Today was our free day in Budva, and for a rainy day we tried to make the most of it. First off we slept in. I think we didn’t got out of bed until 11am. Which for anyone who knows me, is not usually a thing I can do. But it was nice to have a slow start to the day and spend some time catching up with family and reading. We did manage to get our buffet breakfast right before they closed to prep for lunch. I think I had toast.
When we finally got dressed, we decided to brave the weather and go for a hike in Budva, so we could see the city. We decided to walk the outside walls of the city, since we did not do that the day before. It was a pretty windy miserable day. we walked along the wall until we got to a pebble beach. At which point we continued to walk until we reached where the wall met the sea. As you can see below these massive walls were built right into the sea. I wonder how they built them, without the sea taking away their building materials? My personal theory is that they built a stone wall, then filled it in with a stone wall behind it.
Budva is 2,500 years old, which makes it one of the oldest settlements on the Adriatic coast. A legend recounts that it was founded by Cadmus the founder of Thebes, Greece, when exiled out of Thebes, finding a shelter in this place for him and his wife, Harmonia.
Our second mission was to find some Baklava. We were told this region was famous for the stuff. What we were not told was that there would be many different flavours. Chocolate, raspberry, caramel. It seemed a shame to only order plain, so we ordered a chocolate one as well. They were good, but I like my baklava from the St. Lawrence Market better. At this point we saw some trip mates getting lunch at restaurant. We figured it would be nice to join them for a drink, particularly since they were all getting milkshakes.
One super cool thing we noticed here, was that the tourist shops were basically lockers that you could open during the day then close at night. They sold the basic magnets, necklaces and bags of lavender. However, they cool thing was when you closed the locker, they were painted to look like the old stone walls behind them so they would blend into the scenery when the tourist shop was closed. I thought this was pretty neat.
After we got lunch we decided to try to find the Budva Dancer, a popular statue for the town. We walked towards the casino, then saw that there was a path, under the casino’s deck that would lead to the Budva Dancer and the “nice beach.” The dancer is on a large rock overlooking the beach. Some people say that this is a statue of a young girl who drowned here but others say that this is just an ordinary statue. It is believed that if you make a wish and touch the dancer, it will become true. Not sure if I want to climb on those rocks when its raining to do that….
So we decided to continue along the pathway to the “nice beach.” The pathway was long the cliffs of Budva. The rock sides were pretty cool, as they were made of sedimentary rock. (So you could see all the layers under pressure). They were fenced in so that they would not collapses on anyone, but there were definitely areas where rocks had fallen off and were resting against the fence, so probably a good thing the fence was there.
The nice beach had dark brown sand, that was interspersed with pebbles. The sand was rough, and still hurt our feet. We saw why this was called the nice beach, but it still did not live up to Canada standards. They had chairs that you could rent, and if it was a sunny day, I definitely would have rented one rather then lie on the beach. As soon as we got to the end of the beach and sat down, it started raining really hard. It was pretty miserable. So we turned around to make the long hike back to our hotel.
On the way we were passing restaurants on the harbour and found a bunch of our hotel mates. We told them we would go grab money, then join them for pizza. When we got back, only Alex from Australia was left. However we had a wonderful afternoon catching up on beers and eating fried cheese and watching the people walk by. The harbour restaurants are great for people watching, since the main pathway to town goes through every restaurant.
Before we knew it, it was 5:30 and we figured we should get back to the room so we could dry off change, and be ready for dinner. Dinner was packed. There were even more young teenagers then the day before. And occupied all the tables. The food was noticeably worse than the previous night, but still edible. I got soup that was basically warm water with 12 noodles. One thing we noticed was that all of the teenagers at the resort had never seen anyone of colour before. It was a weird issue to come up against. The people on our tour of colour were stared at, and asked by the teens if they could take pictures with them. It was weird in the year 2016 to come up with that.
After dinner we went back to the city to find a bar. We ended up at a silly bar that resembled a pirate ship (I think called Jeff’s) which served over-priced drinks. I really liked the atmosphere, but it was over-priced. At least we got free trail mix. We stayed for one, and play what is your most embarrassing or outrageous story. After that we decided to buy beach beers and then made our way back to the resort.
