The hostel in Kotor is costing just €30. For both of us, in a private room. It’s the cheapest of the trip, and is in an annex of someone’s house; so is more like a homestay than a hostel. The owners speak not a word of English between them, and are old enough to be our grandparents, but from the moment we saw her waving at us from her balcony as we walked up the road towards the house we knew this was going to be a great place.

The Old Town of Kotor is a beautiful walled city where the stone pavements are so shiny they look as though they are made of marble. The town is reminiscent of Venice (without the water!), with lots of alleyways that seem to lead to nowhere and a maze of tiny backstreets that exist behind the tourist facade.

Last night, we raced to the far edge of the town and up flight after flight of stairs to reach a terrace bar where The Book said was the best (only?) place to watch the sun set. However, as the book was not clever enough to tell us exactly when to be there, we missed it – probably only by 5 minutes. However, a half litre of the good local beer more than made up for it, and after an hour or so we headed back into the town (down the flight after flight of stairs) and towards our reserved table for dinner. Only, I don’t think they thought we’d come back – there are, after all, many many places to eat in the walled city. What they didn’t know, was that as they are the only restaurant in the walled city that are in The Book, there was no question that we would not be back!

We got ourselves into a bit of a pickle with the whole registration thing in Montenegro, and I just know as I write about it, that it’ll be one of those things that I get teased about in years to come. I had read on the FCO website that you had to register with the police in Montenegro, and if you didn’t, you’d have difficulty exiting at the border. I don’t think Nigel believed me (largely because The Book made no mention of this), so I suggested that before we start the ascent up the mountain to visit the fortress (another one!) we check with the Tourist Information office.

The TI woman was absolutely adamant that we had to register, and she said that the police station was only about 15 mins walk away and was only open for registration in the mornings. If we’d been at either a ‘proper’ hostel or an hotel, they would have done the registration for us. As it was, because we were effectively in someone’s spare room, as far as I was concerned we had no choice but to pitch up at the police station.

The police station was a ramshackle building way over on the other side of the bay (maybe 15 minutes at Scouts Pace, but not at Sarah In The Heat Pace). A fat desk Sgt sat behind a reception desk, literally with his feet up doing nothing while a crowd was steadily gathering for the 10am ‘opening time’ (I’m using the term loosely here) for the registration process.

When we arrived at about 0945 the helpful (not) policeman behind the desk just grunted and pointed to the wall where there were a couple of plastic garden chairs. There were already a couple of people waiting, one of whom turned out to be the most helpful woman on the planet that day. After the first 10 minutes or so, she asked us (in a broad Essex accent) if we had a registration card. No! We had no card! What card?! She told us to walk back out of the police station and down the road to a little row of kiosks where we would find one selling the cards. Neither the TI woman or the policeman had clearly thought this was something worth mentioning. Nige was getting that cross face he has when things aren’t going quite to plan, and the mumbling under the breath about pointless bureaucrats and stick your registration was becoming less and less ‘under the breath’ by the minute. I think if we had not found out until we were sat in front of the immigration bloke Nige might have lost it and got himself arrested.

Once we were back with the cards, the same woman helped us fill them in – seeing as none of the three language options were English. There is no reason of course why any of the languages should have been English – just my French, Montenegrin and whatever the other one was are a little rusty.

Cards all completed, Nige and I sat on the floor in the absence of anywhere else (the garden chairs long since having been taken by others who had arrived in our absence with the white cards) until the grumpy Sgt (or whatever) behind the desk barked at us in Montenegrin. The kind lady translated to us that we weren’t allowed to sit on the floor and had to stand and wait.

The registration man finally arrived over an hour late. Not helping this fledgling EU member nation on it’s road to a healthy tourist industry. Nige was ready to explode by this point (which was not helped by me whispering at him periodically how unhelpful his anger was going to be to the whole situation). We finally left the place at 1130, and it felt like most of the day had gone. I was trying to look on the bright side – as I had managed to take some pics of Kotor from the other side of the Bay that we wouldn’t have otherwise got – whilst Nige was whining about the whole ridiculous system and that it had spoilt the day… not the best way to start the morning, I’ll agree.

The climb up to the fortress at the top of the mountain overlooking the walled town was hot (and yes Nigel, I KNOW that if we hadn’t got stuck at the police station with the pointless getting registered thing we would have been up and down in the coolest part of the day…). At the half way point, I wimped out and Nige went up the rest of the way on his own (or should I say with the stream of other tourists also making the climb). Frankly I was as grateful for the rest from the whinging as I was for the rest from the climbing – luckily by the time he came down again, he’d worked it out of his system and was back to normal.

The views – even from the Church at the mid point – of Kotor were stunning, and worth the climb.

What a wonderful surprise this whole place was. A little jewel in the Adriatic, which it has been a pleasure to visit.

After collecting the rucksacks and waving goodbye to the friendly hostel lady, we caught the bus to Dubrovnik and Croatia. The two hour journey took over 3, and as we reached the border it started to rain. Not only that, but the boarder officials were not the slightest bit interested in collecting the stamped registration documents, that’s despite the pleading eyelash batting imploring looks I was giving. Losing my touch?