Budva by Day

After resting, we spent the morning walking Budva (again). Parts of it reminded me of the Jersey shore, with a boardwalk/carnival feel. That was the area behind the beach farthest from Stari Grad, which you can see in the first picture here. This is one of the churches; there were two - one Roman Catholic, one Orthodox. The whole old town is made up of the same stone. Touring every street of it takes about ten minutes. There are some fairly nice restaurants inside.

And here is part of what the crowds were about - one of the cigarette boats being taken out of the water to be transported back to the starting line. While we were there, they were still doing time trials. Noisy to hear and exciting to see.

This is a shot of some of what's normally in the harbor. Boats range from dinghys to yachts. And, as usual for around here, the sky is a lovely blue and the water is a great bluish green. The water in the boatyard wasn't as clean as what we've been seeing in Croatia, though. If you want to see more pictures of Budva, follow the link in my previous "Night in Budva" post. There's an excellent panorama there.

Night in Budva

We were very, very lucky when we pulled into traffic-jammed Budva after our very long day in the car. The first hotel we tried, Hotel Oaza, had a room available and we took it. Oaza is located just across the boardwalk area from the marina and about a hundred meters from Stari Grad (old town - all the towns with fortifications from medieval times are called Stari Grad in Montenegro). It turns out that there was a World Powerboat Championship race the next day, and the whole town was partying before it, along with a few thousand tourists/race enthusiasts. There was a concert bu Russian girl group (Eurovision contestants in 2007) Serebro (pictured here), a fireworks show, and a bunch of dazzle.

So we ate dinner, walked around Stari Grad, listened to the music, and my companion took a lot of pictures. This one is from Stari Grad looking back out across the bay toward the south end of Budva. If you look closely (or at the bigger version of the picture in this set), you can see the race sponsor's name in green laser in the sky by the mountains. Neat trick. After a few hours of the walking around bit, we went back to the hotel for sleep. I'd recommend this place. The room was big, even had two bathrooms (one with jacuzzi), and breakfast was included.

First Afternoon of the Trip

We left Pristina in the morning headed for Peja and got there around noon. It was a hot and dusty trip, and kind of sad, too. There are the remains of a burned out Serbian village on the side of the road. My companion said it was done during the 2004 riots. Whatever and whyever it was done, it was a sad thing and the remains are still being pulled apart in time honored fashion to build new things. After turning north at Peja, we decided to stop for lunch. I have pictures of the food (really!) but won't be able to add them until I can download them from my phone, which means either I figure out how to download the Windows Mobile 6 for Vista package without corruption or I get to the States and email them to myself for free. Either way, they'll be up when I do. Edited to include food pictures:

Or my companion can loan me his micro SD card after reading this entry and let me upload the pictures that way. He had the trout; they keep several schools of them in the aqueducts at the restaurant. You can see them swimming as you come in and at the front of the reception hall across the road. When someone orders trout, the cook literally comes out and scoops one up. The sauce on the steak was very good and the bread underneath is typical of what you get in Kosovo; several shapes, same bread. It's got a chewy crust and a very white center. We also had salads (huge ones) with the meals.

To continue... the restaurant was a lovely little place on the river just past Novo Selo. Its name is Vala & Drinj's and is owned by a father and son. Lunch was delicious. My companion had a trout which he watched getting caught (how fresh is that?) and I had a beef and mushroom dish. The son/brother of the owners came over and talked to us. He was soooo happy to see Americans, especially one from New Jersey. It turns out that he now has American citizenship and lives in Somerville, NJ, where I used to teach high school. He works at a restaurant there called Ciao Bella. I'll have to go visit it and see him.

The food at the restaurant really was great and the view magnificent, but you can see the kind of road (track) we had to drive on to get there. This is typical of both Kosovo and Montenegro once you get off the main roads.

At the Kosovo checkpoint for the Montenegro border, we saw this friendly dog. Her mate and puppies were not too far away in the shade. Border checkpoint crossed, we went over a mountain before getting to the Montenegro checkpoint. A whole bunch of hairpin turns and beautiful views in between, of course. If you want to see more of the pictures of this part of the trip,go to my companion's flickr set. There are some awesome shots.

What should have been a six hour trip from Pristina to Podgorica turned into an eight plus hour trip due to scenes like this. There were multiple tunnels being enlarged and at every single one of them we were required to stop for up to half an hour to let traffic pass from the other direction. Gorgeous mountain views, at least, but still! Lots of time with the car turned off and just watching things. We get to do this on the way back, too. I'll talk about Budva later in the day and post some pictures from that.