Montenegro (and Dubrovnik)

We're always on the search for a cheaper getaway. I still know very little about this part of the world, so it was interesting to read up on Montenegro’s history, as well as some worrying recent events. The budget airlines have only just started coming here, so the general consensus seemed to be: experience Montenegro now before it gets too popular. As our three requirements for any getaway are cheap beer, less people and more cats, this felt like a winner already.

This was the first easyJet flight I had been on that didn’t have a announcements in the local language, a language that also didn’t feature on Google translate. I made the typical English assumption that everyone would at least speak my language, and that turned out to be the case. We arrived in Tivat and picked up a car at the airport. Walking through the carpark, the hire company employee gave us tips on where to go and lightly told us “our roads are terrible”. This would turn out to be an understatement.

We were staying in an apartment a short drive from the airport, just around the bay from Kotor. We were promised a kitchenette, but ended up with a kettle sitting on a microwave on top of a fridge. Clearly the only people staying there, the owner spent so much time trying to upsell us to a bigger flat. We stuck to our budget guns and made the most of the supermarket next door. As we could make our own breakfast and lunch each day, I didn’t have a problem spending a little more on food and drinks in the evening. 

Still slightly dazed from the 5am start, we spent our first afternoon walking around Kotor’s UNESCO protected old town. Charming narrow lanes were dotted with shops, bars and cats. The famous cat museum was closed for renovation, but we saw plenty of content felines during our exploration. We then committed ourselves to the steep Old Town Road up to the fortress, the reward being the first of what would be many stunning views - dark mountains plunging into crystal clear waters, with little towns and villages clinging to the edge. On the way back down it started to rain, making the stone path a little slippery, but we survived and sheltered in a bar to get acquainted with the local beer. We then found Hoste, a brilliant craft beer bar serving Fabrika beers - brewed by the owner himself. It was a brilliant find which unfortunately didn’t seem to be open any other evening during the rest of our holiday. We finished the night with a feast at Galerija - consuming a tapas board of meat and cheese to start followed by stuffed squid with garlic potatoes. All this came with a view of the sunset over the bay and the fortress above us lit up. I thought we would have been too tired to fit so much in, but I’m glad we powered through. I’ve been driven around Greece so I am used to fearing for my life, but the drive back on the narrow road around the bay with locals speeding at us in the opposite direction sure was something. Back at the apartment, the local cats were doing backflips in front of the owner’s dog, clearly showing who was the boss.

After a much needed lie in, we started our drive to Cetinje, but immediately got a warning of a flat tyre. After a short detour back to the airport, one of the hire company employees took a look and said it “should be fine”. This would also turn out to be an understatement. Back on the road, we started our climb through the mountains with more amazing views. Cetinje was the royal capital and is a good 10 degrees cooler than the coast. It has the main national museums and you can buy a ticket which gets you in to all five. One of the benefits of still dressing like a student is that you occasionally get confused for one, so we paid only five Euros instead of 10. We had planned to visit the Lipa caves afterwards, but forgot to check the opening times and saw that we had missed our chance. Poor organisational skills. Driving back to the coast, we went to Budva. There was another beautiful Old Town, but slightly more developed and touristy, plus it was attached to a large beach resort with all the standard concrete blobs. It was still just out of season so it wasn’t too busy, and I saw the Greek football team graffiti (ΠΑΟΚ) that appears to be following us around the world, Bad Wolf style. We ate at Konoba Portun, choosing a local cream cheese, bruschetta with sardines, pasta with salmon for me and a big octopus for my associate. It was all very nice but it was the same price as the previous night’s meal and only half as much food. I blame this for us getting some stodgy sweet snacks from a supermarket afterwards. We then made the short drive to Sveti Stefan, with the sun setting behind this photo hotspot -  a fortified island that is now a luxury hotel. Perhaps that was out of season too, as it looked closed up and abandoned. Our approach was blocked by the modern curse of a Pre Wedding Photoshoot, a bride and groom moodily emoting at each other without making eye contact. So much love. Never got the appeal of those things, and definitely not a fan of these idiots getting in the way of my photos. After trying to crop them out of our shots as much as possible, we drove back and tried to make a more coherent plan for the rest of the week.

