Montenegro

Continuing our travels through the Balkans, our next country to explore was Montenegro. We stayed in Kotor, which is a beautiful town nestled among the mountains on the Bay of Kotor. We'd gotten pretty used to the unreliability of Balkan buses at this point, but Kotor was the first place that didn't even have a bus schedule we could reference. When we arrived, we were able to figure out where the main bus stop by the Old Town was, and talked to some locals who were also waiting and they said the buses usually come about every hour, but couldn't tell us when (this still kind of breaks our brains, but that's the Balkans for you!). We showed them where we were staying, and they told us to just ask the driver to drop us outside the hospital, which we did. It all worked out, but we were sure glad we talked to people or we would have been in for a long walk. Even though the bus got us close to our place, our apartment was still located up a VERY steep driveway (we always seem to end up at finding places on hills).

On our first day we relaxed and walked to the Old Town of Kotor. We walked along the bay for about 20 mins until we reached the walls to enter the Old Town. The Old Town reminded us of a mini Dubrovnik with the stone buildings and towering walls protecting the city. This Old Town was built into the mountain side so the walls continued up the mountain to a fortress higher up guarding the city. Walking around town, the main attraction we kept seeing were cats. The Kotor cats were everywhere chilling around the city, including in shop windows. The cats loved Melissa and would follow her and want pets which she of course obliged. After lots of pets, we headed home to get some sleep to wake up early to hike to the fortress and beat the heat.

The next day, we started to hike up to the Kotor fortress via "the ladder" route which has A LOT of switch backs; fortunately they were all very gradual. There is another route up to the fortress that involves a lot of stairs, but you have to pay to access it this way, and we opted for the free route. We reached an old chapel and stone walls which were beautiful in the morning light. We then got up to the fortress which we accessed by climbing through a window of the fortress. The window used to have a ladder, but this was gone, so it was a bit high and involved some maneuvering, but it wasn't too bad to access (and worth it to keep the hike free!). Inside the fortress, we explored the various rooms and stone walls with views down to Old Town. Construction of the fortifications began in the 9th century, but additions continued until the 19th century. The views of Kotor and the bay were beautiful and well worth the effort to climb into and out of the fortress. After the hike, we went home to relax during the heat of the day, and Carson got his first international haircut. The women at the shop didn't speak any English, but he had some photos to show them of what he wanted, and he came out looking normal!

Post-haircut, we then headed to another small nearby town on the Bay of Kotor called Perast. We waited at our local bus stop for a bus (again not knowing when it would show) and eventually a small mini bus/van pulled up. The locals headed in so we joined them, but to this day we're still not sure if this was even really a city bus. The guys up front just asked us where we were going and to tell them when we wanted to stop, which we did. We also never paid the same amount twice for the buses in Montenegro, so to our American brains the whole system is crazy but somehow seems to work and not bother anyone else! We were dropped off on the side of the road at the Perast beach and we strolled through the town seeing Our Lady of the Rocks (a quaint chapel on a man-made island in the bay) and the Old Town. Perast is a very small but cute town that we enjoyed exploring. We then went to the Perast beach to swim and relax. As we were chilling, people started setting up a local triathlon for children. We ended up having a front row spot for the race and cheered on the kids.

Our next day was jam packed; we went on an excursion around Montenegro with a tour group so we could see more of the country. It's so small that we really were able to see a lot of it in just a day. We started our tour by taking a cable car up to Lovćen National Park. The views from the cable car were amazing and gave us views of the different bays of Montenegro. We learned that Kotor was founded by the ancient Romans and the story is Montenegro later got its name from the black mountains that surrounded the land (literally Monte + Negro). Currently it is home to about 600,000 people and the official currency is the Euro even though Montenegro is not apart of the EU. So essentially every Euro in circulation in Montenegro is from a different, EU country. Wild! We also learned more about Montenegro's more recent history. Unlike it's Balkan neighbors, Montenegro actually did not become independent until 2006. During the breakup of the other Yugoslav republics, Serbia and Montenegro remained together as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Montenegro's transition to independence at this point in the 2000's was peaceful compared to its other Balkan neighbors.

In the national park, we then walked up a long staircase to reach the tomb and memorial of Peter II, a former Prince-Bishop and poet of Montenegro, who remain their most beloved leader. The Njegos Mausoleum is on the second highest mountain in Montenegro, and offered stunning views of the mountains. Next, we took the mini bus to Cetinje, which was the old capital of Montenegro, where we walked around and visited the Centije Monastery. During Yugoslavia rule, Tito moved the capital to Podgorica (formerly Titograd) because it had a more favorable geographic position. Podgorica is now considered by many to be one of the most boring cities in Europe, so seemed like the wrong move (seriously, even Montenegrins were telling us not to visit, which we didn't, except to later fly to Greece).

Up next, we went to Lake Skadar National Park for a boat ride. Lake Skadar (also called Lake Shkodër in Albania) is the largest lake in southern Europe and sits on the border of Montenegro and Albania. We made a pit stop at a beautiful overlook where the lake bends around a mountain. The viewpoint reminded us of the Grand Canyon's Horseshoe Bend, but this park was instead vibrant in greens and blues. During different times of day and weather, the lily pads in the river will bloom and look white and yellow, but what we saw on the cloudy day was more green. We continued driving and descended into the park where we had lunch and then jumped onto a boat. Lake Skadar is known for birding so Carson was on high alert during the boat ride looking for new birds. The boat stopped and we were able to jump into the water (RIP to Mel's sunglasses). This was the first fresh water we jumped into on our trip and it was very refreshing during the heat of the day. We also had some rakia which is a liquor in the Balkans that is widespread. Aside from just drinking it for pleasure, it is also used for healing anything from sore throats, colds, to external injuries. Rakia is their miracle medicine that is 40-60% alcohol (and tastes like it)! After some time on the water, we started to make our way back to Kotor. We made a short stop at an overlook to see Budva and Sveti Stefan on the coast. Budva is called the "Miami of Montenegro" due to all of it's beaches and high rise buildings. Sveti Stefan is an old fortress but was purchased and converted to a luxury resort in recent years. It's located out in the sea and connected by a small strip of land. Unfortunately, nobody can visit Sveti Stefan right now, because it is tied up in lawsuits between the resort and the state. Both Sveti Stefan and Budva have interesting back stories; according to our guide, Russians bought most of the property in these areas and developed them without much of an urban plan, which many of the locals are unhappy about.

Montenegro was a great visit and we wished we had more time to go explore the country, even though we got to see a good amount on our day tour. We would like to do more hiking in this country since it has so many mountains and other national parks like Durmitor in the north that we didn't get to see. The only thing we didn't love about Kotor were all the cruise ships that were always docked in the Bay- some of them MASSIVE. According to our guide, the government is prioritizing the money made from this and has not done anything to limit the cruise ships in Montenegro yet the way they have in other European cities like Venice. We understand why cruise ships would want to visit this beautiful place, but we hope the influx of mass tourist crowds doesn't have an impact on Kotor the way it did on a place like Venice. Fortunately, it doesn't seem like this has happened yet, and we hope it stays that way!