Ulcinj

Layne's beach artwork!

 

Well... After only less than 2 hours of sightseeing, I can now check Ulcinj off my list of towns to go in Montenegro! Yes, less than 2 hours! Despite its length the entire trip to Ulcinj was entertaining. Let me start with the walk to the bus station: As we are walking down the road, this guy about our age "accidentally" bumps Layne (because she is on the inside of the sidewalk) and says, "F**k off!!" Then he starts laughing. After the initial shock, we determined that he heard us talking English and thought it would be funny to say this to us. I guess he wanted to show off his English skills!

 

When we got to the bus station, there was a little gypsy boy begging for money. However, this was not just any gypsy boy. We have ran into this boy two previous times. The first time was while eating Layne's burek birthday lunch. The owner of the restaurant had to scare the boy away because he just stood by our table with his hands out. Then a few days later (again on our way to the bus station), we run into the boy again. I notice it is the same boy a few feet before we are to cross paths and as we cross, he jumps at Layne (again in the middle) to try to scare her. She jumps a little, he starts laughing, but keeps walking and leaves us alone. So today we see him again at the bus station, and he will not leave. He keeps repeating, "Daj mi 5 cents." This means, "Give me 5 cents." Finally, Layne gave him 10 cents, and he left. 

 

After an eventful walk to the bus station, we got to Ulcinj around 12:45. We knew we wanted to see Old Town, a super long beach, and maybe a mosque and church. Layne had been to Ulcinj once, but only for a super short time to eat. We had no idea where to go, so we stopped that this place that had a sign outside that read "Tourist". We stopped in there, and the man working spoke really good English. He showed us on a map where everything was and as we were about to go, he asked us to have some coffee in his restaurant right next door. We felt kinda obligated because he provided us with information. Little did we know that he was going to sit with us and talk the entire time. We talked about him meeting people from Oklahoma, him going to America, us playing volleyball, and his son. He even offered his son to take us to Albania and show us around some other time! It was getting to be a long coffee stop, and we wanted to get sightseeing so we told him we were going to head out. We offered to pay for our drinks, but he wouldn't let us pay! He gave us his business card, and we left (only after we took a picture which is on Layne's camera). After a block of walking, I realized I forgot my gloves so I had to go back! He told us to stop back by before we left.

 

Once on our way, we spotted this store, and I had to take a picture for my dad. He had been asking me about this type of store, and I finally found one!  

 

 A 1 Euro store!

 

Our first stop was Old Town. It overlooked the sea, but was not very impressive. There are a few hotels, a few restaurants, and some homes in Old Town. The other parts are not very well taken care of, but the views of the sea were great. 

 

View of sea and some of Old Town

Layne and I on some stairs in Old Town

 

 View of Ulcinj and the beach from Old Town

After Old Town, we headed down to the beach. The day was super cold and windy, but it was still nice to see a sandy beach. Layne walked barefoot, but I decided to keep my shoes on. Here are some pictures from the beach:

Two random boats sitting on the beach

 

Hanging out on the beach 

 

Sitting on the ledge at the beach (CRNOGORSKA means Montenegro)

We then headed back into town for lunch: cevapi! It was really good, and we wasted some time until the 4:15 bus would take us back to Bar. (You may be thinking, you said you were Ulcinj for less than 2 hours. If you do the math, we were technically in Ulcinj for 3.5 hours, but most of that time was spent with the man at the cafe and at lunch. Seeing Ulcinj took less than 2 hours.) We did not stop back at the cafe, but Layne is going to email him the picture!

When we got back to Bar, we decided to go a basketball game. I have been wanting to go, and finally we did not have practice or a game that conflicted. It was a blow-out: we won by more than 30 points, but it was still fun. The refs called very few fouls, and it was different than American basketball. I'm not sure if I would go to another game because I don't know any of the guys and the basketball was not all that great, but it was a good experience.

Here is a picture of the game in our "big" gym

 

After the game, Layne and I finally watched The Tourist. I don't know why, but we have been putting this movie off for weeks. We made an agreement that before we watched any other movie, we had to watch The Tourist. Last week we bought Conviction (the one with Hilary Swank based on the true story of her brother getting wrongly convicted of a crime and she goes back to school to be his lawyer in order to prove his innocence.) and both us want to see this movie really bad, but we couldn't because of The dang Tourist. Now that it has finally been watched, we can move on. Final grade: 6. It was okay, worth $1 at Redbox. Until next time...