Our first destination in Montenegro was a small town called Cetinje. Our hostel was a building that felt like it was abandoned decades ago. The railing for the stairs was broken, there were no lights in the stairwell (had to go down 3 flights of stairs for the toilet), no furniture besides the bed, etc. Our room was the entire attic, which was funny. As it turns out, Cetinje is a big party place and both nights it was difficult to sleep with all the music and drinking late in the evening on either side of our building. During the day, though, the town seemed relatively dead. We wondered if there were events going on when we were there.

The real highlight of Cetinje is being close to the Lovćen National Park. One of the days we took a 30 minute taxi to do some casual hiking in the area. There are not that many trails and everything is pretty short. We did a trail that was gradual and easy up to the mausoleum that sits at a high point with nice views all around the park going all the way to the ocean. Nick and I passed a small village, open fields, and forests. Overall I would say the park was underwhelming and if anyone trying to plan a trip to Montenegro feels short on time it’s an easy area to cut.

The main highlight of our time in Montenegro was Kotor. What was supposed to be an approximately 1.5 hour bus ride there ended up being almost 5 hours long due to insane traffic. We had experienced this in Albania as well, but this was still pretty bad. Luckily we had several days there so we could just take it easy after the crazy bus ride. The views coming in the city from the top of the serpentine road were incredible. It was hard to get a good picture of it, but it was stunning with the harbor and old town in view. Our first dinner was at La Catedral Pasta Bar where we shared the seafood pasta and a burrata appetizer. It was so yummy, finally our bad food streak was over! It would turn out that a big portion of our Kotor experience would just be eating good food, which was a nice change of pace.

One of the most iconic features in Kotor is the fort wall that goes up the hill behind old town. To go up from old town there is a fee of 15 euros per person (crazy expensive) but there is a back way that is free (for now). Nick and I walked the back way, which is supposedly longer and hard but I thought it was much less steep and less busy, which was fantastic. Along the way up the switch backs there was a little seating area where a day drunk old man was selling his homemade goat cheese, drinks, and various accompaniments. It didn’t seem like he was all that interested in actually selling much and we had to pester a little bit for bread with our cheese. Nick tried to buy a pomegranate drink and he refused. We saw him chase or scare off other customers entirely while we were there, but some managed to make purchases. Nick loved the experience and moderately enjoyed the cheese. The views were nice but the wasps were everywhere.

Eventually we made it to the fortress. There were ruins leading up to the area where we could enter. There was a wooden ladder up the wall to a window we could climb through in order to be on the wall. Once there we continued up the stairs to the fort at the top for some amazing views and cool exploring. Nick had read that once on the wall people walk down the stairs to exit the normal way without needing to buy a ticket. It seems that they’ve increased the monitoring on this because once we finally made it all the way down the steep steps we were told we would need to buy a ticket to exit. Instead we got our steps in and walked all the way back up the stairs to our window/ladder then all the way back down the back way. Going up and down both the back way and the stairs, having our cheese break, and taking some photos took about 3 hours. The views of old town from up there made it worth it though.

After our exhausting walk we were super excited for a lunch break. I was perhaps more excited, but its not a competition (Nick would lose a lot in that case). We went to Konoba Scala Santa, an amazing seafood restaurant in old town. We shared the fish carpaccio, the shrimp pasta, and the cuttlefish risotto. Everything was amazing and really hit the spot after our strenuous walk. The old town was cute with lots of napping cats, gelato places, and souvenir shops.

One day was pretty lazy and spent at the beach. Our Australian friends don’t believe anything that isn’t white soft sand on the ocean is a beach so they’d be pretty offended by the one in Kotor. It was made up of pebbles. That doesn’t bother Nick and I too much, though, and the water temperature was perfect. We didn’t beach for very long, but enjoyed our relaxed day there and back at our apartment. I forgot to mention that the lady that runs the apartment rentals tried giving us beers as a welcome drink (which we declined since we don’t drink beer) so instead she came back with a plate of fresh pancakes which Nick loved.

Our final day in Kotor was a Monday so we hoped traffic would be better than on the weekend. There are so many cute little towns that are about 20-40 minutes away by bus up the serpentine road, but traffic was so horrendous that we knew we would have to skip them. Perast, however, was a town in the opposite direction so we took the local bus there instead. It was pretty quiet. We enjoyed a fika beside the ocean, followed by a short boat ride to the island. “Our Lady of the Rocks” is an island with a church on it that is open to visitors. It was a quick stop for us as the museum inside is small. It was neat but filled with tours so it was nice to get back to shore.

Nick enjoyed wandering up and down the steps on the old town. We went up a bell tower beside a church and got amazing views of the town. The stairs were steep and there were sections where we had to duck a lot to avoid hitting our heads. We ended our time there with lunch at Trattoria Rosmarino. This was our last meal in Montenegro so we decided to go all out. We shared a burrata salad (delicious), tuna tartar (yummy), fish soup (not my favorite but it was okay), and a fish platter. The fish platter had rice, vegetables, swordfish, mystery fish, shrimp, octopus, and mussels. Unfortunately only the mystery fish and the mussels were good and not overcooked. That was a let down after so much good food. Our friends had warned us that Montenegro had hits and misses when it came to food, though.

Our local bus back to Kotor took hours due to traffic (instead of the 30 minutes it was supposed to). We were not back for long before I noticed that the floor was covered in hundreds of ants! It turns out the bottom of my sandals had a lot of squished figs in them. They went straight outside followed by me frantically cleaning up as many ants as I could. The town has many pomegranate and fig trees everywhere, so it was not unusual to step on them occasionally. Lesson learned! We loved it in Kotor, but would only go back during shoulder season as there were so many tour groups, cruise ships, and crazy traffic.