The sun, the sea and Stari Bar
Trip Start
Sep 12, 2006
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23
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Trip End
Sep 08, 2008
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Bar, Montenegro
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
I was awoken sometime around 6.30am with the sensation of my ears popping as our train passed through the Moraca canyon, and I forced myself up to admire the mountainous scenery. After a brief stop at the station in the tiny nation's capital, Podgorica, we continued on towards the coast passing the stunning Lake Skadar as the sun rose. This ecologically significant lake, the largest in the Balkans, was a beautiful site early in the morning on what was looking to be a magnificent day, and I marvelled at the clear blue waters flanked by limestone mountains. I had to look twice as the train passed a huge ruined castle jutting westward from the causeway allowing road and rail traffic to continue directly to Bar. Later on I read that it was the 400 year old Turkish castle of Lesendro, and luckily I had my camera at the ready to take a quick snap.
We arrived in Bar sometime around 8.30am, and immediately made for the centre of town in search of a café where we could get a coffee and freshen up a little. The city had quite a modern look, with many white tower blocks, but what may have been an ordinary city elsewhere had a nice feel to it thanks to the precipitous coastal range backing it. The stunning weather made it even better, and I regretted not bringing a pair of sunglasses with me. Despite being early in the morning, I hadn't felt sun this strong since autumn when I first arrived in Poland. We didn't plan on spending too long in Bar, but while in Belgrade our friend Katerina from hospitality club recommended we spend a half day there to check out the old town of 'Stari Bar' before getting an afternoon bus up the coast to Kotor. An extremely friendly lady in the small tourist office by the docks helped us out with maps and information, and before we knew it we were in a taxi on our way up the hill.
The very interesting Stari Bar (Old Bar) lay 4km northeast of the modern town, and nearly all of the 240 buildings lay in ruin, a result of Montenegrin shelling when they captured the town from the Turks in 1878. The ruined town had an incredible location, overlooking the modern town and the Adriatic Sea, backed by the Rumija Mountains. We spent about an hour and a half wandering through the ruins, as I tried to imagine what happened in the town when it was destroyed. It certainly was a peaceful place today, with the sun shining and barely a soul about except a group of old men chatting and what appeared to be two young gypsies smoking in one of the shelled buildings. The view was stunning and we could easily have spent all day exploring, but wanting to make the 2pm bus to Kotor we began making our way back down the hill on foot just before midday. It was a pretty special place, with numerous ruins intermingled with small houses and churches along the way. The view over the modern city of Bar about a kilometre from the coast was quite impressive, and I was looking forward to the two hour journey along it to Kotor, the walled city overlooking Southern Europe's deepest fjord.
