Budva is the busiest tourist area in Montenegro. It’s a sprawling, mostly modern city with a growing number of high-rise condos. It’s late night party scene, big beach area, lots of restaurants and bars make it a favorite for all income groups.

Its old town, with narrow streets and squares, is more than 2500 years old, but only holds a tiny point of land on the local waterfront. But, for us, it was the best part. It is full of impeccable restaurants and shops (one with ruins on its lower level). Many of the terraces at homes, restaurants and bars are covered in grape vines and leaves.

On the waterfront, Budva’s Citadela Fortress was, as usual, built to protect Budva from attacks. Construction started in the 9th century, but the buildings that you see today were put there by the Venetians during the Renaissance. This includes library rooms that house rare books today.

We walked the city walls, which provided a glimpse of the old town from above, as well as a nice look at the Adriatic. However, it was not as big or as exciting as Dubrovnik’s city wall.

Budva’s promenade runs from the old town to Sveti Stefan, a small island turned into an exclusive hotel frequented by celebrities. The walk is about 15 minutes, and we should have tried that. Sveti Stefan was on our list of “must sees”, even though we were told you need a hotel or restaurant reservation to get on the island. We got close in our rental car, but the narrow roads along the way to the island was cluttered with people squeezing into limited parking spaces, and we turned around.



























































































































Sveti Stefan

Thank you for posting this great report. It is wonderful to see people visit for a bit longer than the day trip from Dubrovnik.

Montenegro does not get 300 days of sun a year though in fact, it gets an insane amount of rain. Weather looks perfect when you were there!

rialtogrl Thank you for your comments and that correction on the number of sunny days in Montenegro each year.. I saw that higher number somewhere, but upon further review it seems like 240 days of sunshine is more like it and when it rains, it pours, especially September through April. We feel even luckier.

you probably read the marketing materials from Porto Montenegro

One thing I love about Montenegro.. the rain and the storms. Nothing is halfway, this is for sure.

There are all sorts of boat excursions available for Kotor Bay. We negotiated our own discounted version on a small private speedboat at an earlier hour than most want to go. The speedboat literally hopped over the waves, with a constant bam, bam, bam on your butt. I loved it; my wife not so much; and I appreciate her even more for putting up with it for three hours.

We did slow down for many of the regular stops.

Our captain was an affable young story-teller with excellent English with plans to go to Miami and captain a yacht for a millionaire sometime in 2023.

There are any number of picture perfect villages hugging the bay, but nearby Perast is so beautiful, most tour boats allow passengers to disembark there for a few minutes. We scratched that and decided to drive over there and have a late lunch later.

Just off Perast is a postage stamp sized island big enough to barely fit Our Lady of the Rocks Catholic Church. The man-made island was created by locals piling up rocks and shipwrecks full of rocks. To this day, there is an annual celebration, where locals toss rocks, purportedly to very slowly widen the island.

This tiny place was surrounded with tour boats and so many people, we opted not to pay the extra fee and visit the church.

St. George Island is a real island, right next to Our Lady of the Rocks. It has an old 1,000 year-old monastery, and, according to our skipper was purchased for $5M by someone who wanted to keep it as is. The web says the local catholic church owns it. We soon learned that our captain was a story teller when he showed us a rusty shipwreck that he said was from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and was put there by Johnny Depp, who spends a lot of time at his house above on the hill, overlooking a resort he also owns. We could not find any of that to be true.

Funny thing is I started telling him about the owners of various mega yachts we had seen the day before at Porto Montenegro, and we overheard him telling another skipper these stories when we were back in the harbor. Maybe we gave him a new, and perhaps more accurate, story line for his future passengers.

Our skipper had a whale of a story about Mamula Island, a restored 19th century fort. This fort was converted by Mussolini into a concentration camp during WWII. The captain said the fort was turned into a hotel by another Russian oligarch. He was partially right. It is owned by a billionaire, but one from Montenegro, originally from Egypt. The $200M our skipper said was paid for the crumbling fort was actually less than 10% of that. The $10,000 daily room rates are actually about $1,000. And access to the island, its 32 rooms restaurant and spa, which appeared to be about half a mile from the mainland is not by private tunnel, as he told us, but by private shuttle boats.

We drove into two of several old WWII tunnels, where the Yugoslavs hid Hitler’s submarines. One had an old vessel, which we were TOLD was the last surviving one of its type from WWII. We were also TOLD that the layers of screening on the outside was to provide camouflage from any air surveillance by the Allies. We were TOLD that the camouflage “rocks” still there on these screens were actually styrofoam, which we checked was invented during WWII, so maybe.

We had the tunnels to ourselves.

