Travel

At the end of every season we pack up the boat for a few months and fly home to see friends and family. As we are in a different country every season, it’s always a new experience. This year was no different. We decided to fly out of the capital city of Montenegro, Podgorica, through Istanbul, as Turkish airlines had one of the best prices and least convoluted routes to get home. As usual it was its own adventure.

We raced around doing our final bit of packing the boat away: I dropped my sourdough starter to Jen, Hannah & Jules, we went over the boat with fellow dock mate Nige who was going to check on Kalyra while we were gone, and we said goodbye to all of our new friends. Ian had a car and was kind enough to drop us off at the local bus station. The bus was a breathtaking but a little unnerving winding drive along the coast and then up through the mountains to Podgorica. We had planned to get in early afternoon so as to see the city. We were later warned that there wasn’t much to see and wow, they were right. As beautiful as the bay of Kotor is, Podgorica is simply grey and concrete and downright boring and depressing. We had lunch, and took a cab to the apartment.

The upside of the apartment was that it was very close to the airport (10 minutes ) and they would drive us in the morning. The downside was that it was in the middle of nowhere. We had to walk down a really sketchy road with no lights and no sidewalk to the one restaurant in town, which luckily had incredibly tasty food and sizable portions.

The flight to Istanbul was uneventful and the view was spectacular. Istanbul’s airport is one of the largest in the world, and it took over 30 minutes (with people movers (moving sidewalks)) to get from our gate to customs and immigration. It was a little surprising to see the number of offices they had scattered through the airport dedicated to people who have been denied boarding. Is it that common???

The last part of the trip that was eye-opening was our ride from the airport to the hotel. We had booked ahead of time for transportation, and a guy met us at the exit and took us to the pickup location. A black van pulled up that looked innocuous enough. But when they opened the door the interior looked like we were on our way to a bachelor party – the only thing that was missing was the stripper pole! We giggled our way into the city.