At home in Skopje

Well, after 3 nights in Dubrovnik, we decided to stay the night in Herzeg Novi, Montenegro. Our bus from Dubrovnik stopped there and it is a little beach town. Our hostess was very strange, having a lot of little rules that we had to follow. Dao and I also realized that we somehow always managed to be walking uphill for most of our travels. When we were walking to our accommodation for the evening, it was seriously steep. I tried to not hate my rolling, carry on suitcase that I was using as my only bag, but it was difficult. We went and lay on the beach for the day then ended up getting the restaurant's special platter for dinner at a Bosnian restaurant. Turned out to be mostly meat with fries. We had pork, chicken and beef! Atkins diet delight! The local Montenegrin beer was delicious and refreshing. The next day, we caught a bus to Kotor, Montenegro.

Kotor is surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and this means it gets super hot. Their Starigrad (Old City) was very cool, but reminiscent of the one in Dubrovnik and Split. In the Middle Ages, they built this wall on the side of the mountain behind Starigrad. Why? Dao and I were never quite sure. We had fried calamari, salads and white Montenegrin wine for dinner. Delicious. Our room was nice and pitch black. If only the guy would quit hacking...we decided to go back to Skopje after one night in Kotor instead of heading down to Budva. Dao and I were simply tired ladies. We prefered to think of ourselves as mariners, even though we know nothing about sailing. In fact, when we were trying to figure out how to get to Starigrad from our room, I told Dao that I could only navigate by the stars at night, channeling my inner Mariner. As you can tell, the heat began to get to us. We took a night bus to Skopje from Kotor. This was only a 12 hour bus ride, I think. We almost cried at the bus station in Kotor because when we were waiting for our bus, there were all these beautiful, new, functional buses pulling in. Except in our peron (gate). Then, this junky, old uncomfortable bus whose air brakes kept making noise even at a dead stop pulled into our peron. Of course this is our bus. We told the bus to get out of our peron (to ourselves of course) and, finally, got the nerve to ask the driver if this was the bus to Skopje. He said no. We were saved! Our bus was super! We even got our own row. Imagine that! I arrived at the Skopje bus station, avoided the super sketchy cab drivers, found a non-sketchy cab and made home to my lovely flat.

So now, I am back at work, doing some work on a Domestic Violence proposal (actually 2). I will try to get pictures online soon. Be patient, my friends. Until next time...