After 4 days in Bosnia we took a bus to Herceg Novi in Montenegro, arriving after lunch. Herceg Novi is a seaside town with a very small old centre, but a long waterside walk which we ambled along from one end to the other during the afternoon. It was a very pleasant walk, though a heatwave was in full swing by this point. Despite being a seaside resort town, there aren’t really any beaches in Herceg Novi – there are a few small stretches of pebbles, but most sunbeds are simply set up on concrete, which is very weird to see. People didn’t seem to mind though, as the concrete was packed with sunbathers, despite this being literally just lying on the ground. 

The next day we needed to get to Shkoder in Albania, and we didn’t fully know how to get there. The last bus across the border left from Budva at 4pm. There was the easy option of getting a bus along the most direct route from Herceg Novi to Budva, but the less direct route which went along the coastline was supposed to be very beautiful and well worth seeing. The plan that ended up coming together to try to see this was quite hectic. First we took an early bus from Herceg Novi to Perast, except the bus doesn’t stop at Perast so you have to get a ticket to the next town and then ask the bus driver to let you hop off at the closest bit of road to Perast town. We asked our driver when we got on and he ignored us, so a lady next to us asked in the local language and he muttered something at her, and neither of them translated the response to us. Two other passengers got dropped off at random points along the road, so we got up as we were approaching Perast and gestured to the driver that we wanted to get off. This was apparently a terrible ordeal and he muttered many things and threw his hands up in the air at our audacity, but did pull over to let us off. 

The town of Perast is about 1.5km long, and we walked about half of this distance along a beautiful waterside walkway water before picking a spot on the wall for a picnic breakfast. The reason Perast is a tourist hotspot despite being so tiny is the small island just off the coast, which was created by sinking a few ships and piling some rocks on top. A church was then built here, and fishermen and sailors would pray for safe passage and give offerings in thanks when they returned safely. The museum inside the church is therefore a weird collection of items discovered during various sea voyages. We got a boat taxi across to the island and explored for half an hour before returning to Perast and walking the other half of the 1.5km to the other side of town to catch our next bus. Fortunately this one was supposed to stop here, so we didn’t have to deal with another grumpy driver.

The next stop was Kotor, probably the most famous place in Montenegro. It’s a cruise destination, and on this day an enormous ship was moored alongside the old town walls, towering over every single building in the whole town and probably accommodating more people than the entire local population of Kotor. This town is a fair bit bigger than Perast, so we spent a couple of hours walking the city walls and then wandering the alleyways within them. We didn’t have time to hike up the fortress ramparts climbing the hillside, and it wasn’t particularly appealing to do so with bags in the heat anyway. So we headed back to the bus station for our next part of the journey.

We arrived with a couple of minutes to spare before the next bus to Budva, but unfortunately we weren’t able to pay the bus driver directly and instead had to buy the tickets inside, where there was a queue. The bus was delayed and was still waiting by the time I got to the front of the line, but the lady at the ticket office told me it was full. I don’t believe this was true, as the driver had just told us that we could get on as long as we got tickets inside. I think the system just showed it as unavailable as we were past its intended departure time. So I booked tickets for the next one which was supposed to be just 20 minutes later. The next bus didn’t show up for 40 minutes, at which point it took half an hour to load everyone and their bags, and we ended up leaving over an hour after we’d got to the bus station. We then hit traffic due to roadworks, and the hour journey took closer to 2, on the hottest bus I’ve ever been stuck on. Fortunately we’d left plenty of time to make the 4pm bus to Albania, but this was because we also wanted to see Budva town on our one Montengran sightseeing day. This was the biggest town of the lot, and the interesting old town was a half hour walk from the bus station, meaning we needed at least an hour and a half to see anything. We did not have an hour and a half left by the time we arrived, so instead we walked to a mini market, basked in their Aircon for a while, and got ice creams before heading back to wait at the bus station. Everything had gone almost perfectly up to this point, so it was a shame to miss our last stop of the day. Despite sounding very rushed, Montenegro is very small, so with well timed transport (ie on a tour or with your own car and not needing to catch a bus by 4pm) you really can see everything of interest in 1 day. But getting to Albania was the priority, and we did so fairly painlessly, though the driver of this bus didn’t want to go all the way in to the station so dropped us off about a mile out of the way. 

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!

 Ros ♥

If you’re interested in how I got here, or where I went next, check out the rest of the story!