I've been interested in a holiday to the Balkans for a long time. I've been hearing Dubrovnik's name a lot in recent years, and the photos on the internet seemed very interesting. Then we received positive feedback from a few of our friends who went there and we decided to plan a trip.
Although choosing mid-May as a timing wasn't very accurate, our trip was quite colorful. We were generally pleased. But I think it's better to go from early June. We planned our tour to fly to Podgorica, rent a car there and drive for a week. Distances are generally close. Considering that we have a 2-year-old son with us, our trip was relatively limited to activities that could be done with the child, but we did our best 🙂
First of all, we pushed the boundaries by staying in 4 different hotels in 7 days. We've seen every place we can see in a week in the area. I'd like to do a balkan tour again and more detailed, this time in a caravan, but 🙂
Anyway, back to our trip, we arrived in Podgorica on the first day and took our car and then headed to Budva, the town where we would stay immediately, and we stopped by several different towns on the beach until we reached Budva, which is about 45 minutes away. . Since it's still noon and the weather is so hot, we stopped by Petrovac first, we wandered there for about an hour, there's a lovely little town, a beach, a port with fishing boats and cute fish restaurants, i'd say it looks like our Shield.
We stopped by Sveti Stefan after Petrovac. It's a pretty nice place, too, but it doesn't promise much outside the beach because the tiny island, which is actually very nice, belongs to a completely private hotel, no entrance, only those who stay there can get in. You just go spend time on the beach and watch the view. After spending some time there, we went to Budva and found the apartment where we were staying. (www.villaapia.com ) Staying in the apartitias is really much more comfortable with the child, our apartment was quite comfortable, the service was very good and it was 2 minutes walk from old town. It was very enjoyable to walk through the narrow streets of the old town and eat at the fish restaurant recommended by the apart stake. I'm sure it's a lot of time in the summer, i'm sure it's a lot of work since the season hasn't begun. You can eat plenty of fresh seafood in this area, try many different kinds of risotto.
After dinner in the evening, walking along the beach at the marina and, of course, eating ice cream is also a pleasure. During this holiday we had ice cream 1-2-3 times a day, some kind of ice cream really and it was very nice. We stayed in Budva for 2 nights. The next day the weather broke down and it rained almost all day, so we generally went outside during the hours of the rain and tried to spend time in cafes and restaurants at other times, hop in the car in the afternoon and went to Tivat and Kotor for a short tour. we did it and went back to Budva. It worked for us again to stay apart because it was easier to spend time when it was a large space. It is possible to find plenty of fruit and vegetables in this region that looks like our aegean coast, i can say that when we go it is strawberry time and i ate kilos of strawberries because it is one of my favorite fruits 🙂 The variety of cafes and restaurants is also quite high, it is possible to find beautiful places where you can eat something nice for each meal. In fact, I'm saying it's going to be a lot of fun on summer evenings, it was called Montenegro's open-air disco, budva 🙂
The next stop point of our trip was Dubrovnik. 3. On the morning of today, we set off after breakfast, and budva-Dubrovnik lasted about 4 hours with pauses. Meanwhile, following the Budva-Tivat-Kotor route, we took the nose completely by car, it's really enjoyable if you have time, extending the road but it's a very pleasant and scenic road, I recommend it. And if you're supposed to go through passport control on the Montenegro-Croatia land border and if you're going to travel in high season, set your time accordingly because long queues may have to wait, we passed by a 15 min wait Border. We arrived in Dubrovnik at noon, met with the owner of the apartment at the point where we agreed, and after parking the car where it showed us, we had suitcases, strollers and children arriving at our apartment in dubrovnik hills after a short walk We did it.
Our apartment was the attic of an old stone house, there was no one to say the view, it was really looking at the old town as it was from the top, but we still weren't very pleased because we preferred this place with the knowledge that it was 10 minutes walk from the old town. However, we didn't know that the first part of this stage was 50 stair steps and then downhill landings – which means the turn is an uphill climb. If we compare price performance, it would make more sense to stay in another hotel or apartment just near old town at a more expensive price. Of course, we looked primarily at the apartments that were car parking spaces because everyone had a parking lot shortage, and even if you found a place, it was very expensive — which is more like getting on a motorcycle, people were intimidated, but we were in high season. It didn't seem like there was a lot of parking shortages because we didn't go. Even though we're a little tired on the Dubrovnik slopes, I loved Dubrovnik 🙂 It's a really nice place with its narrow streets, well-preserved buildings, shops, cafes and restaurants. It can be easily spent 2 days.
Definitely walkable views on the castle walls are spectacular. My other advice is to get up the hill by cable car. It's either for breakfast in the morning or at sunset in the evening. The view is great again. We had planned it for 3 days in Dubrovnik but we decided to cancel our last day, and the weather was lightly rained and we finished all over the place in 2 days. If you're staying for 3 days, if the weather is nice, you can go a little further north and cross the islands by ferry. We didn't do it because of the weather. We decided to continue our next stop, Kotor. Kotor is one of the lovely towns in Montenegro again. There are a few other towns between Dubrovnik Kotor. We stopped by Cavtat for example, we had lunch there in a lovely seaside town, there are really nice restaurants. Then we stopped by the Konavle region, which we saw in a brochure, and there are local restaurants and venues where tours are always visited in this wine region, which borders Croatia-Montenegro. We stopped by Konavoski Dvori, a lovely place along the creek with wooded, mills, if you want to spend some time in nature, it's a nice place.
Then we crossed the border and stopped by Herceg-Novi, which is a lovely place with its narrow streets and cafés. Then we threw ourselves at our hotel in Kotor, tired. Our hotel was a very nice hotel in the old town, we were very pleased with the very not crowded 🙂 (www.hotelmontecristo.co.me), the restaurant just below offers very stylish and delicious food. We were so glad we had a nice restaurant in the hotel because we were already looking for another restaurant with that fatigue on the first evening. The last 3 days of our trip the weather was always nice and warmer. We were at Kotor for two days. We wandered the streets of the old town, one day we went to Perast and then we took the boat to a small island with only one church on it, and we ate a lot in general 🙂
The historic castle in Kotor can be climbed by a challenging hillside walk, but of course we never went on those roads with the boy. You can walk along Kotor's marina and watch the large tour ships entering the port. At the end of two days at Kotor, we decided to stay in Budva again on the last day of our trip, but this time in an all-inclusive beach hotel. Again, since there is no high season, we were able to make last-minute changes on our trip and stayed at hotel Iberostar Bellevue. The service, the food, the room, the beach was quite nice. At least on the last day we rested a little bit and went back to Turkey the next day. He's a little tired, but with plenty of good moments and 🙂
General information: Montenegro and Croatia are not members of the European Union at the time we go. Neither of them apply visas to Turks, both because of this reason and because they are close, they are preferred holiday destinations. Even we did not have a high season, but we met the Turks in every town we went to. The currency in Montenegro is the euro, and in Croatia they use their own money. Both countries are quite civilized, traffic works very smoothly, they respect pedestrians, they are widely used in English. In the meantime, their language is very similar to Russian if you know Russian, it's possible to deal with crack pat. It resembles aegean culture along the coast, plenty of olive oil, wine, seafood. People were generally cute and loved help. Since it's still early in the season, maybe we've had a very good service everywhere we've been.
Bay