Hotel Montenegro Beach Resort Budva

... and wool blankets. So we all got to sleep during the ride. (Well, Andre and the two guys got to sleep.) The train was really loud for some reason (between the tunnels we went through and the loud rail itself) so I didn’t get to much sleep. Also, we got woken up by police once at the Montenegro border for customs and then twice more at the Serbian border for passport checks and visa stamps and customs. It was a long night.

... and Podgorica also in Montenegro but uncertain of which locations we visited first. During the last two days, Darko took me one day to Old Town in Montenegro for dinner; there we greatly enjoyed an expensive seafood meal after which we walked around. Darko got a parking ticket that night in Old Town and greatly complained about its five dollar fee; for some, five dollars is equal to an entire week pay in Serbia. I think I offered him the five dollars for the ticket feeling guilty ...

We also visited Budva &#8211; much more touristy town, well kept and with very interesting and beautiful Old Town. Very international feel also with many Russians buying property down there. <br>There are plenty of buses from Kotor ...

... guy who offered us a room at the bus station and whom we followed through the little alleyways while he pointed out all the various historical landmarks, in what might have been German but was most definitely wasn't English. Marco was so dapper and charming, I might have run off with him if not for Mitch. And the fact that Marco was probably pushing 80. After we settled into our room and cleaned up a little bit (the room, that is - but hey, it was cheap!) we had some dinner on ...

... Serbian or Russian. The guide explained that Budva normally has 10,000 residents but in the summer it goes up to 150,000. To make traffic horrendous there is limited parking and most Montenegrans drive in for the day since lodging is expensive for them. Our first stop on the excursion was Cetinje which was the capital of Montenegro until 20 years ago. It is a small, quiet town with lots of empty buildings. It looked like a dying or dead city to me since I could not see anything ...

... of which are extremely simple and borderline austere in their design. All along in between on the main streets are small, simple houses, decorated in varying bright shades of color. It makes for a fascinating wander and a pleasant surprise given the relative obscurity of the town elsewhere in the world. Seeing the lot of what Cetinje had to offer only wound up taking an afternoon, so it made for a perfect daytrip. I also managed to find a hilltop mausoleum that ...

... bucks. The fact that no one in Montenegro gave two rats asses about my wad of dinars further clued me into the fact that Montenegro is, in fact, its own country. We went for a bite and Ryan somehow managed to keep his pizza streak alive. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, he failed in Ukraine but I contend that we ate so much Sbarro's in Russia every time that Lenin ne rabotayet that the mozzarella couldn't have possibly managed to completely leave his system ...

... mussels, in their delicious tomato-based sauce. We explained that we wanted to keep the sauce for the gnocchi, however, and she seemed to understand. Moments later, our risotto was delivered, along with... an entire additional order of the mussels. Mind you, we could hardly finish the first round. We asked her what this was about and she confidently informed us that we had ordered a second round of the mussels. We told her with equal confidence that this was assuredly not the ...

... pouring rain. This morning there was a clap of thunder so loud and powerful that it set off practically every car alarm in the city. But we should have expected this. Almost every time we go to the beach, it rains. I remain hopeful, however. We're here until Sunday, so there is bound to be at least one day of sunshine. Right? *Update: The country of Serbia and Montenegro was formed on February 5, 2003, when the former Yugoslavia Republic disbanded and dissolved.