Montenegro & Dubrovnik

We met up with some other families for a month in Montenegro. We stayed in the city of Tivat. Unbeknownst to us, this was a city for the rich and famous, and there were many superyachts docked in town.

Tivat

The really rich area is Porto Montenegro, but we stayed about a 10 minute walk south of that area. Three of us families stayed in one apartment building and the views from the top apartments were amazing. The fourth family stayed down the street. We were really close to a beach which we enjoyed even though the fish were a bit bitey!

There was also a submarine in town we visited that was quite interesting. Although I didn’t appreciate the woman telling us several times that it was very old and fragile. (It was built in 1970!)

Perast

We visited a few other places on the Bay of Kotor while there – namely Perast and Kotor. Perast was a cute little town consisting of only one street along the water. It’s a famous place for visiting two island churches just offshore.

Kotor

Kotor has a beautiful walled old town, although there were a lot of tourists there! The day we went, there were two large cruise ships in town in addition to the tour buses. The city walls were quite impressive and continued up the mountain which you could walk up (we didn’t!).

Herceg Novi

This is another town on the Bay of Kotor, but it isn’t as touristy as the others. There was a nice promenade along the water and a small old town up the hill above the water with a bit of remaining fortification wall.

Budva

We took a day trip to Budva. This town was cute but had the most expensive Gyros that we have found in Europe – 9 euros! To put this into perspective, we paid 2.50 – 3.50 in Greece (Rhodes was a bit more – 3.50 – 4.50), in Turkey and Albania, Burek (similar meal – bread with meat) was 1 euro. Montenegro in general was very, very expensive! We ended up never eating out and only went out for coffee and drinks a couple of times.

Budva has two sections – the modern high-rises and fancy hotels and the small, cute, walled old town.

Sveti Stefan

A bit further south of Budva is Sveti Stefan. This is an island town that you see on all the tourist brochures, so we decided to visit. After paying our 10 euros per hour to park, we realised that we hadn’t done our research properly… You actually can’t visit the island without a ticket for a private tour which you have to buy from the hotel. The next tour wasn’t for several hours and we didn’t want to keep paying for parking. So, we just walked around and looked at the island from afar.

Dubrovnik

We took an overnight trip to Dubrovnik, which was only about an hour and a half drive away from Tivat. I visited Dubrovnik back in 1987 and really liked it back then so I was curious to see what it was like now with a ton more tourists. It was still lovely and we really enjoyed it. The walls of the city are so impressive! But we decided not to walk on them because they were charging 40 euros per person!!

Friends

Our main goal of our month in Montenegro was to spend time with some of our wonderful travelling family friends. It is such a joy to find like-minded families whose kids also get along with ours. Thanks for coming to hang out with us!!