Montenegro 🇲🇪 an Adriatic gem!
Quick holiday facts
Duration: 7 nights
Accommodation: Risan Bay Apartments-Hotel, 1 bed deluxe apartment with sea view booked via Expedia (£700)
Flights: EasyJet return from London Gatwick to Dubrovnik (£435)
Car Hire: 8 days from Dubrovnik airport with Alamo (£80)
Spending Money: Approx. £1100 covering activities like ferry crossing, national park entrance fees, petrol, lunches, room snacks, evening meals, drinks.
APPROX TOTAL SPEND = £2,315
The Bay of Kotor: in every way as beautiful as the online content shows. Defo has to be to be believed!
Read on for more…
We’ll be honest - the bar was high.
Four trips to Croatia will do that to you. So when we decided to cross the border and spend eight days in Montenegro, we weren’t exactly going in blind. We knew what the Adriatic could look like. We’d seen the old towns, the mountain backdrops, the impossibly blue water. We thought we knew what to expect…
Montenegro had other ideas.
Image: views over the bay from Kotor Cable Car
MUST VISIT QUICK VIEW:
Kotor Cable Car, and Monte1350 whilst you’re at the top
Verige65 for panoramic views and top notch Asian fusion food
Perast for all it’s oldy worldy charm
Herceg Novi old town, Kotor old town, Budva old town - you get the gist!
Durmitor National Park for the ultimate in contrast to the bay
Day 1 - Dubrovnik to Risan: A Soggy Start
We landed in a very rainy Dubrovnik, which at least took the pressure off lingering too long before crossing into Montenegro. The border crossing was painless and before long we were pulling into Risan, a quiet, unhurried little town sitting right on the Bay of Kotor.
Our apartment-hotel, Risan Bay, was perfectly placed - views over the bay, everything we needed. After realising that we hadn’t booked B&B and coming to uickthe slow realisation we’d be self-catering (!) we stocked up at the local shop, had a gentle wander around Risan, and let the journey settle.
A note on the accommodation: we were pleasantly surprised. Our apartment was beautiful, well appointed and had everything we needed. Balconies on 3 sides! A sea/bay view and a pool view! What’s not to love?! We highly recommend it.
First impressions: very good indeed.
Day 2 - Perast, Kotor and a Dinner in Dobrota
This was the day that properly announced itself. Perast is one of those places that’s almost unfairly beautiful — baroque churches, elegant stone buildings, and a waterfront that just sits there being spectacular without trying. We took a boat trip out to Our Lady of the Rocks, the little island church sitting in the middle of the bay, and it’s every bit as lovely up close as it looks from the shore.
In the evening, we headed into Kotor old town. The city walls are a proper undertaking but absolutely worth it, and Kotor’s famous cats did not disappoint — they’re everywhere, completely unbothered, very much in charge. There’s even a cat museum, which tells you everything you need to know about the town’s relationship with its feline residents. Dinner in nearby Dobrota, at the highly rated Konoba Bonazza rounded off a genuinely perfect day.
On the boat from Perast to Our Lady of the Rocks!
Day 3 - Porto Montenegro, Luštica Bay and Verige65
Day three started with a ferry crossing of the bay - a lovely way to travel - before driving into Tivat for brunch at Porto Montenegro.
It’s a different world: superyachts, boutique hotels, a neighbourhood that feels like it’s been airlifted in from the south of France. We had a good nosy around, enjoyed the contrast with the rest of what we’d seen, and then hopped back in the car in search of something more secluded.
We found it on Luštica Bay: a quiet beach, crystal water, very few other people. Perfect. On the way home we stopped at Verige65, perched right at the narrowest point of the bay, and watched a full-size cruise ship navigate the Verige Channel over a cocktail. It’s a spectacle that absolutely warrants the pit stop. Dinner back at the apartment to finish.
Day 4 - Mountain Day: Durmitor, the Black Lake and Tara Bridge
Durmitor National Park - a UNESCO world heritage centre - is a serious drive from the coast but a serious destination - it feels like a different country entirely, all alpine air and dramatic peaks and forests that go on forever. We hiked around the Black Lake, which is beautiful, and through the Celine waterfall. Fair warning: it is described as accessible. It is not. Factor that in accordingly! 🤣
Tara Bridge was our next stop, a spectacular piece of engineering spanning a dramatic gorge, and worth every second of the detour. We ended the day with traditional lamb cooked under the bell (peka-style), which was exactly what the occasion called for.
