Today we headed off to Budva, another town on the Montenegrin coast. After a morning espresso, we walked to the bus station and purchased tickets, 7 euro for both of us, one way, and we caught the 9:47am bus. On our way to the bus we bought some lovely fresh strawberries, cherries and bananas to eat for breakfast.
We arrived into Budva around 10:30, it's not too far to travel. As we drove in, you could already see the difference between Budva and Kotor, it is very commercialised, with lots of high rise apartments blocks.
The bus station is a short walk to the old town, so we made our way there to experience the small walled city. We instantly noted that the old city is not as respected, with advertising hanging on the outside walls, and a feeling of being in the Gold Coast, as there are many bars located just outside the walled city, clearly with a focus on big drinking.
Budva is known as a party town, very popular with Russian tourists wanting to visit the beach and drink lots! It's certainly very different to Kotor and the old town sadly suffers because of this. There was a certain feeling of tackiness as we walked around the old town, lots of souvenir shops and the odd boutique selling sequinned dresses.
We escaped the old town and walked along the water front, filled with massive yachts and boats, the feeling of glitz and glamour was hard to ignore. Clearly there is a lot of money being spent around here! The beach itself was a gravel beach, filled with tourists sunning themselves. It was certainly not the nicest of beaches.
We headed back to the old town for a beer in one of the many bars, but we did not stay to long and headed back to the bus to make our way back to the sanctity of Kotor. Maybe many moons ago we may have preferred to stay in Budva, but times have changed and we prefer to have a nice quiet beverage!
We caught the 1:20pm bus back to Kotor, arriving back around 2pm. By this time we were a little hungry so decided to have a coup,e of baguettes and make a picnic style lunch up from the supermarket. We sat by the water to enjoy our lunch.
The afternoon we spent wandering again around the old town, walking in the furthest gate and basically covering from one end of the city to the other.
For happy hour we visited a local pub, before deciding to go to dinner at the same restaurant we ate at the first night, it was just so good there and you can't beat the view! I had marinara pasta, Pete had a four cheese pasta and we shared a plate of roast veggies and a Greek salad, not to mention some nice wine. All very good value for 30 euros, or $43.00.
It was a good day, despite not loving Budva, I am glad we visited as we had originally intended to stay there, so I was glad to see we made the right choice.
We head off to Belgrade on Monday afternoon, we are flying direct, a short 40 minute flight. I have loved being by the water and have especially loved it here in Kotor, it is so pretty, simply a magical place. But I look forward to the change and being in a big city, it's like a mother chapter to the trip is starting, and we still have 4 weeks to go!
Cheerio folks :-)
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