With Dubrovnik so close to Croatia’s southern border, it’s easy to continue exploring down the glimmering Adriatic coastline, passport in hand, for a taste of Montenegro. The country’s recent history has been a rollercoaster, including remaining part of Yugoslavia until its collapse in 1992 and then buddying up with Serbia until officially declaring independence in 2006.
Besides the Adriatic Sea to its west, Montenegro has five other countries along its borders to keep it company (if you include Kosovo). I really wanted to check out what I had heard to be another gorgeous, sun-filled and sea goddess country, so I found a day trip that would whisk me away.
In our small group, we made our first stop at Perast, where some people had also purchased tickets for a boat ride to the island of Our Lady of the Rocks. We only had 45 minutes in total for this stop, so I looked at the crammed boat and opted to skip the boat ride and just walk around the city, which sits beside a beautiful bay. Our Lady of the Rocks is a manmade island anyway, and I could see it well enough from the shore, so I thought, “Eh.”
It’s a super quiet town. They have a basketball court on the edge of the water that was sun-washed with green paint chipping off the court floor. I wouldn’t have minded dusting off some lay-ups but, unfortunately the only thing I didn’t see was an actual ball on the court. So onward! Just walking down the coast and back of the slumbering town, the 45 minutes was up. You could see people scrambling to get off the boat to try and mad-dash exploration through the town ... from their reactions getting off the boat, I don’t think I missed anything on the island.
Onward around the bay, we made our way to the UNESCO-protected city of Kotor. The Old Town here is a port for cruise ships, so it's overflowing with tourists and like a maze inside. Similar to Dubrovnik, Kotor also has city walls that you can climb, but they go much further out from the center of Old Town with a much, much steeper incline. The walls were beckoning me, but with the blazing heat and the amount of time we had, I wasn’t sure I could make it back by the deadline. You know how it is when everything looks like it’s “right over there,” and then you find out that “right over there” was actually a mile away ... yeah, I couldn’t have that happen. So instead, I continued exploring, attempting to always go the opposite direction of the massive tour groups as I zigzagged through the Old Town, and just like that corn maze, I always felt like I ended up right where I started.
After Kotor, we made our way to the final destination of Budva, which was delightfully charming and oddly, did not feel overrun. I would have much preferred cutting out Perast all together and tacking that time on to Budva. Because Budva isn’t so contained, it just felt like there was more breathing room from the Riviera, to the Old Town and sprawling further inland. After having a bite to eat, I was having such an enjoyable time exploring the Old Town that I definitely made the mistake of not leaving myself enough time to leisurely walk back to our minibus. Instead, I thought, “Oh I have time to just see what’s behind that corner … oh one more.” When I finally looked at the time, a few expletives popped out. I started walking quickly … countdown at seven minutes … then slight jog …. four minutes … then full-out running until I had the bus in sight … negative two minutes … and back down to a quick pace that appeared calm and dignified as I tried to catch my breath and pretend I was not that person running for the bus. Ah well, three minutes is nothing – in Europe time, late is on time, especially in the Balkans.
As we headed back to Dubrovnik, we took a shortcut through the Bay of Kotor by hopping on one of the freight ferries across. It was funny to watch our BMW 16-seat minibus flooring it to be first in line onto the ship and then zipping away to debark. Hey, gotta be first in line back at the border crossing – you snooze, you lose. At the border crossings, I still can’t figure out the rhyme or reason behind when they decide to stamp passports. I would get a stamp coming back into Croatia, but I didn’t get one entering Montenegro … I hate that. Give me the stamp! I want the stamp!
The trip really was just fast enough to get a hint of the flavor of the country. The sun-kissed waters are definitely calling for a much longer, lazy trip next time.
