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The good news this morning is that the teriyaki sauce has come out of my City shirt. Just in time for the next round of Premiership fixtures, goodo.

With regards to getting to Tirana it looks like my best shot tomorrow will be just to get the earliest (12:10) bus to Ulcinj on the Montenegro border, then try and transfer to Shkodra and from there hopefully get a direct bus to Tirana. I’ve just got to hope that the timings all work out otherwise I’ll be stranded and I don’t like the sound of that.

Okay I’ve spent ages digging through travel forums online and I think by the time I get to Ulcinj tomorrow it would be between 15:00 and 16:00 and the last bus to Shkoder in Albania will have left at 12:00. This is all far from concrete though but I’m going to take it it as being that way so I’ve booked a hostel in Ulcinj for tomorrow night, I don’t want to but it makes most sense.

Then I’ll get the 12:00 bus to Shkoder ( if indeed there is one) on Wednesday which should take about 2 hours. From there I’ve read that buses run to Tirana (where i’ve booked a hostel for Weds and Thurs night) on an hourly basis but only up to 16:00, there seems to be a bit of confusion around the stations as well but I’ll deal with that on the day.

I’ll probably get the evening bus to Ulcinj tomorrow now (which will get me in about 22:00) as that will give me the day in Kotor and as I’ve already said, I really like it here. Unfortunately it’s still chucking it down though.

The grumpster who runs the hostel seems a lot friendlier today, maybe he was just having a bad day yesterday. I’ll give him a 2nd chance.

Kotor Fortress was the most enjoyable part of my day. It should cost €2 but there was no attendant probably because of the bad weather so result. It’s built directly into the mountain behind the town and it will take you a good 40 minutes or so to get to the top. There’s loads of different paths and old crumbing stair cases to take, not to mention dark mysterious caves that could be harbouring all sorts of ghouls and goblins. Basically there’s a lot of opportunity for boyish adventuring and I took full advantage. There was hardly anyone else about which made it even better. Today’s picture is the view from near the top.

As a reward for my efforts I treated myself to a jam donut when I got back down. It was nice but it was the tiniest portion of jam imaginable. One solitary bit had a vague jam like taste.

My company while hiking was Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys fame. His ‘Keep It Hid’ album is decent but nothing spectacular, a lot of is just the same (but generally poorer) than the dirty blues he belts out with The Black Keys. There is enough here to make it worth a listen though and if it was all as strong as the last third it would be a very good album.

The old walled town (which the hostel is actually within) is great for just wandering around aimlessly. It’s got enough little guinnels and passages to make it interesting but not so many that you can’t stumble upon anywhere you want to find within 10 or 15 minutes.

Whilst just outside a local mini-mart near the old-town, I was getting some beers out of the fridge when the guy came out and said you can only buy them if you have an empty bottle for each one first. That’s ridiculous. In Croatia and Romania the price would be a bit higher than advertised if you didn’t have an empty but no beer at all without an empty is a funny approach. It’s a classic chicken and egg scenario, erm I think. No matter, I just went to the supermarket on the other side of town that I used last night and 4 pivos are now mine.

After dropping my supplies off I was going to venture back out and look for a decent meal but once more very heavy rain abounds??. So it’s the pizza parlour directly next to the hostel for me. I’ve ate a lot of pizza on this trip, in my defense they are usually one of the cheapest thing on the menu though and needs must. I’ve gone for the ‘Diavola’ which is tomato, mozzarella, pork sausage, hot chilli pepper and pepper apparently. When it came it was basically just a pepperoni pizza with a couple of large chillis (which were mingin’ as they’d been drowned in vinegar so I didn’t bother with them) and it was pretty good.

As nice as Kotor is there isn’t really that much to see so I’ve changed my mind again and will probably now get the early bus as originally intended. I don’t think there is much going on on Ulcinj but at least if I get in at 16:00ish I’ll have the evening to relax.

Which funnily enough is exactly what I intend to do with this one, I’ve just opened a bottle of Nirsickro (it’s not actually called that but it’s something similar, I can’t quite make it out) with my Swiss army knife and now I’m away.

Best search today – ‘how much are a bag maltesers’. TTFN.