Author: Nicole (Page 11 of 46)

This is Mr. Melancholy. He’s a stray that lives in the area, we see him on a regular basis. He often waits in front of this Italian deli, as the women who work there feed him and look after him, along with others. (They call him Sad Man because of the perpetually sad look on his face, I changed it to Mr. Melancholy). This is the kind of sweet pup I would love to adopt, but I recognize that some animals here don’t need rescue. He’s well fed, looks healthy, always seems to have a dry warm space to rest, and a community that looks after him. Boat life is not necessarily what he needs. But we’ve agreed that a dog (or cat) will be back in our lives once we’ve got the boat back across the Atlantic and are closer to home again.

We tore the edge of the mainsail last season coming over from Sicily to Albania. We were lucky enough to find a local sail loft who fixed that tear for only 35 euro a few weeks ago. We were unlucky enough to put another tear in the sail when putting it back on (I don’t know my own strength). After careful study, Trip found another weak patch in the main that needed attention. Friends offered us their Barracuda sewing machine, which Trip spent the better part of one day repairing only to find the stitching was horrible. So hand stitching it was, but we’re now in good shape for the season or next. Probably will be shopping for a new mainsail before we cross the Atlantic again, though.

If being in Montenegro wasn’t Instagram worthy enough, we decided to take Madeleine & Erin to Buddha Bar, an appropriately bougie place to sip drinks and take photos. Hannah & Jules came along, and the cameras were in full gear!

Happy Birthday Erin! We did a driving tour of Boka Bay, winding our way on the single lane road from Tivat through the cut to Kotor and beyond, stopping for a coffee to explore the town of Perast for a bit. But the highlight of the day was a restaurant we had been saving for a special occasion – the old millstone restaurant in Morinj.

You can come by boat, and take your dinghy up a narrow inlet to this place. We chose to drive, but still wandered the grounds in between every course. It was early in the season, so there were very few people there, and we spent most of the afternoon savoring the place.

We finally headed back to the marina, played darts (Madeleine has now played darts with us in Portugal and in Montenegro!), then it was back to the boat for a small birthday cake from our favorite neighborhood bakery.

Madeleine and her friend Erin were the only ones able to visit while we were in Montenegro, and we were going to make the most of it! They crashed early their first night, slept 14 hours, and then it was game on. The weather cooperated beautifully.

We opted to drive first out to Rose, the cute little town on the other side of the bay. We later found out this town is known for hosting celebrities who want privacy, as there are no anchorages, only a few moorings, and it’s pretty quiet.

The village is ridiculously quaint, and made for lots of good photos. We were also able to walk back down to the submarine tunnel from there and explore again.

While walking to and from the tunnel I was happy to come along a huge stash of wild sage, enough to stock up for the season!

We drove all around the bay through winding little roads, ending up in Bigova Bay, where we had been recommended a restaurant for lunch (owned by three generations of locals) called Grispolis. After mistakenly parking in the owner’s parking spot, we found a safe place to leave the car and enjoyed a lovely lunch by the water. And I got my first taste of octopus in 2024!

Though Orthodox Easter won’t occur for another month, I got into the spirit of using onion skins and beets as a natural dye for Easter eggs, with local flowers and greens for decoration. I was pretty happy with my results!

First I had to collect my onion skins & beets, my eggs, and all sorts of flowers and greens to make a print.

Then I had to pull out all my artistic skills to cover the eggs.

Then wrap up the eggs and chuck them in the water bath with the onion skins and beets and hope for the best. I left them sitting in the water for an extra two hours after boiling to make sure the color set.

And ta-da – the result was pretty spectacular if I do say so myself. Happy Easter!

Getting boat parts repaired in foreign countries is always interesting. We needed some work done on our perpetually problematic riser (remember fixing this in the middle of the Atlantic, as well as off the coast of the Azores?), the worn threads needed to be cut off and new ones done. Luckily we had a good recommendation from a local cruiser. Gabriel is the man in the picture above. He’s 83 years old, used to be the head engineer for the Yugoslav naval base (before our flashy marina took its place), and still works on what looks like the original equipment (see below) in his shop out by the airport.

Gabriel and team speak a little bit of English and do remarkable work. In just one day we had the riser back and Trip said it was the most precise work he had ever seen. I had rather enjoyed seeing the local shop and how equipment decades old was still doing its job so well.

Yup, pretty sure we are the smallest boat in this marina…

It was Sunday, so stores were closed and we couldn’t run errands even though we still had the car. We were tired from the weeks excursions, but still wanted to explore a bit locally, so we drove out past the airport to the church of St Michael the Archangel.

The church was built in the 12th century, though Orthodox Serbian monks were believed to have lived here since the 6th century. The Venetians came to rule in the 15th century, and it was believed that local politicians poisoned the food here, killing all 70 monks that lived in the monastery at the time. The building was abandoned, and it wasn’t until the mid 1800’s that the new church was built. The current church is modest in size, but beautifully decorated and even contains the relics of the the martyred poisoned monks.

The belfry (now I know where the bells are tolling from that we hear in the marina) is huge, given the size of the church.

The graves are particularly interesting. Land here is all rock, so people really couldn’t be buried in the ground. Crypts were built (in this case they did dig through rock, but most are above ground). The irony rings and tabs with holes are used to lift the top off for a new body to be added to the tomb.

From there we headed up into the hills to visit a restaurant recommended by fellow cruisers – Pečenjara Gostiona Nadoveza. It was completely packed with locals and we luckily scored one of the last remaining tables. Over beers and the typical Montenegrin ‘meat fest’ (delicious!), we watched more and more cars arrive and park with no thought to how others would come in and get out. Crazy as it was, there was no honking, no yelling, and everyone figured things out. A lovely end to a long week touring Montenegro!

Driving home from Nikšić, we realized we would be passing through Kotor at night, and with no wind, so flat water in the bay. This is the making of a great photo that we had seen others capture. The lights of the fortress above the city reflect on the water, forming a sideways heart…..