Independent brought a story about Montenegro. This is just another of positive articles in foreign newspapers, portraying Montenegro as a new hot spot in the Adriatic. Here are some excerpts:

This fragment of the former Yugoslavia once lured celebrities to its shores. Can a new luxury enclave help to put it back on the map? By Lisa Markwell (Saturday, 18 June 2011)

What would Sophia Loren make of Aman Sveti Stefan, I wonder? The Italian superstar was a fan of the 1950s hotel that was once on this Montenegrin rock. It had a fleet of Chevrolet cars to transport guests across the causeway and around the coastline, and served elaborately embellished lobster.

That’s all gone, replaced by the austere lines that define the Aman resort   aesthetic (present across the globe from Cambodia to the Caribbean). Bare   stone walls in bedrooms, rough ceramic shampoo bottles and rustic village   salad on the menu signal a major change. But if the glitz has been replaced   by restrained tones, make no mistake – it’s still for the wealthy, it’s just   that now it’s stealthy.

….

Somewhat reluctantly, I stroll over the causeway and into a car with Marco,   one of the hotel’s guides. He’s bursting with pride about Montenegro. We   tour Kotor, a Unesco-listed medieval walled town of narrow, cobbled pathways   and the occasional square with a church or museum to gaze upon. Its walls   extend up the steep mountain behind. Hardy souls can walk up to the   crumbling remains of St Ivan’s Castle at 260m and look down at the luxury   yachts and expanse of fjord on which Kotor sits.

I get into a little boat and travel across the silent, crystal clear water to   the twin tiny islands that sit between the impossibly pretty town of Perast   (where the influence of the region’s Venetian rule between around 1400 to   1800 is very clear) and the narrow neck that separates the bay from the rest   of the fjord and the Adriatic sea beyond.

“Our Lady of the Rock” is a man-made island, in the shape of a ship.   It was created over 200 years starting in 1452, built up from a natural rock   of just a couple of square metres by fishermen who wanted the protection of   the Virgin Mary. They sank vessels here, more than 100 of them, and cast   rocks and stones into the bay until they reached the surface, then created a   church. I study the silver votives left by grateful sailors, the dried   flowers and lace of long-ago brides, left by tradition in thanks – and   wonder at the quiet, careful pride Montenegrins have for their natural and   spiritual treasures.

Budva, back down the coast towards Sveti Stefan, is also an ancient walled   town, but although the old settlement shares the church spires and   worn-smooth cobbles of Kotor – and nuns selling the same fabulous soap that   appears in the Aman bathrooms – outside the walls, it’s a thoroughly modern   resort. Russian-built black-glass hotels sprawl, superyachts bob   cheek-by-jowl in the harbour and plenty of bars, restaurants and shops   entertain those that descend on this tourism hub in high season.

Read entire article here …