Day 12 - Trip to Montenegro

I am so exhausted! I have been moving non-stop since Friday afternoon. But, it has been completely worth it. I have seen and done so many cool things in such a short time. Today was one of the best days so far. I went with a small group to Montenegro. It was 7 of us - me, Raymond, Jeanna, Matt, Karrie, Jody (all of us from IU) and Katie (a girl from Delaware). Our driver, Josef, is a taxi driver in Dubrovnik and we hired him on his day off to take us to Montenegro. The price was 300 Kuna, which is only about $65-$70 US Dollars, per person. It was well worth the money.

We started the day really early - we left at 8am (2am Indiana time) and went to a small town in Croatia near the border to Montenegro (which is less than a 30 minute drive from our hotel). We stopped there really quickly so our driver could get our passports ready for the border check. We got through there fine and were on our way!

We stopped for a bit on the way to our first location, Perast (pronouced Paris), a small town with two churches built on man-made islands to take pictures of the amazing views. This country is probably the most beautiful place I've been since I can remember. There are hills covered in trees, crystal clear deep blue water and wildflowers growing all over. I couldn't have taken enough pictures.

Anyway...so we get to Perast, around 11am and Josef decides to stop and let us take a short boat ride to one of the islands and view the Church of Saint Nikola. It was a really small building, but very pretty. And, it had a really ornately painted ceiling. We had to pay extra to go into their very small museum, so the group decided not to do that, but I still left a small donation because our guide was really good and very informative.

After Perast we drove along the coast to our next stop, Kotor. It is a pretty small city, from what I can tell, with an Old Town walled section, like Dubrovnik. We got there around noon and were only there for about an hour and a half, but it was enough to see the major buildings and have a quick lunch. Then, I bought a couple souveniers and we were off to our next destination.

Next, we went to Budva, which was my favorite of the three places. It is definitely a city devoted to tourists with lots of boutique shops and bars. It also had a beautiful Old Town walled area, which was larger than Kotor's. We wandered around there for a while and saw some incredible views of the sea.

After walking around for a little while, we stopped and had a drink at the bar by the beach. I was so excited because they have what I call "umbrella drinks" (fruity cocktails) and I'd been resigned to only having wine and beer for the entire trip. I had a "Sex on the Beach," which is about the sweetest tasting drink ever and it hit the spot. :)

After we walked around Budva for about 2 hours we met back up with Josef around 4pm and made our trek back to Croatia. On the way back, instead of riding around the coast like we had before, we took a ferry from Tivat to Igalo which was only about 10-15 minutes long but it saved a lot of time on our drive back.

Once we made it back to Croatia, we passed our hotel because Josef wanted to take us to a special place to view Dubrovnik. We drove up the biggest hill (which was huge, by Indiana standards, at least) to an army "fort" used by the soldiers in the war only 15 years ago. It had so many artillery holes, it really brought to life the fact that so many people were fighting so close to where we are staying.

The views of Dubrovnik from the fort were indescribable. I will put the pictures on here soon, but just believe me, they look like a postcard. I am really impressed with my photography skills. That was probably the coolest thing I've done here so far. I will hopefully remember what I did today for the rest of my life. This trip was absolutely worth every penny that I spent on it.