. There are buses that run from Mostar to Croatia, but they take a really long time, especially at the border crossing. Having the driver was a good solution to this problem – worth the extra money for the flexibility and guidance. 

Sandi was really nice, he spoke English well, and was really helpful. We had booked a stop at a monastery along the way that makes wine. He suggested a friend that had a winery where we could do some wine tasting, but it sounded like it might add significant time to our trip and we politely declined. From Mostar to the monastery it was a 2.5 hour drive, so we leaned back and enjoyed the scenery. 

While not as dramatic as the train view the valleys and fields we drove through were pretty. There were mountains off in the distance, quite a few vineyards, and lots of fruit trees. As we got closer to the monastery there were big fields full of broken white rocks, and lots of empty space that reminded me of Read Dead Redemption. Sandi stopped once to run in and grab a bite to eat, but he rushed through it and we made good time.

We arrived at the monastery – it appeared suddenly and seemed to be surrounded by empty space. There were vineyards on the grounds, but not much space devoted to grape growing. Sandi asked if we wanted an escort into the grounds, but we said we’d do it ourselves and walked in. There were signs pointing towards buildings, the one pointing to a winery seemed to lead towards a big building under construction, so they may have been undergoing some modernization upgrades.

We sort of followed the path until we came upon a group of people who seemed to be taking a tour inside a church on the grounds – the language was not English, so we stepped back outside the building and continued looking for some kind of tasting room. The grounds themselves were quite beautiful and well-maintained. It was just hard to understand what to do. 

While Kuniko waited in the shade I followed the group around the path to see if they were heading into some kind of main building, but instead they went into a cemetery. Just as I decided to give up on the group and head back to Kuniko they all suddenly broke into song, and given the location it gave me a weird vibe. So we decided that we’d head back to the car and move on. On the way to the car we popped into the gift shop, and they had about 70% religious goods and 30% products made at the monastery, including wine. We tossed around the idea of buying a bottle for our hotel room that night, but in the end we decided not to. Sandi was a little surprised that we were ready to leave so quickly, but soon enough we were off.

From there it was quite close to the border to Croatia. We approached and there was a very short line of cars. Sandi said that he has seen much, much longer lines and thanks to our early departure from Mostar we were missing that. While leaving Bosnia we were entering the EU, so the border crossing involved a photo of each person in the car – we had to step out one by one and get our picture taken. 

Once we had entered Croatia we had a very short ride along the coast to get to Dubrovnik. The approach to the old city was quite beautiful, as we came over the mountain we looked down on the orange tile roofs in the old city surrounded by tall walls. It was instantly recognizable from Game of Thrones, and later we saw plenty of shops inside selling GoT goods to take advantage of this. The road we were traveling on was just two lanes and quite narrow on the side of the mountain, and I was interested to see that wherever there was a turnout they had put up boards to block the view of the city below. I imagined they blocked the view to avoid cars gathering there with people taking pictures and causing gridlock.

It took two passes for our driver to find our hotel, it was part of a restaurant called Urban&Veggie, so it wasn’t really clear on the first pass. But he dropped us off close, and we thanked him for all his help. It was a good experience and we really liked Sandi.

When we entered the restaurant to check-in to the hotel, the staff seemed like they were not really happy to see us. Maybe because they are restaurant workers that are doing hotel jobs in addition to their regular jobs? They had trouble finding the key, the heavily accented English they used made it unclear what our room number was, and so we couldn’t quite find the right room and knocked on a few other doors first. Eventually we got it figured out and we entered our room. It was small but good enough for our purposes – we would be leaving early tomorrow morning.

We hurried off to go look at Dubrovnik and get some dinner. We had to leave by a special side door that opened into a sort of suspicious alleyway, but once we figured out the locking mechanism we were free. Unfortunately during all this travel my phone  was running low on juice, so Kuniko offered to use her phone and GPS to guide us to the historic walls and old town. Basically the sun was getting low enough that we could find shade to walk in, but it was still quite hot. We started up a long hill, making good time. Near the top of the hill something felt off to me, and so we checked again and realized we were going a different direction than where we wanted to go. We backtracked closer to a busy street, and bought some water in a shop to cool down. From there I used my phone to call an Uber, and the (bad) driver took us to just outside the old town gates. Just as the Uber dropped us off and drove away my phone battery officially died – luckily timing, I guess – Kuniko didn’t have the Uber app.

