It is absolutely wild to me that you can do day trips to two completely different countries from Dubrovnik. Of course I signed up for both – while I’m very interested in exploring both inland Montenegro and inland Bosnia & Herzegovina, I couldn’t resist a small taste of both of them when I was right there!
Montenegro is a tiny jewel of a country. I hadn’t realized how recently it became independent – 2006! Which is so wildly recent. Something fun that I had learned is that both Montenegro and Kosovo de facto use the euro as their currency, despite not being formally in the Eurozone. I think Montenegro would rather like to join but to do so, they would actually need to create their own currency and circulate that before they could go back to using the euro officially. Not sure where this rule came from but it sounds like a fascinating application of bureaucracy.
The Bay of Kotor is probably its top tourist attraction, and it is absolutely stunning. We stopped in Perast first and spent some free time there to explore. Then we boarded a boat, stopping on a tiny island with a beautiful church and finally cruising down the fjord to the town of Kotor. Most of my time was spent in the Old Town, which had winding narrow alleys to explore. Some of the city walls are still up, and I was able to walk along those as well. There were some nice restaurants tucked into the plazas, and I had a lovely late lunch of risotto and wine and sat out of the sun for a bit. It was a hot day, so I was glad I had picked an activity along the water for most of it!
I’d love to make it back to the eastern part of Montenegro someday so that I can do some hiking in their beautiful national parks and potentially spend a little time in the capital, Podgorica, but I had a great time along their coast!