Exploring South East Montenegro from Budva

From Budva itself, over Sveti Stefan, Stari Bar, Lake Skadar and the Lipa Cave, to the former royal capital Cetinje and even Kotor, Budva is a great starting point to explore the coast of South East Montenegro. It also has the best hotel I stayed in during my time in Montenegro.

Overview of exploring South East Montenegro from Budva

• Why choose Budva as your base?
• Where to stay in Budva?
• What to do in Budva?
• Where to go from Budva?
  • Sveti Stefan
  • Stari Bar
  • Skadar Lake
  • Cetinje

Why choose Budva as your base?

Budva has a historical old town and notable places to visit, it is a medium size city with every store you might need and it’s roughly in the middle of the Montenegrin coastline. Most places I visited in the southeast are about 40 to 70 minutes away by car. You can also drive easily to Kotor as the next stop on your journey.

Where to stay in Budva?

For me there is only one choice: Garni Hotel Vladimir*. It was my favourite hotel during my time in Montenegro. By a wide margin!

In my opinion the property has an ideal location to explore Budva on foot, while also being in a more quiet part of the city. It is a new or recently renovated building with private parking options right in front of the hotel. The bathroom is spacious, with a big walk in shower and everything was sparkling clean.

The breakfast is phenomenal, with a focus on quality over quantity! They had different local cheeses, local meats and baked goods. Hot and cold choices of veggies, either fried eggs or scrambled eggs, a fruit- and cereal-bar and coffee, tea and juices to top it all off. The staff was so lovely, always incredibly helpful and you could really tell that they cared about every guests experience.

Trust me it’s better to get a car and drive to other places in the area while staying here overnight than to book somewhere else!

It was during breakfast at hotel Vladimir that I got to try several Montenegrin baked goods, all included in the price. There was Bombice (chocolate and hazelnuts pressed into a ball, covered in shredded coconut), Bajadera (a no-bake tea biscuits, hazelnuts, almonds, and dark chocolate cake that originated in what today is Croatia) and Oblanda (wafers with a chocolate and walnut filling). I could have tried more, but there is a limit of how much sugar I can take in the morning.

Down the road from the hotel, through a small park, was a bakery called Good Food that sold even more baked goods. This time I opted for a savoury Burek. It was made from filo pastry, filled with something I think was white cabbage(?) and rolled into a snail.

Less than 400m down the road on the other side of the hotel you will find Oliva Coffee. A small coffee shop with some outdoor seating and a great Latte.

Also within a short walk is a Telekom Shop where you can get a tourist E-SIM with 500 GB für 15€.

What to do in Budva?

Budva itself has several points of interest, as well as some city beaches and hiking paths, making it an ideal starting point for exploration.

Budva Old Town

The old town of Budva, also called Stari Grad, is an area in the southernmost part of the city marked by the old city walls (prior to last picture). Several gates lead into this labyrinth of narrow alleys and cobblestone squares. After seeing Kotor later in the week – it was also my favourite old town. You get to take in the historical buildings and charm of the Adriatic medieval flair, while enjoying all the modern developments like streetlamps, an underground sewer system and garbage collection.

Inside the old town you will find many of the cities restaurants, bars and souvenir shops. Honorable mentions here are the Blue Cat Art Cafe (a cocktail bar) and Fluffy pancakes Budva for a sweet snack (their fluffy mini pancakes are incredibly similar to Dutch Poffertjes).

Budva City Museum

Within the old town you can also find the Museum of Budva, a very small three story building containing archeological findings from the city and surrounding area, as well as several donations from the more recent past. Make sure you have a mobile data connection before you go in, there are three VR stations inside the museum. For 3€ per ticket you can’t go wrong here.

Where to go from Budva?

All the mentioned locations are about 40 to 70 minutes away by car. You can also drive easily to Kotor as the next stop on your journey.

Stari Bar

Several kilometres outside of the city that is Bar today lies the old town of bar called Stari Bar. When I mentioned the old town of Budva above I was talking about a part of the city that is still lived in today. However, Stari Bar is different. Mainly ruins remain today of what once was the most important settlement of Montenegro. Everything that once belong to this ancient town is now an open air museum. Over the years a new settlement grew around it. Today it’s mostly focused on tourism.

The history of the old Stari Bar is turbulent and every single culture that once held the city left their traces: Byzantines, Illyrians, Romans, Serbs, Venetians, Ottomans and Montenegrins. Points of note in the town include: Bar Aqueduct, a Hammam, a Clock Tower, the Cathedral of St. George and a Lapidarium.

A Lapidarium is in its simplest form a collection of stones. The Lapidarium within the Old Town of Bar impressively shows off the cities past, with remnants of stones with inscriptions in different languages and different forms of writing form the past thousands of years.

Skadar Lake

Skadar Lake is the largest lake in Southern Europe, located on the border of Albania and Montenegro. Two thirds of the lake are territory of Montenegro and all of it is part of a national park, which extends well beyond the borders of the body of water and it’s shore.

Boat tours to see the lake are popular with tourists, both those who are just stopping by and those who want to “go off the beaten path”. Whichever one you are, finding the boat tour that is right for you is not easy. So many of them sound the exact same on paper, but the costs vary to a degree where you can’t help but ask if you are underpaying the cheaper ones or overpaying the more expensive ones if you choose them. The 5€ ticket for entering the national park is not included in any of the tour prices so that’s not something you have to consider either.

I did a lot of research and in the end I booked a 2 hour cruise with Boat Cruise Viktor*. Originally I had wanted to go with a 3 hour tour that stops at the Kom Monastery*, to take a different route than most other tours, but the timing didn’t work out.

Their sales booth is right next to the bridge and looked more sturdy to me than most others. During the early afternoon tour only three other people were on the boat. On the boat you get unlimited drinks: water, juices, but also local Montenegrin wines. Our guide told us a little about the company, a family business founded nine years ago, then focused on telling us about the lake and what we were seeing on the way.

The lake, its islands and connecting rivers are said to be home to over 250 bird species. While I did see many birds, they were mainly black cormorants, seagulls and grey herons. There was also a single pelican. The pelicans here are among the last ones in Europe.

What you should know before you go to Virpazar

You’ll read online (fellow travel blogs) that Virpazar, the village from where most Skadar Lake tours start, is a sleepy fishing village. Sure, tourism has arrived there, but it kept its charm and character. That was my expectation when I went there.

Instead I found the “city centre” overflowing from sales booths for boat tours (at least 15, eleven of them on the side of the road I uploaded a picture of), restaurants and pubs and a giant modern hotel dominating the north side of the river. Next to the booths are people selling all kinds of stuff, only two vendors looked like their products weren’t just imports from SEA.

The once free parking space (a gravel covered area that also serves as a trash dump) has been taken over by another boat tour company threatening people who want to park if they don’t buy with them. If you say you’ll just park at a paid spot then, good luck getting one. I saw space for six cars in total.

And lastly: If you go in autumn or winter most of the green plants will be brown or entirely dead. The lake will not be covered in pretty water lilies. Just in case some people forgot that seasons are a thing.

Cetinje

Cetinje is the former royal capital of Montenegro and before that played a role all throughout Montenegrin history as well. Today several institutions are still active here, such as the national museum of Montenegro (closed for now and the next few years), the ethnological museum of Montenegro, the former palace and now museum of King Nikola, as well as the Cetinje Monastery. It is also the ideal place to try Kremptia, a cream cake.

Lipa cave, the only cave in Montenegro that is open to the public, is also about 15 minutes from there.

You can read more about my visit to Cetinje here: Visiting Cetinje – the former royal capital of Montenegro

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