Monday morning, August 29, 2011

Monday morning, August 29, 2011

     We have now been in Montenegro almost a week, visiting our friend Adriana, her husband Nikola and their very active 3 year old son Karlo. Last Monday morning we took a 45 minute flight from Belgrade, Serbia to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. Nikola met us and drove us directly to the resort city of Budva on the Adriatic Sea where Adriana and Karlo were waiting for us. We stayed in a modern apartment in the same building as an apartment owned by Nikola's parents and where Adriana, Nikola and Karlo stayed.

      Budva is a very popular tourist center with many hotels and apartment rentals (both modern and older), outdoor waterfront restaurants, souvenir shops and crowded beaches. Although the locals appreciate the influx of money, they bemoan the loss of the slower pace of life and all the development.

      Because of its location, Budva makes a good base from which to explore the lovely coastline filled with beautiful bays and beaches surrounded by the rocky limestone cliffs that come right down to the sea. We spent two days exploring the dramatic large Boka Kotorska Bay (which is sometime called the southern-most fjord in Europe, 15 nautical miles long) dotted with smaller bays and towns. Many towns were partially destroyed by an earthquake in 1979 and have been rebuilt. Most now have an “Old Town” section with stone buildings and very narrow cobble-stoned streets (we would call them alleys). Tivat is now home to the new Porto Montenegro where an old military base and shipyard is being converted to a modern basin for mega yachts with exclusive hotels and condominium. We enjoyed admiring the huge yachts and sailboats. Kotor is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Most of this area has been inhabited since prehistoric times and has been ruled by many different entities: Ancient Romans, Ostragoths, Saracens, Serbians, Bulgarians, Venetians, Ottomans, Hapsburgs, French, Russians, Austria-Hungarians, Italians, Yugoslavians. Perast is an old small fishing village at the head of the bay which does not allow cars.

      On Friday we left Budva and drove south along the coast to Adriana's home town of Ulcinj where her mother and two sisters live. The entire coast is very Mediterranean – narrow winding roads, cliffs, blue-green water, small towns nestled in coves with small beaches. Ulcinj has not been “discovered” by tourists as much as Budva so seems more “natural”. Once again, we are staying in an apartment, this time it is directly under Adriana's mother's apartment.

      Ulcinj is known for its lovely “Long Beach” (7.5 miles) where it is possible to find much less crowded sections. Our favorite is called Bora Bora and is adjacent to the more developed (and therefore crowded) Copacabana. Karlo especially loves the freedom to run around unhindered.

      Here are the links to two new photo albums:

https://picasaweb.google.com/104998323846009190297/201108MontenegroI

https://picasaweb.google.com/104998323846009190297/201108MontenegroII

Monday Morning August 22nd

Monday Morning August 22

 We are on our way to Montenegro.  We had a delightful stay in Belgrade with Maya and her friends and family. During the past few days we did a lot of sightseeing in Belgrade.  We went to the Nikola Tesla museum (Tesla was the genius who invented alternating current and the electric motor (amongst many other things), the Museum of Yugoslavian History, and we took a half day cruise on the Sava river, which joins the Danube at Belgrade.  We had a lot of small adventures too, in the restaurants and plazas and municipal systems of Belgrade.  So far, this has been a wonderful adventure.

Belgrade reminds Linda very much of Sao Paulo, Brazil when she lived there in the 1950's - the red tile roofs, houses and buildings made of brick and concrete, wooden shutters on the windows walls or fences around properties, wrought iron gates, cobblestone streets, narrow sidewalks with house doors opening right onto the sidewalks, old architecture with statues and elaborate decorated masonry, bright painted masonry, old buildings with peeling masonry next to modern steel & glass, abandoned half finished structures, old rundown next to the newer well-kept, many parks, tree lined streets and boulevards, older houses in the country made of sticks and mud. Even the language sometimes sounds like Portuguese, though some words can be foolers. Bel, belle, beau all mean "white" not "pretty". Belgrade actually means white city as the concrete buildings used to all be white. Now they have aged to gray. The beautiful women and the hot weather are more like Rio. It is surprising that a city at the same latitude as Bangor, Maine should feel tropical with sun that burns and heat that makes you soaking wet in an hour (though the humidity is not the suffocating type of North Carolina).