The next morning we had the double whammy of wasps finding their way into our room and the water going off in our village. Apparently the water just ran out from time to time. Not very refreshed, we made the short drive round the bay to Perast, a one street village with views for days across the bay, including the islands of Sveti Đorđe (a monastery) and Gospa od Škrpjela (a church). Again we easily resisted the urge to pay to Go See The Thing when you can just as easily See The Thing for free. It was a beautiful place, but the small streets were already feeling overcrowded, it must be hell in the summer. Both here and across the country, bar and venue owners seemed to be tearing up the streets and doing other work to prepare for the busy times to come. Tourist buses were doing battle in the tiny car park, it was a mess. We then drove further round the picturesque bay to Herceg Novi, parking on the outskirts and walking along the empty beach front. We had another Stari Grad (old town) to see, and had brilliant views from the fortresses at either end, especially the amphitheatre at the top. I had another “y tho” moment with all the tourists welding drones. Just keep out of my way with your shrill buzzing menace, ta. The drive back to Kotor was reliably beautiful, and we had a few drinks in the sun. That evening we dined at Ladovina. It was empty, but most likely because my eating schedule is always early compared to the Mediterranean appetite. We had a filling meal of squid ragu and local cakes. Arriving back to our apartment, it was thankfully not full of wasps.

The next day we retraced our drive to Cetinje, this time successfully visiting the Lipa Caves. There were fascinating ancient formations, with stalagmites and stalactites galore. We then climbed higher to Lovcen National Park. It totally felt like cheating, but you can (and we did) drive all the way to the top of this mountain to visit the Njegos Mausoleum. The turning point outside the restaurant at the peak was a crowded nightmare. It was weird to suddenly see snow everywhere, defrosting but still very deep. This highpoint naturally delivered on views across the country, while I tried to ignore my fear of heights. We drove through the mountains back to Kotor and experienced for the first time something that would ultimately do in our tyres - the active resurfacing of a road where they expect you to drive around this mess rather than close the road and offer a diversion - which to be fair probably isn’t an option. The Kotor Lovcen road does offer some of the more amazing views across the bay, we could see the airport and pretty much every else we had visited so far, showing how little relative distance we had travelled. After more beers in the Old Town sunshine, complete with sunbathing cats doing their best to ignore tourists, we went to Gastro Pub 702 which earned points for serving Fabrika beers from Hoste, but lost out thanks to another curse - The Screaming Child. That was joined by local kids doing laps around the block on their bikes. Once all the youngsters were banished, it was bliss. We had bruschetta coated in what appeared to be chip spice, and salted grilled squid. Divine.

The first destination on our next day was Bar, which has another Stari Grad. Ignoring the street of tourist tat that leads to it, this old town was more of a collection of ruins, complete with its own army of cats. We then went Ulcinj, close to the Albanian border. A more unkempt town off the main tourist trail, their Stari Grad was a far more quiet collection of hotels, restaurants and ruins with views across the coast. The call to prayers was a reminder that we were in one of the Muslim majority areas. Our next destination was the Lake Skadar National Park, but then we got an actual flat tyre. An attempt was made to fix it using the kit that was in the car, and then we managed to drive back to our hire company at the airport. They “took a look at it” (translation: pumped it up again) but did not have a spare car or even a replacement tyre to give us. There were a lot of apologies, but we were not massively confident that it wouldn't just happen again. Back at our apartment we calmed down with a beer on the beach. That evening we thought we’d try one of the restaurants within walking distance to where we were staying. The nearest and highest rated was still closed for the season, so instead we went a little further to Konoba Bokeški Gušti, sitting on an outdoor terrace next to the lake. We had cheese in oil followed by stuffed calamari, which was tasty to say the least. On the beach by our table the local sparrows had a gang war over the remaining bread.

