Roll with it

Insane views from Konoba Vidkovac Restaurant, where we had dinner tonight

Sometimes, you have grandiose plans for vacation and today was one of the days where we were supposed to put one of those grandiose plans into action.

In theory, we were supposed to get up super early this morning, drive to Prokletije National Park and hike the spectacular Volusnica loop trail. This trail goes up 700m ascent, and then proceeds along a spectacular ridge hike in a big loop. Brad, Rosie and I had all really been looking forward to this hike and today was the only day that allowed us the time to drive to the park, do the hike, and then get back.

Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans in store for us today. After what felt like the world's hottest week in Greece and Croatia, the mountains of Montenegro greeted us with spectacular vistas.....and thunderstorms.

Brad glossed over a bit of our drive up yesterday, but we had some insanely heavy rain where we actually had to pull over at the side of a switchbacked mountain road to a 'lookout' perched several hundred metres above the Bay of Kotor and wait until we could actually see the road. We definitely couldn't see anything from the lookout.

The 'amazing' cliffside view. Before the rain blocked it all, it was actually a vertiginous view of a several hundred metre drop over the Bay of Kotor

Today was much nicer, but the forecast of scattered thunderstorms meant that a prolonged and exposed ridgeline hike was really not a great idea (yes, the fun police struck again). I regret nothing - after watching the radar all day, Volusnica was definitely hit with an afternoon thunderstorm and hiking would have been a TERRIBLE idea. Hiking in a thunderstorm is never great, but definitely if there's a thunderstorm, the absolute LAST place you want to be is on an exposed ridgeline over 2000m of elevation, well above the treeline, with no place to shelter or retreat. 

The good news is that while 3/4 family members were excited about a challenging hike....4/4 family members embraced a lazy day in our beautiful mountain AirBnB.

The snazziest Airbnb of the trip so far

The place where we are staying near Kolasin is nice and spacious and the outside grounds are just gorgeous - a nice (cold!) pool, lots of outdoor space, a hammock, a covered gazebo....it's just picturesque and private and quiet.  We even enjoyed watching a cute little lizard sunning itself today.

cute little lizard at our AirBnb

So we took advantage of the quiet and beautiful settings to do several things.

1) I learned how to make Greek coffee. This was a new one for me. :) This AirBnB is the first one where the only coffee maker/pot was a classic greek coffee pot called a Briki (and actually, there were three of them). So off to google I went to learn how to make a decent cup of coffee with it. Coffee is always a priority.

Practice makes perfect. I am pleased to report that no coffee was wasted.

I am all about practice makes perfect. And I drink a lot of coffee. This was definitely the task for me. The first cup tasted good but had no kaimaki (froth). The second one was a little better. But I think by the third cup, I figured it out - a beautiful cup of coffee with nice light froth. And....sorry to my Greek friends.....I did make it without sugar. Black coffee only over here.

2) Zoe worked on her polar bear dip and actually spent a ton of time in the pool.  Brad joined her for quite a while too.  The pool here is really nice - super private, but it's also pretty darn cool....I'd put it on par with an early June lake in Ontario....you can get in, but it's borderline painful. Probably good for your health.  Zoe is a trooper. :)

Brad and Zoe enjoying the pool

3) Rosie was excited to catch up with her friends and got a lot of quality hammock time.  And you can never overestimate the enjoyment to be had from a peaceful rock in the hammock.

4) Brad made good progress on "The New Confession of an Economic Hitman," the book he referred to yesterday and both he and I got us all caught up on laundry so we're set up for the next leg of the trip. We also took some time to figure out a bit more granularity with what we're going to be doing over the next few days. Hopefully it goes well and we'll make some awesome memories to share here.

I find when we are fortunate to go on these longer trips, it's good for everyone if we take a little down time, catch up on sleep, recharge our literal and figurative batteries and space out from each other a bit. This was such an amazing AirBnb that it was a great spot for it.  The hike would have been great....but some R&R was also great.

For dinner tonight, we visited another nearby restaurant, called Konoba Vidkovac, specializing in classic local food - we enjoyed veal soup, sausages, pork chops, skewers. Very hearty food (is it normal that the protein portions are like the size of your head????). 

I would like to point out that my meal had the smallest portion of meat. It's still HUGE.

This was the second night in a row we were the only people in the restaurant - I think these rainy days might be hard on the mountain tourism economy. The views, as with yesterday, were absolutely incredible - we ate inside because of the rain, but thankfully still had the gorgeous views.

Tomorrow, we are headed toward Durmitor National Park - ready for some more Montenegrin fun.