It's a 20 minute walk from our apartment to the fabled Old Town of Kotor. None of us are much into fables so we chose to stay in Utopia - known by the locals as Muo. Or to others as fjord central.  

We arrived at the Kotor bus station, cold, wet and hungry after getting drenched in Dubrovnik by a b****y Balkan rain storm. Shivering, we went into a tiny restaurant down the street from the terminal called Tanjga and voraciously chowed down on roast chicken with all the fixin'. We liked the guy who ran the place so I thought I'd do a write-up of his tiny eatery on Tripadvisor - see if I could drum up some business for him. Turns out I wasn't really needed. Tanjga has been reviewed 170 times and it sits comfortably in 1st place ahead of 83 restaurants in the Kotor area. 
 
While Lynn and Elenka tidied up and had our doggy bag prepared I ran across the street to the local Loblaw sized supermarket. While I was rooting through the yogurt section a young grocery clerk came to me and pointed out the best yogurt. After thanking her I asked her opinion on whole vs low-fat milk. From there we moved on to coffee, gin, granola, beer, tonic, soda, bread, fruit and crackers. Finally, I told her that I needed some cheese, so she took me to the meat and cheese counter, went behind it, picked one she knew I'd like and proceeded to slice it for me. Imagine the shelf stocking clerk doing all of this for you at home.  
 
Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, the guy who owns Tanjga had called us a cab. The driver, a woman, took us one place, then another, then back again, helping us find our new apartment. When it was all said and done - about twenty minutes - the bill came to 2.50 Euros.  
 
The only tourists in Muo or Kotor, at least at this time of year, arrive by cruise ship. Over the years Elenka and I have talked to a lot of cruise ship "tourists" and belief that a good number of them just want to be able to say they've visited this or that country which they so often can't remember the name of 'cause the darn places have such odd soundin' names with letters that don't fit together to make real words. These folks wear brightly coloured badges and follow their group leaders like children, keeping their eyes to the ground or above the heads so as to avoid eye contact with the dangerous locals. We've witnessed this type of oddity a number of times. For those who scream, "Hypocrite" at me after reading the above, let it be known that we've never worn brightly coloured signs that say, "I'm lost, please take me to my boat" in the language of the country we're visiting, or played in any follow-the-leader games on any of our big-boat journeys ... one of which we're about to have ... soon.  

Real Time: 
 
After eight days in Montenegro we're back in Croatia in a seaside town called Cavtat. When we arrived at the bus station we knew exactly where we needed to go to get to our new apartment - up an extremely steep hill about 200 - 300 metres away. The hill wouldn't have been so bad on its own, but the heavy luggage we were carrying made the walk a no-no. Our cabbie refused to turn his meter on. The flat rate was 50 kuna or $10 CDN. We had no choice we later learned from the woman who owns the apartment where we're staying. Theft by cabbie is apparently legal in Croatia. The ten dollar journey took less than two minutes. I hope with all my heart that Uber soon finds Croatia. There is no single group of people who I would like to see walking the streets with their thumbs up their butts than the taxi drivers of this nation.
 
And speaking of Uber changing the people transportation world as we know it, here's another one on which we should keep a watchful eye - hotels. Throughout Europe, hotels and pensions are on the decline because just about anyone and everyone who owns more property than they need is renting out the excess room to travellers. Over the past six weeks, since we began this trip, we've stayed exclusively in privately owned apartments. They've been great - the guy in Reykjavik even gave us a free car to use during our stay.    

Mark my words. Within a year the hotel industry will be up in arms about this one.