Destination
I arrived in Montenegro in late winter, which meant Budva was quiet, the coast was mostly to myself and the Bay of Kotor looked exactly like it does in the photographs that made you want to come in the first place.
Montenegro is small. The entire country is about the size of Wales. You can drive from the Albanian border to the Croatian border in a few hours, stopping whenever something looks interesting, which turns out to be constantly.
Kotor is the obvious starting point. The old town is walled, medieval and almost entirely car-free. It sits at the end of a bay that is often called Europe’s southernmost fjord, which is not technically accurate but captures the feeling of standing on the water looking at limestone mountains rising almost vertically on three sides.
I walked the walls on a grey morning when almost nobody else was there. The climb is steep and the views are extraordinary. You can see the entire bay from the top, the terracotta rooftops of the old town below, the water changing colour as the light changes. It is the kind of place that makes you slow down without trying.
The Bay of Kotor is best understood from the water. A boat tour of the bay takes you past the fortified walls of the old town, out into the open water with the mountains rising on every side and back along a coastline that changes character every few minutes. The island church of Our Lady of the Rocks appeared out of nowhere and I understood immediately why people have been painting it for centuries.
Tivat is worth a half day if you have it. Porto Montenegro turned a former military shipyard into a marina for superyachts, which sounds like it should be soulless and somehow isn’t. The contrast between the industrial bones of the place and the life that now fills it is genuinely interesting to walk around.
What stays with me most about Montenegro is the feeling that it has not yet been optimised for tourism. Things close when the owner feels like closing. Restaurants serve what they have. The pace is unhurried in a way that feels genuine rather than performed.
Everyone talks about Croatia. Almost nobody talks about what’s next door. I went to find out why, and I stayed longer than planned.
