Milocer, Cetinje, and Dubrovnik

Recently I convinced the powers that be that it would be an excellent idea to let my offices in Belgrade and Pristina have a retreat together in a third country (and in case any of the PTBs happen to read this it as a really good idea-lots of productive things were done). Our first choice was Greece but I was not disappointed when the meeting was moved to Montenegro. I've never been before and it allowed me to tick off one more country on my Former Yugoslav Countries to Visit list.

We ended up in Milocer which is quite literally the poster city of Montenegro. Go ahead and Google image Montenegro and some of the first, and most reoccuring images you'll find is this:

It's not my best photo ever...heck it's not even the best picture I took but I managed to do a permanent delet of all my pictures. Without my awesome brother I wouldn't have even recovered this one. In any case, that's Sveti Stefan island. It used to be a fishing village but is now a hotel. The whole island is a hotel. The whole thing. I've always wondered if, given the choice, would I want to live near the water or near mountains? Well I've decided that I'll move to Milocer because it has both. It's one those incredible places where the mountains run right into the sea and between the bases of them are inlets with beaches. Rocky not sandy beaches but I was never one for laying out anyway.

Sigh. Really wish I hadn't lost all the great pictures I took. Ah well. Moving on...I also got to visit Kotor which is a fairly quick taxi ride away. Kotor is one of Montenegro's walled cities and was completely charming. I lost those pictures too so you get to see the few that were recovered.

As a group we took a quick day trip to Cetinje which is a mountain town, not coastal like Milocer. From our very (very very) loquacious and informative guide I learned that Montenegro has four climates. I certainly could feel the differnce. In Milocer it had been very warm and downright balmy but Cetinje was cold. Like see your breath in the air cold. We visited a few places but it was really the view that interested me.

On our last day we had a pretty good amount of free time so three of my colleagues/friends and I went to Dubrovnik, Croatia which was only about a 2.5 hour drive away. So yay for me...another country ticked off my list!! I have far more pictures of Dubrovnik since I hadn't deleted them. It's a charming coastal city, the old section walled like Kotor. It was a bit odd though because everything in the old city was the same color which made it all feel not quite real.

 Way too many stairs here for me. Almost every alley off the main road involved stairs. No thank you.

 I've never been to a church dedicated to Saint Blaise. That was very cool.

 See what I mean re the monochrome? Roofs all one color and stone all one color.

I wish I'd had more time in both places but I will definitely be going back to see more. And this time I won't delete the pictures.