Ride to Kotor and Shkodra

Finally, the weather is good and we ride from Klek to the south. First of all, our destination is Kotor. There we want to see what we will do next.

On the way to Dubrovnik we make a small detour to Mali Ston for a café and there we decide to visit Ston too. Both places are connected or shielded by a fortress wall similar to the Chinese wall. Very interesting, because the wall is really built over the mountain like the Chinese wall.

Here, by chance, we also meet the two tourist guides, that we asked yesterday in the tourists tour company on our search for motorcycle gloves. Very funny to meet familar faces here already.

We passing through Dubrovnik today and only stop for a photo because weather is much better than yesterday.

We arrive at noon in Kotor (Montenegro) and decide to have lunch there. Unfortunately, I have to work, so Markus has to discover Kotor by his own. I already know it from my stay in 2013.

Fortunately, I do not need much time and I can go for a walk myself too. Luckily Kotor is not that busy now in the low season. In the main season, it is probably unbearable, especially if just one of the big cruise ships has arrived.

We decide to continue to Shkodra today. The route follows a narrow road - with many hairpin bends and breathtaking views - up the hill to Lovcen National Park. A great route, definitely recommended!

We ride south around the Skadar Lake along the national park. This too is a beautiful stretch with views of the lake and the reedy banks.

The border crossing at Sukobin is like in 2013 and like all other border crossings completely unproblematic.

In Shkodra we ride directly to the center, where there are several hotels. We have made our choise for the Kaduku already before. Once there, the 80-year-old owner shows me a somewhat plush room, which is perfectly fine. I'm feeling bad that I'asked the old gentleman to show me the room on the second floor of the adjoining building. It turns out that he speaks German quite well, which he learned after World War II, as he tells me later.

We can park our two motorcycles in the courtyard. If the hotel is more crowded you will have to park outside in the hotel parking lot, but that should probably quite safe too.

We are too late to change cash at an exchange. Markus gets some cash from a atm, but we do not have an idea of what the Lek is actually worth and so he gets to less money in correlation to the very high bank fees.

But it is enough for dinner in the Vila Bekteshi, which is recommended to us from the hotel receptionist. This recommendation will later be repeated by another hotel and we can pass it on. Later we will also try the restaurant San Francisco. Also worth a recommendation, but actually you can say that for almost all restaurants in Albania. We were never disappointed.