Originally today was going to be our only full day in Petrovac, Montenegro but we are enjoying the location and it is not very expensive and moving from town to town quickly makes it hard for us to do things that we need to do with normal life so we decided to extend through much of the week and we will actually be staying for four nights in Petrovac instead of two. We have been moving so quickly for the last several days that the idea of relaxing by the sea for a few extra days sounds pretty awesome.
I got to try out the shower at the apartment this morning since I was up nice and early. This is the first time that I’ve gotten to use a modern shower with the full body spray, rain shower head and such. We never get things like this when travelling. We don’t even get them back in the US. This is quite a treat for us. Most of our showers are rather pathetic affairs at best. We’ve not had a really good shower for months.
Before everyone was up and moving I went out for a little walk down the promenade and hit up the bakery there to get some treats for the morning. Dominica and I started the day with a croissant and I got donuts for the girls but they were not interested.
We had coffee this morning from Cuba Caffe which is basically part of the apartment. The coffee is decent here in town, but nothing amazing. The Balkans seem to lack the extreme coffee culture that we tend to enjoy. It is warm and bright on the sea today.
We had to wait at the apartment for a while because the handyman was coming to deal with the lock. Originally we thought that he was going to come early this morning but it ended up that he was only able to come around noon. So a little disruptive but we really were not going to go anywhere today.
The car has three of its four headlights out, so getting that dealt with is a bit of a major concern. But we are going to deal with that tomorrow, hopefully. We have no idea how we will deal with that, but we will figure that out. That was a key reason for us thinking that we would stay here in Petrovac longer than we had originally planned so that we would have time to address that issue.
We started the afternoon by walking about a block down the promenade to a place that does coffee and smoothies and sat out having coffee while the girls went out onto the beach to play in the “sand.” It isn’t really a sandy beach but is actually lots of tiny pebbles, but still pretty decent. The sun was out and the pebbles were hot and the girls did not want to play for very long. Luciana’s sandals are not well suited to the beach and so she tried to go barefoot but ended up burning her feet and being unhappy. Liesl played a little longer but was not that into it. Dominica had gone shopping yesterday to get a plastic bucket and some shovels and rakes for the beach.
So the beach time was rather short today. We tried ordering food but discovered that this restaurant, like so many others here, is not actually open and they are just running on skeleton staff and serving drinks. Petrovac is really dead and today is a Monday so it is a fraction of the people that we saw yesterday. There is almost no one out and about and just on one getting food. We were able to get cakes, a least, to have with our coffee; but that was it.
After the beach time we came back to the apartment and the girls were happy to spend the afternoon using their Kindle Fire tablets and just watching their shows or whatever. Being at the apartment gave me time to work on catching up with writing and posting and some lab stuff, so that was good. I put in a long day, actually, totally burning through my laptop battery a full two times today which means that I was at the computer for about eleven hours.
This evening we wanted to do something simple. We went for a walk on the promenade around six. We learned from last night that if we try to eat on our normal schedule that everything is shutting down by the time that we got out and we will be the only people out eating. As it is now Monday and not a weekend day any longer, this will likely be even more pronounced.
We went down and checked out the Lazeret Pizzeria at the north end of the promenade and sat out under the umbrellas by the water and ordered dinner. The girls split a pizza, Dominica got pasta with veggies and I was the brave one who decided to try what was described as a tuna pancake.
The girls loved their pizza, Luciana ate half of a large pizza all by herself! But the big winner at dinner was me. The tuna pancake was amazing. It was actually closer to a tuna burrito. It was in a crepe that was deep fried or something like that, and topped with sour cream and cheese. It was delicious!
We stopped and got ice cream on the walk home. None of us are super impressed with the ice cream here. The selection is tiny and the quality is so so. The price is right, though. The whole family gets ice cream cones on the promenade for well under three dollars!
The girls were anxious to get back home, they mostly just want to use their tablets. Luciana lost hers for the night (and maybe tomorrow) though, because she had a temper tantrum and threw her headphones.
We were back home between eight and nine and it was a quiet evening after that point. Luciana was asleep well before ten. Liesl stayed awake with me while I did some work until about one thirty in the morning. That got her off to bed about two hours before normal, which was pretty good.