Day 27 - Wednesday 8th June

For breakfast, we went down to the terrace on level 1 of the hotel. There was almost nobody there and we sat at a table on the edge of the terrace with the old town in the background. It was a little hazy and cloudy but this was better than the predicted showers.

Today we'd be going to Montenegro which is a small country on the coast just south of Croatia. It has a population of only about 700,000 people. The name Montenegro means "black mountain" because most of the country consists of rugged mountains with dark vegetation. Just like Croatia, its rugged coastline consists of beautiful bays, islands and quaint towns in beautiful locations. Although it is not part of the European Union, it uses the Euro as its currency.

Our tour guide and driver, Luka, picked us up at 8am in a large modern Mercedes sedan. Luka and his brother have a small business offering tours for visitors including adventure tours. As with the other guides we've had, he was very professional, polite, courteous, knowledgeable and informative. Suzy noted that he had the added advantage of being very handsome.

Luka said he comes to Montenegro twice each week with a mate to do Salsa dancing classes. He said that the women greatly outnumber the men at these classes.

Our first stop was at a nearby lookout so we could admire the coastline and take pictures. When we crossed the border into Montenegro, there was one checkpoint for leaving Croatia followed by another for entering Montenegro. More stamps for our passports.

John and Gaye had told us that we should go to an island near the town of Perast in the Bay of Kotor. This wasn't on Luka's original itinerary but he was happy to take us there. He organised a small boat and driver to take us across to the island. It's a very small island with only two buildings - one of which is a cathedral with a painted ceiling. It is referred to as a mini Sistine Chapel.

Next we stopped in Kotor for a walking tour of old town. We admired the marina and the expensive boats and visited the cathedral. We drove further south and stopped at at a lookout to see St Stefan Island from the cliff top.

In Kotor we walked through the old town and stopped for coffee at a cafe that was a favourite of Luka's because of the cakes it sold.

The final destination was the town of Budva. We visited the old town and had lunch in a cafe next to the beach.

It started to rain as we were leaving the town. During the day we had some showers but, luckily, they mainly happened when we were in Luka's car.

On the way back to Croatia, we used the car ferry to cross the Bay of Kotor rather than taking the road around the bay because this would save time. The ferry was designed to take cars - rather like the punts we used to see in Australia but without the guide ropes. The view from the ferry was great.

Luka dropped us back at our hotel soon after 5pm. For dinner, we went down to the old town of Dubrovnik After checking out a few restaurants, we ate at Domino Steak House.