...Montenegro

The view of Kotor and the coast, after climbing ten million steps (or something)

Twenty four hours in Montenegro. How much local food and drink can one sample in such a short space of time? The answer my friends is a fair bit. A fair old bit indeed.

And so we arrived in Kotor, another off season tourist town. A museum of buildings with Christmas decorations up still (it's gone, get over it).  Cherry strudel was sampled and enjoyed, cherry and almond strudel was enjoyed a hundred times more.

The local market was like an open air Waitrose - local olives, cloudy olive oil, cherry brandy (we'll come back to that later), cheese, proscutto ham, blood oranges, fat pomegranates etc.  We were beckoned over by a lady to try the ham (delicious). She then proceeded to let us try all the different types of cheese she had, telling us which animal they were from by making the sound of the animal. You don't get that in Waitrose. Very entertaining. We bought ham and cheese (baaaa) from her. Interestingly, at Waitrose prices...

Ham and cheese in the local market

As we were by the coast, I allowed Finn to sample the local delicacy of 'stuffed squid'. We found a suitably empty restaurant (not difficult) and nestled ourselves in next to a Christmas tree with massive baubles. The waitress lit a candle. We joked that it was romantic. She laughed. She went away and on came a compilation of love songs starting with Careless Whisper. We learnt a lot about the Montenegran's sense of humour. Finn ordered, and I quote, 'stuffed squid with fish and herbs in the traditional way'.  Indeed. Finn claimed it had a 'satisfying taste of the sea' and that he felt 'squids in'. Other equally poor puns followed. Worryingly, I also heard him utter the words 'it was almost too big a portion'. But I took comfort in the fact he said 'almost'. And the fact that there weren't no squiddy tentacle left on that there plate.

There you go, 'stuffed squid with fish and herbs in the traditional way'

'It was almost too big a portion'. Clearly

We finished our meal with the local cherry brandy. Here is a list of words uttered when we were trying to pin down its taste - spicy, childhood, Christmas, medicinal, syrupy, TCP, plasters. In a nutshell, very tasty. We drank up as soon as the first notes of the Titanic song blared out, and made a swift exit.

Onwards to Albania...