With my phone dead we entered the city without some key items. I was basically using my phone for photos, to refer to a list of sightseeing spots that I wanted to check out, and a map with saved restaurants that I wanted to try. I couldn’t do anything about the map or restaurants, but I did have my point-and-shoot camera with me to take pictures. 

The city itself is beautiful. The walls surround the city and the buildings are made of old stone that has been smoothed over the ages. We had been to Croatia before exactly 10 years ago, but at that time we didn’t make it to this city and instead went to Zadar. I remember being so impressed with Zadar as the architecture is very similar – just a smaller version of Dubrovnik. Because of this, tonight’s visit to the city made less of an impression. It almost felt like we had been here before.

We walked down a long street, descending steps until we reached a main square, and it was fairly crowded with tourists like us. We poked around, took some photos of some of the more dramatic buildings, and then went out to the wharf and around to the side. Young people had gathered, some swimming in the water while others lounged in the setting sun drying off.

From there we made an attempt to go up to the city walls and see the view from there, but in a blatant money grab the city was charging 40 euros a person to walk on the city walls. That means all of the city walls, and they had built little booths everywhere the walls had an entrance to make sure tourists were paying. We were definitely not going to get 80 Euros of enjoyment out of that and decided instead to invest that in a good meal somewhere. 

There were restaurants everywhere in the city – down every little street and alley there were tables, and most restaurants had touts outside to try to get customers. We were getting hungry but we kept finding Italian restaurants – I was hoping for something more traditional, and we wanted to eat some seafood as we were right next to the ocean. No pizza or pasta necessary. The first place we considered I vetoed because it clearly said Italian restaurant on the menu. The second place we found had a seafood section, and I was so focused on that information that I missed that it was also an Italian restaurant. I told Kuniko that we should try this place, and we sat down – Kuniko slightly confused why we were eating at an Italian place after all. We talked about it and I realized my mistake, but we decided since we had been seated and they did have seafood that we’d make a go of it. 

I ordered a tuna steak, Kuniko ordered a grilled fish fillet, and when they came we were really disappointed. They were both super simple, overly salted, and served with a mountain of french fries. I had a big beer which was fine, but Kuniko’s white wine was a little tart and not pleasant to drink. I was really bummed out – here we were in Dubrovnik, one night only, and we just wasted a meal on generic tourist fare. Next to us a Chinese family was scarfing through pasta – the server even said “Welcome back!”to them so they apparently liked it here. To top it all off the staff said that they couldn’t accept credit cards (!) because their machine doesn’t connect sometimes, so we had to burn some of our precious Euros that we had prepared for use in Montenegro and Kosovo.

After we left I swung by the menu and was surprised to see that there was no restaurant name at all. Later I looked online and there was nothing listed in that location. We had walked into the very definition of a tourist trap. I was seriously bummed out but Kuniko was not about to let our evening end like this. Earlier while walking around we had seen a cute little restaurant down an alley and had filed away that info – we went back and had a second dinner there. This place was actually quite good, called the Renaissance Art Restaurant, and we ordered shrimp carpaccio with onions, Adriatic shrimp ravioli and two glasses of white wine that were excellent. This was more like it.

After (second) dinner we walked around and found a keychain that we liked, and then walked back up the steps (still hot, even in the evening) and caught a taxi back to our hotel. My Uber app was unavailable so we did it the old fashioned way. The driver was really nice and got us where we needed to go.

Before retiring we took a walk along the waterfront – our hotel was on the harbor itself – passing boats big and small moored for the night. One boat was in party mode with flashing disco lights on the deck. We scoped out the likely location for tomorrow’s ferry to Montenegro, and then went back to our hotel to call it a night. Outside our windows there was outdoor dining for the restaurant, and we fell asleep to the sounds of forks and knives on plates. 

That was a big travel day! We have some more traveling to do tomorrow and then things should settle into a more regular rhythm.

I slept really well, whereas Kuniko was awoken in the middle of the night by some people talking loudly in another room in the hotel. The time was nearly 3 am, and these people had come back from whatever event/party they had attended and the high ceilings were carrying their voices throughout the building. Kuniko actually went out of our room to track down the source. Eventually around 4 am one of them left and things got quiet. I just lay there – oblivious, unconscious, unhelpful.