Now we are off to Montenegro, to visit with Nikola, Adriana, and their son Karlo.  We will be on the Adriatic coast for a week, and then in the capital, Podgorica, for a week.  We'll post again when we have the time and energy.

Our last group of photos of Belgrade are in:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104998323846009190297/201108BelgradeIII

Wednesday Morning, August 17th

Last Friday we and Maya and her niece Helena took a 5 hour bus trip to Zlatibor, a mountain resort area near the border with Montenegro.  We went there to visit our Montenegrin friend Adriana, her husband Nikola and their 3-year-old son Karlo.  They were visiting Nikolas mother Jovanka and father Blavo who have a home near the resort, in a town named White Lands, so named because the earth there is a light grey color.
 
We had a nice time visiting with these folks, and the kids had a grand time at the resort.

Sunday we visited a restored village named Sirogojno, near Zlatibor,  that had been occupied as late as the early 1900's.

We came back to Belgrade on Monday (another long bus ride) and just rested the rest of Monday and Tuesday. See the photos of Zlatibor at

https://picasaweb.google.com/104998323846009190297/201108SerbiaZlatiborI
and
https://picasaweb.google.com/104998323846009190297/201108SerbiaZlatiborII

We are going to be in Belgrade through Sunday, and expect to take a day cruise on the Beautiful Blue Danube on Friday.  We'll post again when we have the time.  YAZOO!
 

Sunday August 14th

Sunday Morning August 14th.  We are enjoying our stay at the mountain resort of Zlatibor.  Photos that Linda is taking here will be available mid-week.  In the meantime, here is the last batch of photos from Belgrade last week.  Nothing really exciting, but Belgrade is a very beautiful city, and there are some very nice views of it.  These commentaries are short because we are busy having fun and we are exhausted at the end of the day.

See the photos at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104998323846009190297/201108BelgradeII

Friday morning August 12th

YAZOO!  We spent the last two days doing whirlwind sightseeing in Belgrade.  We are heading off to the mountains this morning, with Marijana (Maya) and her seven-year-old niece Helena, to spend the weekend with Adriana and her family.  The second part of our trip (August 22 - September 5) will be spent visiting with them in Montenegro.

 We have finally been able to put some photos out on Picasa.  Of interest are: two smoking rooms at the Munich airport, the sight of which brought us right back to Winston-Salem; plazas, buildings, and street entertainers in downtown Belgrade; Kalemegdan Citadel; the baptism ceremony of a 35-year-old woman (that's her three-year-old watching the ceremony), and, just after the piece of cake, our visit with Maya's family (parents, brother and wife, and their children).  We wish we had time to tell you more.  We are having a grand time participating in our vacation, and don't have a lot of time to be just spectators.

See the photos at

https://picasaweb.google.com/104998323846009190297/201108BelgradeI

YAZOO! 

 Wednesday morning, August 10th.

