10 Days in Montenegro

Lots of sun, lots of beach, a drive through the mountains, and another visit to the emergency room.  What a trip.

Montenegro is as beautiful as advertised.  From what we saw, the country is essentially mountains and coast (I believe that Montenegro or Crne Gore translates to black mountains but don't quote me on that), meaning that pretty much wherever you find yourself there is a scenic view.  It also means that unless you are standing on the beach, wherever you find yourself you are in danger of falling off a cliff.

We stayed in the hills above Sveti Stefan, a small seaside village.  Sveti Stefan itself is sort of a geographic anomaly, as it sits on a rock just off the shore and is connected to the mainland via a narrow isthmus.  It was a fishing village until the 1950’s, when the government of Yugoslavia turned it into a resort hotel.  We had dinner out on it one night, and it’s absolutely beautiful.  They have maintained the original building structures, so you wouldn’t know you’re at a resort…it feels like you’re walking through a fifteenth-century stone village.

The best thing about Sveti Stefan and the hills above is there is literally nothing to do except go to the beach.   There are two small (really small) grocery stores, a handful of restaurants, a street vendor who sells beach supplies, one ATM machine (that was out of order), and sporadic internet access (hence no blog posts, although it’s hard to believe we would have spent much time on the laptop anyhow).  That’s it.  No bars, no souvenir shops, nothing.  Most of our days consisted of getting up, eating breakfast, walking down the hill to the beach, staying at the beach all day, walking back up the hill, showering, eating dinner, getting the kids to bed, and watching the sunset over the Adriatic from our balcony.  Jerry and friends were definitely referring to a different Saint Stephen…it’s tough to gripe about this one.

We actually did venture out twice.  One day, we hired a van to drive us to the Bay of Kotor, which is billed as both the southernmost and second-largest fjord in all of Europe.  There are old walled towns, fortresses, and monasteries all around the bay, with mountains rising straight up on all sides.  From the bay, we drove straight up one of those mountains on a single-lane road on the edge of a cliff (so, yes, there were issues whenever we met someone driving down the mountain) from sea level to 1700 meters.  It was like no drive any of us had ever been on, and Chantelle was thankful I wasn’t behind the wheel, as it would have taken years off of her life (mine too).  The pictures below were taken about three-quarters of the way up.  We then drove around Lovćen National Park to Cetinje, which was the original capital city from the 1400’s.  Another day, we took a bus to Budva, a town just north of Sveti Stefan with a walled old town and fortress overlooking the sea.  Of course, the kiddos thought the bus ride was the coolest part of that outing.

And, of course, there was an emergency room visit.  This time, it was Grandma Rose (there must be some connection between Rosettas and foreign emergency rooms).  A week into our trip, she had been having a blast on the beach when she got sand in her eye and cut a blood vessel.  Technically, our son picked up sand and threw it in her eye, but we’re trying not to remind her of that.  The beach manager, Milan (who is a huge NBA fan and follows the Timberwolves because Nikola Pekovic is Montenegrin and Darko Milicic is Serbian) and one of his employees, Dragan, drove Chantelle and her mother to the emergency room and made sure she got the treatment she needed.  It was a definite scare but it looks as though everything will be okay.  If you don’t count Italy, which we visited by accident, we have now been to four countries here, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, and have been to emergency rooms in three of those.  We’re not really sure what that says about our crew.

All in all, we would say our final big trip was a success.  We had a great time, no one got sunburned and no one lost an…errrrr…we all came back relatively in one piece.  Montenegro is certainly a country we would like to go back to and explore some more.