Our hotel offered breakfast and we went to partake at 7 am, and it was quite a spread. Considering the size of the hotel they had lots of different items, the usual stuff and also some burek, rolls, plenty of yogurts, hot eggs, and so we were looking good. The automatic espresso machine made a pretty good cappuccino, but we noticed only afterwards that the empty cup should be placed on the left – we lost some precious coffee thanks to our lack of attention to the sign. Once a cook came in to check on things and get her own coffee, and she seemed really friendly although we couldn’t communicate very well.

Afterwards we set out to walk through old town and do some sightseeing with fewer people around. This early sightseeing was our strategy whenever we travel – but even in the morning the sun was quite hot, and we had to stick to walking in the shade only.

We did a bit of exploring, beyond to the old town to climb a hill overlooking part of the city, to see a memorial graveyard. We tried to visit a mosque that look quite beautiful, but the gates were firmly closed at the early hour. The old brewery in town looked interesting online but was all shut down when we went past. Other than those fails we had success seeing other things. At 9 am we went into the big city office that was renovated after a fire in the 1990s. The entrance hall was dramatically lit up with vivid colors and they had movie scores playing from some hidden speakers – it felt a little like Instagram bait. But the rooms upstairs were dedicated to documenting the war crimes of the Yugoslavian war. They were fairly graphic (by design) and I think the showy entrance was probably a good strategy to get more young people in there to learn about their history. 

Afterwards we walked along the river (which was flowing more freely than yesterday) towards the Academy of Fine Arts building in the west part of town. Along the way we tried to stay to the shady side of the street. We checked out the Latin Bridge – hard to believe this historic bridge was so simple. We had unknowingly walked over it the night before.

We also passed some kind of military building – outside a large squad of soldiers was in the process of lining up – maybe going on duty. Across from the Fine Arts building was an interesting artistic bridge that looked like it was doing a loop. Artistic and eye-catching!

Since we had already come across most of the city we decided to make a run to the train station in the northwest to buy tickets for tomorrow’s train to Mostar. Usually I like to get those lined up online but their website had said that online sales were unavailable at the moment (the message stayed the same for four months before we arrived).We didn’t want to miss out on the train so we thought we’d lock down the tickets today.

It was a fair walk in the heat, about 25 minutes, and even trying to stay in the shade we were starting to get sweaty. We spotted some markets on the way, and some interesting building architecture. Once we got to the train station there was no shade anywhere, so we had to cross a big hot parking lot in the sun. Luckily we had brought sunscreen.

We approached the station and it appeared empty. There were just two or three cars in the giant lot, and not what we expected in the capital city of the country. Inside was also empty – I was reminded of exploring ruins in the Fallout video games. There was someone sitting in the ticket office, but when we asked about tickets she said that we should come early tomorrow and buy them then. So our trip to the station was sort of a bust. As soon as we walked away from the station we saw the ticket agent and her friend walking away – apparently to go to lunch. I can’t help thinking that we could have gotten tickets if lunchtime hadn’t been coming up. 

On our way back we stopped in a little convenience store to get some water. The store’s name was “Konsume” which is a very direct name for a retail outlet. They took credit cards, so we didn’t have to use any of our precious BAM. From there we stopped in at the giant SCC (Sarajevo City Center) which was an air conditioned shopping mall. Besides cooling down we bought some snacks for the train trip the next day, and some more water. We also hit another ATM, figuring that we should have cash on hand for train tickets just in case.

As we got closer to our hotel I looked up a wine bar that I wanted to try, and even with the GPS it was hard to pin down. But when we finally found the place it was open. We sat on the patio outside in the shade of a green park and enjoyed a couple glasses of a Malvasia/Chardonnay blend from Herzegovina – the name on the bottle was VukojE. Sitting at the high table enjoying the cool shade of the park, wine in hand – I was glad to be back in Europe. 

After a short break back at our hotel we went back towards old town to find some lunch. We chose a lunch place called Kiopa, right next to the Sacred Heart Cathedral – which had an abstract sculpture of Pope John Paul in front of it. The restaurant had tables in the shade, and while we sipped wine and beer a little black kitten came to play with our ankles and get attention. We had a plate of lamb skewers, and a chicken pastry pot for lunch, they went well with homemade bread and some local beer. We love eating outside – it was a nice vibe there. 

