Is, in fact, an independent country. But one has to admit that, culturally, it’s rather a lot like Serbia.
Perhaps made famous by the James Bond Casino Royale movie, I was disappointed to discover that not a single scene from the movie was actually shot in Montenegro.
It’s the next country south of Croatia, and so we wound up there primarily because we were desperately chasing the (theoretically) warmer southern weather as quickly as possible. To avoid any suspense: It rained almost the entire time.
Our travels only covered the coastal towns of Kotor and Budva, Kotor in particular being a stunning place, poor weather notwithstanding.
“Montenegro” is a cool name, a few minutes study of any of the romance languages would reveal that it means “Black Mountain”. Which in the local lingo is “Crna Gora”. Nice name.
Kotor is reputed to cater to a lot of “nouveau-super-riche” Russians and Ukrainians, and the yachts parked in the harbour (even in off season) tend to support this theory.
(The most trashed scooted ever seen)
The official currency is the Euro, although they’re not (yet) part of the E.U. I’ll bet they’re glad they didn’t pick US Dollars after independence.
Much like in Croatia (and indeed all of the rest of the former Yugoslavia) everyone smokes. Everywhere. Except, luckily, the fairly excellent hostel we stayed in.
(mmmm börek)
We met an interesting and diverse crew there with whom we day tripped over to Budva, and eventually onto Albania with.
Tags: budva, kotor, montonegro, rtw