Our penultimate day saw a second attempt to reach Lake Skadar. We did our best to ignore the boat hawkers and just went for a walk around the edge of the lake. There was no chance we were going to shell out for one of the many trips around the lake that were being peddled, I really question just what extra views they could have offered. For the second or third time, a local guy tried to talk football with me after hearing I was from York. It was impressive that they had even heard of York City FC, as I’m not even sure what minor league they’re in. We found Besac fortress, proudly showing off its EU funding, which offered brilliant views of the lake below. More views of the lake were given during the drive around it to reach the mini waterfalls and canyon at Niagara (yes, really). There was a nondescript entrance that advertised a restaurant more than the attraction. As we left we passed four nuns and a priest taking selfies. There’s probably a joke there somewhere. We then drove on to the capital, Podgorica, which can be described as “skippable at best”. There was an anti-government protest outside the parliament, the police appeared to be filming it so we didn’t stick around. We then drove back into the mountains to the Ostrog monastery. I must admit this was underwhelming as well, especially after witnessing Meteora in Greece. We were treated to a drive back through a part of the country we hadn’t seen yet, especially nice were the mountain lakes near Niksic. However we did have to drive over another extended area of unsurfaced road which made me fear for our tyres. Making it back to Kotor, we had what was probably our swankiest meal at Gallion - so posh they didn’t even serve beer. Sticking to tap water, we had feta cheese parcels to start and seafood risotto for main. We then were sure to visit the bus station to purchase tickets for tomorrow’s destination.  

Running out of things to easily drive to (the north of the country looked beautiful but would have been a seven hour round trip), we got the bus to Dubrovnik. Our small Montenegro guide book even had a chapter on it, saying You Might As Well. I thought Easter holidays plus peak Game of Thrones saturation would make it far too busy, but off we went. The bus drove over more dug up roads and we had to suffer a family of hell children on board. There were two borders checkpoints to cross and we spent a lengthy wait at both, that was even after the driver gave the Montenegrin guard a box of chocolate orange bars that definitely wasn't a bribe. One of our passengers was not let in at the Croatian border and was left behind, looking very distressed. We were over 90 minutes late arriving at the bus station, which as we only had the afternoon to visit was very annoying. The walk from there to the old town was around 45 minutes and easy to do, as I was not spending any more time on a bus. It was predictably busy within the walls, but easy to lose the crowds by turning off the main streets. The best decision was to go up on the city walls. It wasn’t cheap, but most importantly it wasn’t busy, and gave perfect views of the terracotta rooftops of Kings Landing. We were visiting ahead of the GoT finale so it wasn’t a shock to still see it all in one piece. We also managed to do a complete circuit before the rains came. We visited a couple of museums and saw a few other Thrones filming locations, plus the now standard cats all over the place. After several wrong turns we found the Beer Factory and had a local brew. The walk back to the bus station was probably the worst weather of the holiday, but as this was right at the end it didn’t feel too bad. The bus and border situation going back were both thankfully less busy, with the Montenegro side even boasting well fed border cats. Thankfully our tyres held out to get us back to the airport in the morning, and the hire company told us we drove almost 1,000 km throughout our week.  

Advice and conclusions

Go to Montenegro! You won’t regret it. Some of the most consistently stunning scenery I have ever witnessed.

Hire a car but beware the condition of the roads. You might be able to get around by public transport, the buses we did see looked pretty modern. 

You don't need a week - we only did that because the flight from Manchester was weekly. You can probably do the main highlights over a long weekend based in Kotor.

Don't go to Dubrovnik from Montenegro. Border delays eat up too much of your day. Save that for another time when you’re in Croatia. 

Keep passport with you all the time. This is true of a lot of countries. You need to register at a local police station on your arrival, but your hotel should do that for you.

Stay online. Montenegro isn’t in the EU yet so we couldn’t use our own mobile data. We hired an unlimited internet router from the car company for 2 EUR a day. It was a lifeline and such a convenience that I’m used to now.