More and more people were walking around the old town, the heat was starting to really build, so we went back to our air-conditioned hotel room to wait out the crowds and heat. This siesta style worked well for us during the trip – I’d hate to spend the whole day out in the brutal summer heat. We watched a little YouTube on the hotel TV, polluting the YouTube watch history with k-pop girl groups and cartoon rabbits talking finance.

By 5:30 pm the temperature was starting to drop outside and we were getting hungry again. As we left we talked with our hotel staff. We set up an early morning taxi to get us to the train station on time to buy tickets, and since we were leaving before breakfast was served we asked if they could put together a to-go bag. The combination of the two requests flustered the guy, but in the end everything worked out.

Outside the pavement was still radiating heat but it was much more manageable. We went to a restaurant called “The Singing Nettle” – a small family owned place that specialized in traditional foods. The waitress/owner/mom was really friendly and set us up at a table for two even though we didn’t have reservations. Her husband must have been in the kitchen, and her son was goofing around and playing while singing weird songs. 

For dinner we had some red and wine by the glass, some nettle fritters, and breaded beef  on cinnamon sticks with rice. I really liked the cinnamon and beef combination. The fritters were good, but sort of tasted like healthy food. By the end of the meal the small restaurant was heating up as more customers appeared. I was starting sweat – no air conditioning in there. The cost of the meal was 75 BAM – which worked out to about 7000 Japanese yen or $45 USD. 

We walked around a little after dinner to cool off. There were a ton of people around with us, even tour groups were walking around in the early evening. Walking again through the Turkish area the air was filled with smoke from the meats grilling in various restaurants. Things were noisy and motorcycles roared past in the streets. Because of the summer it was still quite light out, so we didn’t have a chance to see any of the landmarks illuminated. 

It looked like bars and nightclubs were getting ready to open. Nightlife is really not our scene, so we wandered back to our hotel. There we paid our bill in advance of checking out the next morning. The staff was still a little flustered about the plan for the early morning, but after a brief delay we got it all figured out. In the evening I got an email from our driver who will take us from Mostar to Dubrovnik, so as long as we can catch that train the rest should be easy. Fingers crossed!

Last year we broke from tradition and took a shorter August trip, spending a week in Africa rather than visiting Europe. But this year we were heading back, aiming to visit some of the Eastern European countries that have more challenging transport links and infrastructure. It took a lot more planning to pull off this trip, which will become apparent as you read along.

Following tradition we had dinner at Piccini, a little semi-Italian restaurant near our house on the night before we left. We don’t want to cook and leave trash in the house for two weeks, so we usually hit Piccini and get ourselves in the mood of European travel a little bit. 

Saturday morning we were able to sleep in a bit but woke to a very hot day. Temperatures were hitting 35 degrees Celsius and we had no choice but to walk through the heat and sun to get to Okubo station and start the trip. We arrived in Sannomiya and had lunch there, at a sort of modern Chinese/Japanese place called Mononoke. They’ve got some pretty good lamb skewers and a few different dim sum options. The restaurant was starting to fill up with people getting the lunch buffet special, but we stuck with ordering just what we liked. 

We caught the airport bus then, and it was a slightly different route (apparently a concert by J-pop group “Key to Lit” was causing traffic on the regular route). At KIX we were able to drop off our bag immediately, and then being hands-free it was easy to go through security. However when it was time for me to go through immigration, I found the lines for non-Japanese residents to be full of people. Most were from Vietnam or the Philippines, a result of the recent increase in workers to support certain industries. Usually there are very few people in these lines, so it is a point that I’ll have to keep in mind in the future. 

We bypassed the overpriced restaurants (targeting foreign visitors with more powerful currencies) and instead went directly to the convenience store at the far edge of the terminal. In the center of the terminal a draft beer (or highball) costs a standard 1100 yen, the same drink in a can costs 500 yen, but that same can at the distant convenience store is only 200 yen. Worth the walk for us! We had some Jagarico and two tall highballs, feeling the buzz of the alcohol and impending vacation.