Well, Monday and Tuesday have flown by.  We should warn you that we are having a very interesting vacation (for us) but we are too old to have anything 'exciting' happen to us...  Yesterday we slept late and lazed around almost all day while our hostess Marijana caught up on some projects at her work.  She is on semi-vacation, so we have to share her with her job.  Anyway, we were glad to rest, and Linda was able to work on her early photographs.  Linda says that it will be a few more days before she will be able to release the photos.  Please be patient.
At 5:00 PM Monday Marijana picked us up and took us to her family homestead, around 10 minutes from where we are staying, and thus about 20 minutes from downtown Belgrade.  We met her mother Nana, father Nikola, brother Sasha, sister-in-law Gaga, one-month-old nephew Jovan and seven-year-old niece Helena.  We were greeted and treated like long-lost members of the family. We were served a typical Serbian dinner, with two different meat dishes, meat and vegetable stuffed zuchini, tomato and onion salad, and a lovely banana/mandarin orange cheesecake.  It was all very delicious, and we tried very hard to make Marijana's mother proud by eating all that we could.  Marvin showed remarkable restraint by eating only two portions of the dessert.
After dinner we went up to the top floor terrace of the homestead.  The house is three stories tall, typical in its neighborhood.  It sits on a bluff about 300 feet above and a quarter mile set back from the Danube river.  There is no industrial development here, so the gorgeous view is of a lot of greenery and the slow-flowing Danube with the city in the distance.  We sat here and talked with Marijana, Sasha, and Gaga as we watched the sun set slowly in the west and then watched the city lights come on.  It was very calm and peaceful, and we felt very welcome and relaxed. 

Tuesday we had another lazy day.  We loafed until noon, and then Marijana picked us and took us back downtown, where we continued our tour of the Kalemegdan Citadel.  "Lonely Planet" says this about the citadel:

Capture the hill protected by the junction of the Sava and Danube Rivers and you control the land to the south. This explains why there has been a fortified settlement here since Celtic times, but such prime real estate attracts enemies. Over the last 2300 years some 115 battles have been fought over this site, and parts of it and the outer city have been razed 44 times, as one conqueror removed another.
What remains today dates from the 18th century. The core of the fortifications is the Upper Citadel, accessed by several massive gates and bridges (now wooden) over deep moats.
The main entrance is the Stambol Gate, built by the Turks around 1750, which leads to the Military Museum.
Most of the Upper Citadel is now parkland, and the massive walls are a favorite place for Belgraders to snatch an alfresco lunch on work days, or for young couples to find a bit of romantic solitude.

We enjoyed our afternoon at the citadel, and we finished the day with a leisurely dinner at a Spanish style restaurant at the water's edge.

We 're not sure what Marijana has in store for us today.  We do know that we will be spending the weekend with Marijana and Helena at a mountain resort called Zlatibor near the Montenegro border.  At Zlatibor we will be joined by Marijana's best friend Adriana and her husband and three-year-old son. We first met Adriana in the USA in 2004, and she and her family will be our hosts in Montenegro starting on the 22nd of August.

YAZOO!  Photos soon,  we promise!
 

 

This is a test.

We are new to blogging, and we are just trying this out today to see if it will work for us.


We are having a wonderful time in Belgrade, Serbia,  This is a beautiful city with a lot of charm.  We are visiting a lot of historical sites, and resting by having a fruit juice or lemonade at one of the many little outdoor cafes on a city plaza.  It is fascinating to watch the people walk by.  We are also enjoying that Belgrade has preserved the beauty of the Danube river, reserving shore space for the use of the people rather than for industrialization. Every view of the river is filled with just greenery and the river itself. This is quite different from New York and really makes Belgrade a most wonderful, lovely city.

 Our hostess Marijana has a million friends, and all of them want to join us for drinks or take us to lunch or dinner.  OY!

Yesterday we went to a small church in a small village about an hour and a half out of Belgrade.  We watched one of Marijana's friends get baptized. It was a fascinating experience, and the priest could not believe that he actually had REAL AMERICANS in his church.  We were welcomed by Marijana's friends with great warmth.  We had lunch with them - chicken soup, salad, barbecued pork, and a delicious chocolate/walnut cream pie.  We also had some home-made plum brandy, and we were introduced to the plum tree that was the mother of the plums.  We expressed our gratitude to the earth, the tree, and the family that made the very tasty and sleep inducing brandy.  Marvin was only half awake for the rest of the afternoon.

Linda will post some photos here when she figures out how to do it.  Or maybe she will just post them on Picasa.  We will let you know.

Today is a rest day, so we will spend at least part of it trying to learn more about this blog and how to use it well.  Since Linda is the perfectionist in the family she will probably do most of work.  YAZOO!

More later, but we don't know just when.