I'm staying with a friend in Tivat, a tiny little coastal town in Montenegro, population 14,000. The kind of provincial paradise where you leave your doors unlocked and everyone knows each other by name. I also happen to walk out the house every morning singing Belle's song "Little town...it's a quiet village, everyday like the one before..." but that's just me, I'm a Disney princess on steroids.
Porto Montenegro is more or less my base for the week that I'm here. Enclosed 'within the walls' as the expats put it, it's a tiny but well-formed (that's what I said, hee hee) waterfront development and luxury yacht marina. A parking space for boaties bored of St Tropez and jaded by Monte Carlo, if you will. I predict hipsters with yachts all over Porto Montenegro wearing skinny jhorts and Instagramming their calamari lunch. By the way, my hashtags for Instagram are #BalkanSoHard and #ILiveToSerb. I'm very proud of that.
Thursday morning I dragged my pale London butt out of bed and stumbled ten meters out the door to the beach to join H for breakfast.
Of course H had already started the day's work, see the tension in his face?
We had breakfast at our local pizza place, Big Ben's.
It had to be frutti di mare and Coke Zero, how else would one get the nourishment to endure a hard day of doing sweet nothing? Exactly. I'll probably pay for that dearly when I get back to the city, but for now please just allow my smugness.
In a town where cigarettes are €2 a packet, taxi rides never over €3, and beers €1, of course only I could go to a bar and order a €15 cocktail. It was Johnnie Walker Gold Label, but that's a story for another day. The pizza was only €5. Oh my God, coming from London, that's unreal, I feel like I'm paying with Monopoly money.
You should wait at least half an hour after eating before swimming to avoid cramps, but I've never been very sensible or smart enough to take good advice so I scratched my feet on the pebbly beach and swam out to sea.
I don't like to use the word 'freezing cold' so casually not when somewhere in the world there is a skinny Eskimo who couldn't bring home the blubber. So I'll just describe the water as bracing. Still, the sound that came out of my mouth was the scream that was heard around the world.
I slapped myself for being a sissy, counted my blessings, and sucked it up.
A couple of near heart attacks later, I trotted over to Porto Montenegro to do some work.
Summer office attire. Here in Porto Montenegro, everyday is casual Friday.
Louis Vuitton Alma / ASOS bikini / Zara blazer / Raybans / H&M skirt and flatforms
Another joy of working by the sea? To be able to display cleavage without judgement. I am of the opinion that bosoms are a beautiful thing to behold but as any busty woman will tell you having ample cleavage can make you look tarty. One of the great injustices of the world---a small-chested woman and a busty one showing the same amount of cleavage but of course the one with more generous cleavage will be called salacious. Avert this tragedy, my busty comrades, and move to the seaside where bikinis and bare skin are de rigeur. Excelsior!
In between work there's always people watching, boat-watching...
...and property buying.
Porto Montenegro according to Gulliver.
"What is this? A hotel for ANTS?!!! The building has to be at least...*pause* THREE times bigger!"