We caught our flight on Singapore airlines to Changi airport, sitting near a group of young Japanese students who may have been on their first flight ever. They were curious about everything, asking their teacher questions, and one boy even took a barf bag as a souvenir. The woman sitting next to me had some kind of irregular shaped hands with shorter fingers and fewer joints, and it was fascinating to me to watch her handle everyday tasks that I normally take for granted. I was trying to watch but not look like I was watching, not sure if I succeeded.

It was six hours to Changi airport, and by the time we arrived we weren’t so hungry so we had a ginger honey flavored tea at the food court, but I wish I had the stomach space for their dry noodles – they looked so good. Walking around the airport we saw lots of great looking restaurants, and I had to explain to Kuniko why I laughed out loud at the restaurant called “Heavenly Wang” – plenty of joke material there. 

The next flight was the longer leg, again on Singapore airlines for a 12 hour flight to Istanbul. We sat in a row of three seats in the back of the plane, and we blocked in an Indian guy who was able to make it through almost the whole flight without using the restroom – impressive. Near the end he made a run for it, I think his hands were shaking with the effort of holding his bladder. Across from us a Japanese guy requested the flight attendant serving meals to open up both options and show him so he could decide visually – that was a first time to see that happen. A few seats in front of us a young Japanese couple were traveling, and Kuniko said it reminded her of her youth, when we first started traveling together. We slept for about six hours on this flight, which made it much easier to get through.

Arriving at Istanbul airport we actually entered the country this time, since we were using a different airline for our connection to Sarajevo. That meant that we had to grab our suitcase and roll it with us to check in for our next flight. While rolling we noticed that one of the wheels was pretty damaged. These wheels are actually skateboard wheels – really tough and we subject them to a lot of rough situations when we travel – and about 30% of the material had been ripped off somehow, maybe in some machinery in one of the airports. Luckily it still rolled but it was a situation that I would have to keep an eye on for the next two weeks.

The line to check in for our short flight to Sarajevo on Turkish Airlines was quite long – I was glad that we had enough time to make the connection. Once checked in we stopped at Jackie’s bar at one end of the terminal, and Kuniko bought us a couple glasses of prosecco and two cocktails – my daiquiri was not great, Kuniko’s cosmopolitan was better. Drinking at Istanbul airport is wildly expensive (those four drinks cost us approximately the same as what we pay for two weeks of groceries back home), but we were happy to be kicking off another European trip.

We still had time to kill before our flight, so we sat around fiddling with our phones near a random gate (I played a lot of Angry Birds this trip). Suddenly the gate staff closed off the area and we were sort of default going to Medina, Saudi Arabia. We didn’t have tickets to that destination but now we were sitting in a pre-sorted area – kind of weird situation. To leave we had to push through a huge crowd of Muslim visitors eager to board.

Once we boarded our plane to Sarajevo we noticed that the plane had a surprising number of people who seemed to be not used to air travel. People kept swapping seats with family members and blocking others from boarding, but the staff were amazingly patient with them and we got off the ground on time. Our flight was only 80 minutes but we got a lunch out of it – a sandwich with melted cheese and roasted veggies that was so good we were still talking about it at the end of our trip. I guess we had low expectations but in this case Turkish Airlines over-delivered.

After landing at Sarajevo airport in the afternoon I was surprised to see how small it was. We were able to deplane from the back as well as the front and walk into the terminal. Immigration was simple (no stamps – seems like passport stamps will soon be a thing of the past). One guy in front of us in line did get asked a lot of questions, and I was sure it was rubber hose time but eventually they let him through. The airport’s luggage carousel system was pretty cheesy – it held new luggage back until there was space available on the carousel, but the luggage seemed spaced in such a way that new stuff appeared only occasionally – it took a long time to get our bag.

Outside we met our driver, and I had my first experience with an ATM on this trip to withdraw Bosnian convertible marks (with is shortened to a much more fun “BAM”). One new (to us) upgrade to modern ATMs is that you can touch your bank card to the pad instead of having to insert the card into the machine (which always seemed risky – especially in a foreign country). Here I tapped and got my 200 BAM and was ready to go.

We had to wait a few minutes for the driver to pay for parking. That gave us time to look around the outside of the airport. The weather was really hot – even in the shade – but at least it wasn’t humid. We had booked a driver because we had heard bad things about airport taxi drivers here, and at least visually they lived up to our expectations. These guys all looked shady and it seemed like everyone was smoking. Later we learned that smoking was huge in every city we visited – not the healthiest countries in that respect.

