Devin's Travels: Ulcinj

Arriving in Ulcinj we picked up our bags and headed off trying to find a room. According to Lonely Planet all of the budget accommodation was just spare rooms in peoples houses so we planned on visiting a travel agency to find out if they knew of any; but before we could get to one somebody pulled up to us in his van and asked if we needed a room. Thinking we might as well check it out we hopped in and were taken to a lovely little room in his house in the middle of the old part of town.

After getting settled in our room we decided to head out and check out the town. So we wandered around the tiny old town for a little bit admiring the narrow alleyways and stone buildings before returning to the main part of town. Here we wandered along the beach and were completely shocked at how many people were there: on a stretch of sand about 500 meters long and 20 meters wide there had to be thousands of tourists just relaxing on the beach and playing in the water. I guess the high season had arrived and in full force. Deciding that we would wander around town for a little bit before competing with the hordes on the beach we set off up the main street. The main street was quite nice but absolutely packed with souvenir shops, restaurants and clothes shops all geared towards tourists. So we quickly got bored of wandering around those and made our way back to the beach to fight for a spot. The rest of the afternoon was spent just relaxing on the beach and fighting the other tourists in the water before we got tired of that and headed back to our room to get ready for dinner. That evening we joined the other tourists strolling along the waterfront and up and down the main street for a short while before picking a restaurant and settling down for dinner. After dinner we made our way to a nearby pub to enjoy a few more pints of the delicious local beer and to listen to a very good cover band.

The next morning we decided to head slightly out of town to the nearby famous Velika beach which is a 12km long stretch of sandy beach stretching south towards the Albanian boarder. After a short taxi ride we found ourselves on what we hoped would be a beach where we could find a relatively quiet section. Man were we wrong. The place we were dropped off seemed to be smack dab in the middle of where everybody goes because all we could see in either direction were beach chairs after beach chairs. After wandering in one direction for a while we just decided to join the other people as it wasn't as many as yesterday and to just enjoy the beach. So that day was spent lying on the beach and playing in the huge waves that kept breaking there. After the beach we flagged down a taxi to return to Ulcinj for the evening. Again that night we joined the tourists for a stroll along the waterfront before finding an enjoyable restaurant for dinner. After dinner we made our way back to our room as we were both pretty tired from our late night the previous day.

The next morning we awoke pretty early and made our way to the bus station in Ulcinj. With the plan of just heading to Kotor from Ulcinj we were told that we would have to take a bus to Bar and change there. No problem. So once we got to Bar we looked into buses to Kotor and finding that the next one wasn't for two hours we figured well we might as well sit down and wait for it. While waiting for the bus we started playing cards and after a few hands we were approached by a little girl playing with her doll. At first she was content just watching us and playing with our unused jokers but after a few minutes she grabbed an ace off the table and took off with the two jokers and an ace. Unable to find her again we sadly packed up the rest of our cards and boarded the bus for Kotor our next destination.