A very full, very good day. Worth the drive in our opinion (minus the speeding ticket we caught on the way! 👮 🎫 💰)
Black Lake at Durmitor National Park
For the adventurous out there (and also the not-so adventurous!)
Day 5 - Anniversary: Poolside, Cable Car, Monte 1350 and Independence Day
Our wedding anniversary, and Montenegro delivered.
We started with a lazy morning by the pool — genuinely restorative after the mountain exertions of the day before — before making our way into Kotor for the cable car. The views from the top are genuinely among the best we’ve seen anywhere. Full stop. And, it’s a remarkable feat of engineering traversing the side of the Lovcen National Park… ascending 1350 metres to the top!
Monte 1350 Bar sits at the summit and if you’re going to have sunset pizza and drinks anywhere, make it here. The light, the views across the bay, the whole thing — it’s one of those evenings that earns its place in the memory bank. We came back down to find Kotor old town celebrating Independence Day, which gave the whole evening a particularly lovely atmosphere. Gelato in the square to finish.
A very good anniversary indeed. Happy 9 years to us! 🥂
Image: Sunset on Kotor Cable Car
Day 6 - Budva, Sveti Stefan and Konoba More
Budva has a proper old town — compact, charming, full of good wandering. The citadel and marina are both worth your time and the energy of the place is noticeably more lively than the quieter bay towns we’d been in. Sveti Stefan was our afternoon — the iconic walled village on its own little island, now an Aman resort and achingly photogenic. We found a beach nearby, had a cocktail, encountered some more cats (Montenegro has a type), and then made our way to Konoba More for dinner.
This was one of the meals of the trip. A wonderful spot, the sun going down, excellent food. 🤌 Don’t miss it.
Day 7 - Herceg Novi, the Sea and Verige65 Again
Herceg Novi sits right at the mouth of the bay and has a lovely old town of its own; a fortress looking out over the Adriatic, good walking along a lovely waterfront promenade… a distinctly different feel from Kotor’s labyrinthine streets. After a morning exploring we found our way to a stretch of coastline with the kind of clear, still water that only the Adriatic does. One of those afternoons where you get in, float, and wonder why you ever do anything else.
Dinner at Verige65 again - this time we tried the Asian fusion menu, which was delicious and quite the contrast to the very Montenegrin traditional mountain dish ‘lamb under the bell’ we had earlier in the week. They’re doing interesting things there - 100% worth a visit.
Day 8 - Back to Dubrovnik (and an EasyJet Plot Twist)
We drove back to Dubrovnik for a final day and made the most of it - revisiting the old town for the first time since 2020. Not going to lie, it was Dubrovnik that kickstarted our love affair with Croatia. It never disappoints!
After a long wander through the old town, dropping in at Buza Bar (iykyk), devouring the best burger of the trip (alongside some really delicious cocktails) at Tata’s… more drinks by the city beach (known to a certain fandom as King’s Landing) and hunting for our favourite Croatian wine (= 4 bottles later and + 9kg added to our baggage allowance 😎🤣)… we were ready for home.
A genuinely lovely way to close out a trip.
AND THEN EasyJet cancelled our flight 😤🫣🤯
Which was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a pain. It only slightly marred things - the trip had been too good for that but we’d encourage you to check your return options carefully before booking especially if you’re planning a little break to Dubrovnik. The airport is NOTORIOUS!
Image: Sunset dinner at Konoba More looking out to Budva!
Literally in the middle of the bay - on the car ferry…
So: is Montenegro worth it?
Absolutely, unreservedly yes.
It is similar to Croatia in many ways - the landscape, the old towns, the food, the general Adriatic character but the people feel notably more relaxed, less hurried, less tourist-weary. The Bay of Kotor is seriously worth visiting. The colour of the water in UNREAL. Also, be careful where you park; the local police are also hot for issuing parking tickets. Lol.
And the landscape itself, the way the mountains come right down to meet the sea, is genuinely something that photographs cannot adequately prepare you for. Stunningly breathtaking from all angles.
We went in with high expectations. Montenegro met them, and then some.
Next stamps incoming 🌍