Montenegro

Montenegro caught me off guard. I came in from Croatia expecting something smaller, quieter, less dramatic — and then the Bay of Kotor appeared and I just stopped moving. That water is an impossible shade of blue-green, the kind you think only exists in edited photos, and the mountains drop straight into it like someone sliced them with a knife. The old walled city of Kotor sits at the foot of those mountains, and climbing the fortress walls above it in the midday heat was genuinely punishing, but then you push through a crumbling stone arch and the entire bay opens up in front of you, framed like a painting.

The old town itself felt like it was designed to confuse you in the best way. Every narrow lane turned into another narrow lane, stone walls pressing close on both sides, terracotta pots dripping greenery from the windows above. The cats own the place — they know it and they show it. One calico was sitting in a shaft of afternoon sun against a limestone wall like it had been placed there for the photograph. Inside the churches, the gold of the icons and the ceiling paint was warm and dim and it smelled like old wood and candle smoke.

I bought a ceramic tile from one of the souvenir stalls in the old town — the "10 Montenegrin Commandments," basically an entire philosophy of rest and avoidance of work. I laughed at it in the shop and then thought about it the whole ferry ride to Perast, watching St. George Island drift past, just a little church and a row of dark cypresses sitting out in the middle of the bay. Montenegro moves at its own speed. I think I understand why now.