Virpazar

If you wish to escape from the summer heat and the throng which prevails both on the beaches and in the whole town, we recommend that you set yourself from Bar through the tunnel Sozina, with your own car or tourist taxi or van transport and go to a place called Virpazar. It is a picturesque place, and in the past it was famous for the biggest Montenegrin market.

Today Virpazar is also a famous vacation area, and in the past it was a transitory station for the cruise over Lake Skadar. Many famous and less famous people, who came to Virpazar, kept coming back to it, because it is a beautiful place, which simply attracts people in warm summer days as well as in early autumn and spring. Also in the cold winter days, grey from the rain or first snow, Virpazar look attractive. Family houses from which one can see the smoke coming out of the chimney, which keeps home warm during the winter, numerous canoes, barges and bigger taxi boats, which usually transport tourists who wish to see the beauties of Skadar Lake, stand tied to the shore, and only some hard working and persistent inhabitant of Virpazar, is trying to set out to the lake water in hope that he’ll find in his net numerous: carps, bleaks or some eel. Still, all the magic of Virpazar or Vir, how that place was named in the past, you’ll experience best during the summer.

Whether you’re staying in the hotel “July 13” or if you’re comfortably accommodated in the famous motel “Pelikan” (“Pelican”), you’ll quickly leave your hotel room, because the call of the Skadar Lake and its numerous historical monuments will immediately draw you to a cruise. When you embark on one of the tourist taxies below the formerly built bridge, the captain and at the same time the tour guide, while skillfully navigating the vessel, will try to explain you, in best possible way, the past of Virpazar and Skadar Lake, and very often in several foreign languages. He’ll introduce you with some details like: with the fact that Skadar Lake is the largest lake on the Balkans, and second largest in Europe. You’ll find out that at the lake there are 200 various bird species. Because of that fact, in the recent years, especially among tourists bird watching is very developed or watching of the birds – with binoculars or special gear intended for tracking their flying direction.

Skadar Lake today is the biggest settlement of pelicans in Europe. There 12 kinds of snipes, 3 kinds of ducks and 160 more of other kind of birds. Among the bird inhabitants in the region of the Skadar Lake we have: cormorants, gulls, different kinds of ducks, gooses, and pheasant. Often you can see storks, herons (white, yellow and gray), grebes and other kinds of birds, which are rare in world, are often found here. On the Skadar Lake fishing is very frequent. The fishes most frequently caught are carps and eels.

Driving over the lake, you can meet beautiful flora. If you express a wish, captain will slow down for a moment, so that you can easily pick a water lily or a beautiful white lotus flower which can be found all over the lake.

Beside the decorative stalks of the blossomed reed, the memory of the staying in ecological areas of the Skadar Lake will also be a souvenir like kasoranja (a black, irregularly shaped bristled fruit), that is to say, sea walnut. Usual tourist tour over the lake, understands stopping by the island Grmozur – that used to be a prison, then a visit to churches whose endowers where old Montenegrin rulers Balsici, a visit to a beach named Murici where you can refresh yourself in the lake water, take a rest under the hundred years old trees or repose with a marvelous lake lunch (usually thick fish soup and roasted carp)!

On your way back to Virpazar, captain will suggest swimming in the water where the lake is warmest, he’ll also suggest observation of rare kinds of birds, sightseeing of old churches… and when satisfied with what you’ve seen you come back to Virpazar, we recommend that you inevitably visit motel “Pelikan” because, beside the extraordinary lake specialties like: thick fish soup, smoked or roasted fish, homemade bread…, the kind hosts will serve you with something else. The interior of the restaurant, which is in the motel, testifies about the fisherman life of this region. Over the walls various hats, aromatic and healing herbs, old items are hanged… If you notice that motel “Pelikan” is an unusually interesting place and you publicly say that, the hosts will take you to a hidden place called Odzaklija (Chimney house), an old house that is situated in the attic of the hotel. About that place we’ll reveal only that much that beside the past of the Montenegro, tools, weapons, and folk costumes there are for e.g. kept many old items, some even several centuries old. The rest of the story we wish that you find out and experience by yourself. And of course to enjoy!

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