Our last stop was the “Blue Cave”, where we were finally competing with other tour boats. But not the kind of back-up at Capri's blue grotto. The blue/green waters were spectacular and invited some of the passengers to jump in.

Once we got to the island hotel fort and the blue cave, we are outside of Kotor Bay and in the open Adriatic, maybe 75 minutes away from our starting point. The captain allowed me to drive the boat for half that time at full hopping speed in the open waters and back into parts of the bay where speed is not limited. He cautioned about fines if I got too close to land; and he took over, as we got closer to populated areas again, suggesting that the authorities wouldn’t take kindly to his allowing me to operate the boat.


















Our Lady of the Rocks



St. George Island

































Mamula Island









Blue Cave















































Perast

I love your photos of Budva! I think you were very smart to spend 4 days in Montenegro. I can tell by your photos that we didn't see nearly as much as you did of Budva and the other places. We enjoyed Budva's old town. I remember we left Dubrovnik very early in the morning so we didn't have time for breakfast. But that was fine because we enjoyed a delicious breakfast in Budva's Old Town and then explored a bit. We didn't have time to walk along the walls which would have been nice or visit the fortress. I am enjoying reliving our trip through your report and photos and learning more.

Your speed boat trip sounds like a lot of fun but I think all the bumping across waves would bother me, too! Your story-telling captain sounds like a hoot! I am sure he make the trip even more enjoyable.

Fabulous report, as always. Thanks for the effort in sharing this.

The speedboat does seem awesome! I think your photos will make everyone want to visit Montenegro..

KarenWoo Adelaidean Thank you.

rialtogrl We thought it would be a great place to live, until you told us about all the rain. A lot of English is spoken and friendly people.

it is a great place to live, I don’t mind rain, as long as it is not constant. A lot of expats in Budva and Tivat, also around Kotor.. It is not perfect but the quality of life is pretty nice.

The most scenic waterfront town on Kotor Bay is Perast. It overlooks those two small islands with churches I mentioned in the prior post. With lots of dining, only inches from the water, it was the perfect spot for lunch and we can imagine sunset there.

There is one main street, mostly used by golf carts, with very limited access for cars and only for the 300 people who live there. One of the few cars we saw parked near the town was an older Mercedes with only New York plates. One other oddity was a bocce ball court that had advertising on the walls, as well as what appeared to be pro-Fidel Castro propaganda.

Most of the churches in Perast are Catholic, and the oldest dates to 900 AD.

Iconic looking town. Not much to do, but wow. Reminded us a little of Hallstatt in Austria.










































































































Many of the old restored buildings in the village center, behind wrought iron gates, have been converted into a high end resort hotel.

Sorry for the misspelling of Perast. I usually do one last review and possible edit after posting, but this one went to moderators overnight. They must be having spam issues again.

Another nice day, and we decided to head for the hills. In many rural areas of the US, we see some shabby mobile homes and junk cars. We don’t recall seeing anything like that in Montenegro. In fact, our climb toward and up to Lovcen National Park included mostly manicured properties and homes. There were some narrow, but good, roads and then, surprisingly, a wide, modern highway for the last stretch to the national park.

We found a little out-of-the-way modern hotel for a nice quiet outside breakfast.

There were two large mountains in the distance, one was Montenegro’s tallest with communication towers; the other was Mt. Lovcen, our destination.

We saw so few cars coming and going on the road up, we were surprised to see a line for National Park tickets. The toll was only two euros, but the friendly ticket taker was engaged in a long animated chat with the first car.

You can visit there to enjoy the magnificent views for the token mountain entry fee, but there’s an extra five euro fee if you want to to visit the burial mausoleum of Montengero's most revered royal, leader and poet from the 1800's, Prince Peter. A very stately and elaborate tomb.

To get there, you need to navigate a massive, curving and steep staircase through the mountain (see yellow line on one photo). We counted over 400 steps. There were no elevators and lots of heavy breathing by guests.

Mt. Lovcen is sometimes referred to as "Black Mountain", hence the source of the name for "Montenegro" itself. It offers 360 degree views to the Adriatic to the Albanian Alps to Cetinje, the former royal capital of the country, just below (and our next stop).

Cetinje, beginning in the 1400’s, was the royal capital of Montenegro. Although, some of the stately buildings, remain and are kept in good shape, little was open. Since we were the only obvious tourists in town on this gorgeous day, that was not a surprise.

