Black Hill

A visit to the tourist towns of Kotor (I kept mispronouncing it couture) and Budva (I kept mispronouncing it boudoir) put me firmly back on to the tourist trail. I was ready to visit unsecluded beaches, eat like the locals don’t and firmly stamp my feet over the beaten track.

Whilst Kotor was a watercolour of mountainous beauty it did, unfortunately, live up to such touristic expectations. Photographed menus filled the old town restaurants and earpieced cruise ship passengers lined the streets of the fortified city. If tourist traps were restaurants that locals avoided and that catered only to tourists then there technically weren’t any tourist traps in Kotor since everywhere was solely catering to tourists.

In Budva I was reminded of what I was missing out on the beaches of Western Europe at this time of year. Holidaymakers with skin as white as red roses roasted under ultraviolet radiation. Melanoma is a great money-can’t-buy souvenir to take back home and show off to friends and family. But of course in a place as overcrowded with tourists as Budva even a tan can be bought. Like most European beaches, a class segregation between rich and poor unequally divided the beach. Three quarters of the beach was taken up by the paid deckchairs of one quarter of the people on the beach. The remaining three quarters of beachgoers huddled on their small corner of public beach, saving their euros to pay for the not-so-public toilet.