CC Travel Blog

Being one of the seven Yogoslavia countries, Montenegro is small and close to the southern tip of Croatia, so a day trip is entirely possible to visit this hidden gem on the Balkan.

After 30 mins of drive along the mountain, we came to the border of Montenegro.

The weather of the season in March is between winter and spring, so it was still cold with hanging snow in some areas.

Montenegro is a young country; it is the last one that claimed independence from former Yogoslavia in Jun 2006. Prior to that, it was united with Serbia until a vote of 55.5% changed its fate to be an independent country due to its really high inflation and deteriated economy situation after the union with Serbia.

Montenegro means “black mountain”, which was created by the Italians when they first discovered the place. The country was first founded in the 12th century; to escape from the Ottomen, the Slavs hid into the mountains. The country has the world’s second deepest canyons next to the Grand Canyon, but due to its mountain terrain, it’s hardly an agricultural state.

Most of the country’s income is from tourism. Lately after its independence, the government opens up its property for sale and most of the investors are from Russia, which had a close relationship with Montenegro from a long way back. One of the reason of the close relationship is attributed to their shared religion of Eastern Orthodox.

The population of the country is only 650,000 and the EU has already invested a lot of interest in the country such that the economic border is a lot more important than a physical border these days. The country today is using Euro for its stability.

Another 10 more minutes drive after the border passing, we pulled onto a ferry boat that will cross the Kotor Bay. The ferry ride is rather short, 5 minutes only. This is the short cut to get to Cetinje, the old royal capital of Montenegro.

Most of the roads we drove by were under the foot of the black mountain range.

On our way, we passed the best hotel in Montenegro, the 5 star Hotel Splendid, in which filmed one of the James Bond series movie, the Casino Royal, though most of it was filmed in Czech. The hotel was invested by the Russians for over 100 million Euros.

Behind the hotel is an island that was built to connect to the mainland and used as resorts for tourists with exhorbitant price of over 100 Euro a night.

The speed of changing scenes is quite fast over here in Montenegro. As we drove up higher and higher on the mountains, we saw a split of snow capped black mountain on our left side and beautiful green Adriatic Sea with coastline organge roof towns on our right. I could not split my eyes and mind fast enough to catch all these pleasant sights.

At 11am, after almost 4 hours drive, we reached Cetinje, the old royal capital of Montenegro. We were here to see a museum, King Nikolas Museum.

Tugged in a corner, the museum is a pink and green building. It is the original palace of the King’s family, who ruled the country of 200 years with seven rulers.

King Nikolas and Queen Melana had 12 children, one died in 10 months, so total 9 surviving daughters and 3 sons. Five daughters were married to all over Europe, such as Italy, German, and France while the other two did not get married at all. The docent joked that the marriages made King Nikolas father in law of Europe. Indeed, marriages protected and provided for this small country to survive and prosper in their history.

The two single daughters had their own talents. One became the right hand person of King Nikolas and the first woman driver in Balkan; the other enjoyed arts and music with great talents.

The palace building has two stories, with diplomat room, dining room, family living room and twelve bedrooms for all the children and seperate bedrooms for the king and the queen. The wall papers on the palace are authentic Italian silk and the furnitures are original woods with varieties, for example, the dipolmat room’s furnitures are lemon woods.

I was very impressed with the polar bear and wolf skins lying on the king’s bedroom; they were gifts from the Russsian Sars. The kingdom had about 5000 people in the days and was not a rich country. However, it managed to maintain good relationship with the three Sars in Russia until 1900 that it fell to the hands of Austria-Hungarians rulers.

The museum is quite small and no pictures were allowed.

After the visit, we headed to Budva for lunch.

Budva is a small old town with fortified city walls.

Unfortunately the town has turned into a tourist trap where every place in the old town has become a shop.

The town has a church and a clock tower and a small plaza in the middle. Everything was quiet with limited people.

After lunch, we moved onto the last stop of the day, Kotor, a medieval town.

As we approaching, we saw strong complete fortified walls along the mountains at the back of the city. Facing water and backed by mountain ranges, Kotor hs been around for centuries.

Around town, a lot of the so called palaces have turned into restaurants or shops.

Although small, the city has quite a few palaces and churches. Listed as a UNESCO site, the Cathedral was a big attraction. Short of funds, we couldn’t afford to pay to visit the interior. Through the glass door, I saw lots of marble columns inside with some big gold foil pieces hanging on the altar. Later on I learned that there are some famous relics at the back of the Cathedral that is the most important element of the church. Bummer!

Palace of Grgurina Family from the 18th Century, now a museum but closed at the day.

Kotor old buildings with the mountain at the back.

You can see the fortified walls on the mountains.

One of the shops displayed their local Montenegro tribal costumes.

Palace of Lombardic Family from the 18th century.

House Machin from the 20th century.

Museum Kotor.

There are also two Orthodox churches in Square St. Luke.

The major disadvantage of visiting Montenegro in off peak season is that many museums and churches may not open or open at very limited time. For example, the Cathedral that we first walked pass, after half an hour we decided to return and it was already closed.

Leaving Kotor, we backtracked to take the ferry. On the way, we passed the shortest river of Montenegro, the Ljuta River that flows into the bay and two interesting islands called St. George with trees and a church and Lady of th eRock, an artificial island formed by rock dropping by homecoming fishing boats accumulated in hundreds of years.

Montenegro gave me a unique feeling. Perhaps because of the weather, I felt that it was a gloomy country with interesting sceneries but limited attractions. It is small and lacks resources to trade for its future prosperity. However, for Croatia tourists, it does provide a change of view for a day’s break.