Albania. Skoder, Albania. Yeah. I mean, don't go. Don't. But I did, and I'll tell you all about in pictures. I--we--also went through the beautiful ancient ruins in Bar, Montenegro and through southern Montenegro in the little city of Ulcinj. Enjoy.
Skipping ahead here: this is the view from our hotel room outside the city of Ulcinj on the sea. It really was that beautiful, and the day really was that brilliant. On such a fantastic day you feel as if life is precious and traveling to see the world is the only true way to live. (Then, you get to Albania.) First, though, I have to explain our little adventure getting first to Bar, then here to Ulcinj, then over the border to Skoder. This comes next...
We got off at the wrong stop on the bus, and ended up here. "Here" is just as the photo suggests. Nowhere. There was a restaurant and cafe off the highway, and we went there, had an espresso, and after realizing we had unwisely deposited ourselves onto a highway with no buses coming (we thought somehow we were to get off Bus 1, then catch Bus 2--I dunno. It didn't work.), we called a taxi and the guy showed up after about a half an hour. THIS turned out to be serendipitous, as he (and not the bus) took us up to the ruins in Bar, and we made a great day of it. Great travel tip: mess up the plan. It works!
This was the off-the-path restaurant. Crmnica.
Here we are. Espresso.
Translation: "Stop taking pictures of me. We are stranded in the middle of Montenegro with no plan."
But we had a plan. It was called: "Mr. Taxi, take us down the coast." And he did. Here we are not far from the town of Bar on the coast. Fun fact: the tennis player Andre Aggasi apparently has a house not far from where we were here. It is soooo beautiful. And much less traffic and problems than typical tourist destinations.
There are ancient ruins of an old castle in Bar. Basically there is no one there except you, and you see it all atop a hill. Unbelievable.
Turns out we weren't really alone. There was an old man with his cats. I can't write this stuff. Here it is.
Not to be snarky (sorry), but check out the English. One thing you notice when traveling in the Balkans or definitely Eastern Europe is that "English" is like some weird international business language that these poor people have to figure out, like we might have to work out the details of Latin or something. They always muck it up. Fun fact: I don't speak Serbian, so should shut my pie-hole.
Yeah. This happened. He was just standing there with no one else around, playing the (what is that--accordion?) to us. We didn't know--maybe throw some coins?--and he didn't speak English. I can't remember now what we did, but we stood and listened for a while as it was enjoyable and very kind of him.
Bar was awesome. The taxi guy just hung out (off the clock) for a half an hour while we traipsed through Old Town Bar, then when we appeared again, he opened the doors of the taxi and off we went. He got pulled over later by the police for having something expired, and haggled on and on in Serbian (Montenegran), occasionally jerking his thumb back at us, I assume explaining that the poor Westerners (but Anya isn't) will have to sit by the side of the road again if he can't pass. Well, it worked, eventually. Off we went to Ulcinj. I'll take this up in another post.