- Stacey Shevlin
Day Trip To Montenegro
Updated: Sep 1, 2021
Budva Ballerina Statue
Day Trip to Montenegro – 3 City Tour
I took a day trip to Montenegro with my friend Karen, who was visiting us in Dubrovnik, from Philadelphia.
We scheduled through Viator – an online aggregator of vacation tours. The booking was very smooth, and we were picked up the next day by a local operator of the tour. We left very early, we were picked up at 7:30 am at a local hotel. We then traveled around the city to pick up the other 15 guests… and then we were off.
The seaside town of Budva
First stop Budva
The drive to Budva went smoothly, only a few minutes crossing the border. Before reaching Budva, we made a stop to take pictures on the highway of a resort island called Sveti Stefan – in my opinion, a complete waste of time. Yes .. the island is beautiful, but you are just standing at the highway taking photos of very wealthy people in the distance —
Budva is a coastal town, a bit like Dubrovnik. It’s much smaller, and filled with jewelry shops and restaurants.. there really wasn’t much to see there. The tour only allows for 1 hour in each location, so there wouldn’t be time to see much anyway.
It was our bad fortune that 2 of the guests on our tour got lost in town. I am still not sure how that is even possible, it is the smallest town and all roads lead out. These two women didn’t speak the local language or English, so they were hopelessly lost. Luckily there was a woman on our tour that did speak their language, and once the tour guide was able to reach them by phone this wonderful woman attempted to get them back to the group. All of the efforts were to no avail.
We waited nearly 2 hours, guest getting angry and somewhat mean, tour guide in tears. Finally, we discovered that they got in a cab and were in route to the next destination on the tour.
Kotor Walls
Kotor
Next, we traveled to Kotor was an amazing city. So beautiful. I wish we had more time there. As you can see in the photo it’s quite small, but it’s located on an amazing bay. It’s an old walled city much like Dubrovnik, but again much smaller. The photo was taken from the walls above the city. We had a quick tour of the town, then decided to take a walk up the hundreds of stairs to the first stop on the high wall- a church, pictured below… We didn’t have time to go further, but the stairs reach for 5km~!
Perast
After our far to short a time in Kotor we continued on to Perast. The main attraction there is an island with a church on it, Our Lady Of The Rocks. The church island is reachable by boat and open for visitors. What was more interesting to me was that right next to this island is a cemetery island…. sadly not open to the public. Rather than take the boat out to the church we chose to walk down the one road in town and sit for a glass of local wine.
The town was very sweet with great views of the mountains and sea. We only had 45 minutes so we didn’t get to do much, but we did get to see the set up for a wedding. Pictured below.
The Town of Perast, Montenegro
All in all, I really enjoyed seeing a small piece of Montenegro. I think I could skip Budva and head right to Kotor, and take a quick stop in Perast on the way back to Croatia. We did hit a bit of traffic on the border on the road back and didn’t get home till after 10pm. It was still well worth it, I recommend an excursion if you find yourself in Dubrovnik.
If you want to check out the tours Viator has in this area visit them HERE
Happy Touring