Montenegro
If you are in Dubrovnik, a side trip to Montenegro, even if it is only for a day excursion, is well worth it. The Montenegro border is only an hour south of Dubrovnik. Crossing the border is straight forward, and if you do not have a Green card for car insurance, you can purchase one for E 15.
The first town in Montenegro was Herceg Novi, which we drove through without stopping as nothing caught our eye. There is a ferry to Kotor, but we choose to drive the 40 km around the bay of Kotor. We stopped in Risan, the oldest town on the bay, which at one time was a wealthy fishing village. It has Roman ruins from the 2nd and 3rd century and for an entrance fee of E 2 we looked at the Roman mosaic floors – living room, dining room, game room, and bedroom. We then walked through the park to the old church and found Gabela street with its medieval architecture dating from the 14th century.
We drove on to Perast which was influenced by Venetian settlers and has some of the best preserved Baroque architecture in the eastern Adriatic coast. At one time Perast had 16 palaces and 17 churches or family chapels and 1,600 residents. There are two picturesque islands just offshore which you can visit by boat. The smaller St George’s island is home to a Benedictine monastery, and Our-Lady-of-the-Rock Island has a magnificent church. We spent an hour in Perast and continued on to Kotor. We parked the car in the parking lot outside of the city wall, took our luggage and found our hotel, Hotel Monte Cristo. Kotor is much smaller than Dubrovnik but equally charming. Kotor is filled with palaces that have been converted into museums and hotels. We ate dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, Rosa Luna, on the terrace. Dinner was E 35.
There are three gates into the city. We came into the city through the North gate yesterday so we went out through the main gate, also known as the Sea Gate as it faces the water. There were lots of tours streaming in from the cruise ships.
Plazas with outdoor restaurants abound, making it easy to find a place to eat and drink and take in the Hill of St John and Kotor fortress rising up behind the town. The walls were started in the 9th century and added to throughout the following centuries. At night the walls are lit and are just a spectacular sight. Outside the wall near the main gate is the market with fresh produce and stores which are less expensive than the grocery store inside the old town. The tourist information office is just outside the Sea Gate. We inquired about taking a tour of the town, and we were surprised to learn that all the tours we saw in the city were organized by the cruise ships for their guests, so we got a map of the city and did our own self-guided tour.
The next day we decided to make the climb up to the fortress. We went back to the north gate and found the entrance to the main path which begins under an arch behind the church of St Maria. Although it looks like, it would be a tough climb it only took us 40 minutes to reach the church and 2 hours to the top. It wasn’t too bad a climb with steps along with a rock path. Various brochures have different statistics, but they do agree that there are 1350 steps. The fortification walls are impressive.
That evening we went to dinner in the next square over, at Kajaz. There are a plethora of plazas each filled with wonderful outdoor restaurants. Our seafood risotto and Greek salad with wine were E 20.
The next day we drove south to Budva which is also on the coast. It took less than an hour to get there. We found an information booth and got a map of the “Riviera,” so we could locate Stari Grad, or Old Town, the small walled city. This is a very old town dating back to 1st century BC. There were several churches and museums which were easily covered in an hour. We then walked back through a pretty park and continued along the “beach” which is still pretty rocky, but more beach-like than the beaches in Croatia. It definitely had the feeling of a Riviera resort town.
We drove further down the coast to Sveti Stefan. We had read it was being developed by a hotel but were surprised to find you could not even walk onto the island without a reservation. This beach was rocky as well, but it was obvious they had imported the red pebbles. It was stunning with the red pebbles and white beach chairs and umbrellas.
We return to Kotor and had dinner at the Terrace on top of the wall looking up at the fort. It is a really beautiful sight as the walls all the way along the fort are lit at night. It could be a Disney setting. We both had grilled squid and shared a Greek salad with a glass of local white wine for EUR 35.
Excerpt from my article, Mountains, a monastery, and reminder of war – a self-drive tour of the Balkan countries, published in the September, 2015 issue of International Travel News.
