Thursday, 27th June, 2019
This morning my alarm clock went off at 7.am – it is going to be another travel day as although we are not doing that much mileage, it’s going to take us some 4 hours to arrive finally at our destination and stop over night in Shkoder.
We also wanted to first drive up to the ruins of Fort Imperial on Srd Hill. Built by Napoleon in 1806, the fort was to provide defense from the north when the French dismantled the Republic of Dubrovnik and fierce fighting was going on between the French on one side and the Montenegrins and Russians on the other side while Dubrovnik decided to remain neutral. However Dubrovnik fell into the hands of the French, but it did not last long before the town ceded to the Austrians after the fall of Napoleon. The Austrians were scared of the Ottoman Empire which was moving up more north and decided to fortify the French fortifications.
During the Homeland war of 1991, the fortifications proved again to be useful and strong in the defense of Dubrovnik which was surrounded by Serbs and Montenegrins who occupied all the surrounding territories while the Croatian army was only in the Imperial Fort. The Imperial Fort withstood a whole day of attack in December 1991 and hence Dubrovnik did not fall. Those Croatian defenders must have thanked the builders of the fort – although severely damaged it withstood modern artillery fighting……. now the museum of the Homeland War is situated within the fort.
After our walk around , we also took pictures of the old town of Dubrovnik from the top of hill cliff – this was such a wonderful panorama and good to get a bird’s eye view of Dubrovnik and the surrounding areas!
By 12 noon we were on the road again and our TomTom gave us a route to our destination through the mountains and not as we had expected along the coastline….. we were lucky to have a bus driving in front of us as the road was so narrow that no two cars could fit at the same time x in fact the bus made a car reverse quite a few meters before we could continue our journey.
Both Gerry and I are not really mountain lovers and certainly after an hour of driving through mountains we both had had enough but we had to drive another 3 and a half hours….. these mountains are bare rock formation and only on the lower grounds we could see green vegetation.
Within an hour we had reached the border to Bosnia Herzegovina and some time later we pulled up at a gas station to fill up the car and a sandwich – alas no sandwiches at this fuel station but we were told we could get lunch just across the road. So off we went!
We had a pleasant lunch of Cevapcici and salad and a thirst quenching drink of fresh lemonade and then we were ready to continue our drive through the mountains and head towards the border with Montenegro. This is where we saw beautiful lake Bilecko which made the waiting at the border less frustrating…….
We followed TomTom’s instructions all the way through mountainous roads which seemed impossible to drive through but we made it to the Albanian border and then it was a short trip to Shkoder. We were dead tired by the time we arrived to our hotel – Rose Garden Hotel
Gerry enjoying his well deserved beer 
Our hotel Rose Garden 
Previously an Ottoman mansion 
The church tower as seen from the rose garden
The border to Albania runs across another huge lake – Skadarssko Jezero and Shkoder lies on the this lake. We will be doing the sightseeing tomorrow as will be going up to the Rozafa Fortress and taking in the views from there. But for today, we just wanted to relax in this little hotel and enjoy the rose garden and dinner.
Salad to share 
Enjoying the rose garden 
Vegetarian risotto for me 
Tasty spaghetti Bolonaise for Gerry