The most striking buildings were on the edge of town, a complex that made up the Monastery of St. Peter of Cetinje. A monk invited us into the courtyard of the orthodox complex, after providing my wife with a large scarf-like covering. We were told that absolutely no photographs were allowed. Several more priests beckoned us into an extremely tiny but elaborately decorated space with icons and other relics. Ironically, we had a difficult time navigating the small space as the several priests, obviously visiting, were busily taking photos of each other and selfies of themselves in a less than solemn manner. When we pointed to stairs and other passages from the outer courtyard within the huge complex, we got a negative finger wag, indicating our very brief tour was over.

In town, the streets, which reminded us of a western town in the US, were empty. There were neat colorful buildings, suggesting that maybe they get some summer visitors. But on this beautiful September day, we couldn’t find a restaurant busy enough to predict a good place for lunch.

It ended its time as the country’s capital in 1946, two years after Communist partisans summarily executed 28 local civilians, whom they claimed, without trial, were collaborating with the Germans, who were occupying Montenegro at the time.

We googled Cetinje to find out why it was so quiet, and we learned about a more recent massacre. Just a few weeks earlier, 11 people, including the shooter, were killed in a mass shooting in this small town that started over an argument with family members over unpaid rent. Maybe not such a big deal in the US, but a real biggie in Montenegro.

Between Budva and Herceg-Novi on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast is a peninsula and small previously undeveloped bay.

Samih Sawiris, an Egyptian born billionaire spotted an old military training ground on Lustica Bay and created a new seaside village aptly named Lustica Bay. Sawiris headed up a successful Swiss real estate development company and had called Montenegro his home for several years.

This isn’t quite the billionaire haven that Porto Montenegro is, but, as a destination for mere millionaires, it also is a quite impressive, built from scratch, waterfront village.

Again, most of the homes, although reported to be sold, sit empty, perhaps mostly because mid-September is off season for this largely summer community.

The hotel was operating, the restaurants open, and again we got to take advantage of great food at a fairly priced restaurant. And, lots of top notch service when there are only two tables occupied. Admittedly, we were a little early for dinner, but it’s nice when someone with deep pockets is subsidizing the place to keep it open and looking like a Disney park.

The clouds were rolling in. As we left the next morning, it was quiet enough and raining enough that the border guard for Montenegro had to run out of a larger building to get into his booth to accept our papers.

Thanks to all for reading this report.

Thank you again for sharing your observations and photos. Your photos really do capture the beauty of Montenegro. Lots more to see - Durmitor, and Lake Skadar for starters - if you decide to come back!

(and.. Cetinje is always quiet in the afternoon, except weekends (usually) but in the evening it gets busy with everyone out, kids playing and all cafe tables full. Friday and Saturday evenings are a fashion show on the main drag, Another reason to come back!)

Great photos and Iike seeing that the capital has cleaned up so well since the 90s when I was last up there (used to be armed men lounging in the street).

The crystal clean water will stop if those fat-giant ships keep going in there, they should hold their human waste in tanks until they hit international waters (just off shore) but they have bypass valves and litigation shows they dump where they want.

Thank you. Maybe it was the perfect weather, maybe it was our fun boat excursion, maybe it was the sheer beauty of Kotor Bay, maybe it was the five star lunches/dinner in five star locations at 3 star prices, or maybe it was just September when the summer crowds have moved on, but we have talked with other family members about returning. And, Lake Skadar is the one place we wished we had visited. Will have to look up Durmitor.

Thank you. Many years ago, we briefly owned, as a side biz, a small cruise travel agency and now regret contributing to what that industry has become.

Whitehall - Thanks for the great Montenegro Trip Report. We are just starting to plan our Slovenia, Croatia tour. Starting with a 14 day Rick Steves touring ending in Dubrovnik. If I read your report correctly you rented a car in Dubrovnik and headed to Montenegro. Any problems taking a car into Montenegro from Croatia? Also, I don't think we will have 4 days for Montenegro. If you had only a couple of days would you stay in Perast? And do days trip on either side of that town? Someone mentioned visiting Hercog Novi instead of Budva? Again, amazing pictures.

Thank you. We absolutely loved every bit of Montenegro. Yes, we rented a car at Dubrovnik airport and quickly found ourself at the two border crossings (Croatia and Montenegro). Passports and a handful of papers provided by rental car agency; otherwise no questions or conversation. Our first stop on the way in was Herceg Novi. We walked the beach promenade and ended at the small old town. Budva day trip had the more interesting old town with more restaurants and shops. The whole area is relatively compact (we were able to even double cover a huge chunk of it in our speed boat trip). Perast is a very small town with stunning beauty and some great restaurants rigjht on the water. A perfect lunch stop, but it is largely one relatively long waterfront street. We found that Kotor, with its castle hike and magnificent old town was a better and more active place to come home to in the evening. Cruise ship people are gone, and it had a busy but uncrowded feel at night.