Our driver was really nice but didn’t speak much English, so we were left to our own observations as we drove into the center of Sarajevo. Speaking for myself I didn’t get a great impression – buildings had a lot of graffiti and damage to them, most houses had high security fences and the trash collection areas were piled high with, well, trash. Not many people walking around. Honestly I started to get a little worried about our trip – if the other cities and countries we were visiting look liked this it was going to be a long two weeks.

Our driver dropped us off right near our hotel in the center of Old Town Sarajevo. We paid him the agreed on 25 Euros (our hotel said we couldn’t pay in BAM). Later we found that the price was about double the normal price, but I guess that is because the guy had to stand around waiting for our plane to land. We walked through more burning sunshine to get to Hotel Eleven, our first hotel of the trip.

The hotel was sort of a boutique, artistic hotel built into the first floor of an older building. The ceilings were very high throughout, and our bedroom had an interesting art exhibit of what looked like planets on the wall above our bed – which lit up with LED lights on a switch. Cool! We turned on the AC and even though we really wanted to sleep we forced ourselves to go out and look around to try to get our internal clocks working on local time.

Outside the sun felt super intense on our skin – it was essential to find the shade wherever it was and walk to our destinations there. This was a theme throughout the trip – summer this time felt more painful than before. We walked towards the heart of Old Town, and there were plenty of people on the streets with us. They seemed like a younger crowd, mostly European visitors. I think Kuniko was the only Asian visitor I saw during our stay in the city. 

We managed to find a cool keychain to convert to an ornament for our Christmas tree, but the shop staff was missing. So we had to leave it hanging there and hope to come back later. We found a convenience store that was open but it was absolutely slammed with customers – we found some drinkable yogurt and some waters but we couldn’t find the end of the line to pay. Eventually we figured it out, but it was a chaotic scene. We took the water and yogurt back to our room so we could regroup and rest – the heat was already taking a toll on our already tired bodies.

Despite the temptation to crash out we decided to make one more journey out to get an early dinner. We walked a little southeast of our hotel to the river running through town, although when we crossed it was merely a trickle of water. We crossed over a simple bridge (this bridge would become more important later) and then walked riverside to a restaurant I had picked called Inat Kuca (“House of Spite”). The restaurant is riverside and is named because the owner refused to sell to developers and forced the city to expand around his quaint little house. The house was now a restaurant, and the restaurant was popular even at this early hour. We stood in the baking sun while the staff looked for a table for us, and after a few minutes of heat exposure we were led to a table for two under the covered balcony overlooking the riverbed. Being out of the direct sun made a big difference – and the cold beer I ordered next also helped a lot.

Rather strange Bosnian music was playing on the speaker just over our heads (it reminded us of our visit to Georgia). While I had the beer Kuniko had some local white wine by the glass, and later we both had some red – both wines were pretty good. Our waiter spoke English and was very friendly – that made for a good experience. For dinner we had shopska salad (one of our favorites from our visit to Belgrade), klepe (ravioli with garlic and yogurt), and Sarjevski sahan (“Sarajevo Platter)” of beef, rice and stuffed vegetables. Both dishes were really good – and just on food alone we were happy we made the visit. 

With some cold drinks and delicious food, being out of the sun, things were looking up in Bosnia for us. Around us people came and went, most of them smoking. Some customers ordered a huge (bigger than you are imagining right now) platter to share amongst them, and it looked like an interesting way of eating with a group. We got a big bowl of free bread, too – people have big appetites here.

We walked around a bit more in a wide circle towards our hotel. We walked through part of the Old Town that was dedicated to Turkish shops and restaurants – a Turkeytown if you will. It was a really big area, flooded with smoke from the grilled meats and more than a few mosques. Our last few days of this trip will bring us back to Istanbul to spend some slow time, so we reluctantly avoided all the delicious looking restaurants in this area to save ourselves for later.

Our last stop on the way back to our room was to buy a keychain from another shop – this one had a kind shopkeeper who spoke English fluently. Since I didn’t have small bills in BAM I bought it with Euros – not sure to whose advantage that was. Finally it was back to hotel after a very long day of travel. Our journey is underway!