Most of Montenegro leaves from a jetty in Kotor. The best of it does not.
What a Blue Cave boat costs before the swim stop is added. Whether Durmitor pays for the four hours north. Reviews of every tour you can book in Montenegro.
Kotor by boat, Kotor on foot, the mountains behind it, and the day trip in from Dubrovnik.
Book these four and the rest of a first week arranges itself around them. Prices, running times and what the people who took them said.
01The bay by boatKotor: Blue Cave Swim Stop, Lady of the Rocks & Submarine BaseThree hours out of Kotor with a swim stop inside the Blue Cave and a landing at Our Lady of the Rocks. The day most people come for.
02The old town on footKotor Old Town Walking TourAn hour inside the walls with somebody who can point at the Venetian marks. Go before the ships are alongside.
03The road northGreat Montenegro Tour-Lovcen NP,Mausoleum Lovcen,River of Crnojevic,Sveti StefanLovćen, the mausoleum on the summit and the switchbacks down into Cetinje. Eleven hours, and the only way to see this country vertically.
04In from DubrovnikFrom Dubrovnik: Montenegro Day TripThe whole coast in one long day from across the Croatian border. It is why most people see Montenegro at all.
Three kinds of boat leave Kotor, and they are not the same day out.
The group cave boat, the small-group islet run and a private hull all call at roughly the same places. What separates them is how many people are aboard and how long you actually get in the water.
What everybody in Kotor is queuing for.
Every Montenegro review →The tours that fill first between June and September, and what puts each of them there.
1
From Dubrovnik: Montenegro Day Trip
Review of the Dubrovnik to Montenegro day trip, with Perast, Kotor, optional boat ride, border tips, costs, guides, and practical advice.
From · $70
Read our review →
2
From Dubrovnik: Montenegro Boat Tour from Perast to Kotor
from $66
3
Kotor: Blue Cave Swim Stop, Lady of the Rocks & Submarine Base
from $39
4
Kotor: Boat Cruise with Blue Cave Swim and Submarine Base
from $56
5
From Kotor: Boat to Blue Cave & Lady of the Rocks &Submarine Base
from $32
6
From Dubrovnik: Montenegro Day Trip with Boat Cruise
from $60
7
From Dubrovnik: Perast, Kotor & Budva Small-Group Day Trip
from $100
8
Great Montenegro Tour-Lovcen NP,Mausoleum Lovcen,River of Crnojevic,Sveti Stefan
from $89
Kotor for the bay, Budva for the beach, Podgorica for the road inland.
A walled town at the head of the fjord, a stone village with two islets off it, a resort strip with a citadel in the middle, the flat capital an hour east, and the border town on the Croatian side that half these trips leave from.
Kotor is a wall, a bay and a jetty, in that order.
The old town takes an hour on foot. The wall above it takes two more and thirteen hundred steps, straight up the cliff. Everything else here leaves from the quay outside the Sea Gate: the cave boats, the Perast runs, and the speedboats that reach Mamula before the tour fleet does.
Montenegro stays cheap until you charter something.
Every priced tour in Montenegro, from the cheap seats up. The group boats sit at one end and the private hulls at the other, and the gap between them is wider here than the distances involved.
Group cave boats, the wooden boats on Skadar Lake, walks inside the walls and the cable car ticket.
Whole days: Durmitor and the Tara bridge, Lovćen and Cetinje, the small-group islet runs.
Private skippers, chartered speedboats and the drivers who take the entire coast in one go.
Four hours north the bay disappears and the canyons start.
Durmitor, the bridge over the Tara, a monastery driven into a cliff at Ostrog and a lake full of pelicans on the Albanian border. None of it is near the coast, and all of it is the reason people come back a second time.
Three things Montenegro has that the rest of the Adriatic does not.
Walled towns and clear water run the whole length of this coast. An island built by hand, a cave that turns the sea electric and a monastery driven into a cliff face do not.
Our Lady of the Rocks
The islet off Perast is man-made. Sailors dropped a stone on the spot every time they came home safe, then sank captured hulls alongside, and after four centuries there was enough ground to carry a church. The town still rows out every July to add to it. Boats stop long enough to go inside and see the tapestry a local woman embroidered over twenty-five years, partly with her own hair.
- 1Kotor: Blue Cave Swim Stop, Lady of the Rocks & Submarine Base★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,914 reviews
- 2From Kotor: Boat to Blue Cave & Lady of the Rocks &Submarine Base★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,104 reviews
- 3Blue cave, Mamula island, Submarine tunnels and Our lady of the Rocks (3h)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 575 reviews
The Blue Cave
Sunlight enters the grotto on the Luštica peninsula below the waterline and comes back up through the sea, so the whole cave reads electric and anyone swimming in it looks lit from underneath. Boats go inside only when the swell allows, and the colour is strongest late in the morning. Treat it as a swim stop, not a viewing platform.
- 1Kotor: Blue Cave Swim Stop, Lady of the Rocks & Submarine Base★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,914 reviews
- 2Kotor: Boat Cruise with Blue Cave Swim and Submarine Base★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,155 reviews
- 3From Kotor: Boat to Blue Cave & Lady of the Rocks &Submarine Base★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,104 reviews
Ostrog Monastery
The upper monastery is white, small and set into a vertical cliff nine hundred metres above the Bjelopavlici plain, with two chapels in caves behind it and an access road that concentrates the mind. Pilgrims walk the last stretch barefoot. It is the most visited place in the country that has nothing to do with the sea.
- 1North Montenegro, Durmitor, Tara & Ostrog Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 413 reviews
- 2Ostrog Monastery tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 32 reviews
- 3Ostrog monastery and Niagara waterfalls★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 23 reviews
Four things here run on somebody else’s timetable.
Most of this country can be sorted over dinner the night before. These four cannot. They depend on swell, on daylight, on a cable car with a fixed last one down, and on how many ships are alongside in Kotor.
- 01Kotor: Blue Cave Swim Stop, Lady of the Rocks & Submarine BaseBoats go inside only when the sea is flat enough. A calm August morning is spoken for days ahead, and a rough one cancels everybody at once.
- 02North Montenegro, Durmitor, Tara & Ostrog TourIt is roughly four hours each way from the coast. The trip leaves early, runs to a fixed return and does not exist as a spontaneous afternoon.
- 03Epic 25 Turns Downhill Bike Descent w/ Panoramic Cable Car AscentThe cable car out of Kotor runs to a published timetable with a last car down, and it stops altogether in high wind.
- 04North Montenegro, Durmitor, Tara & Ostrog TourThe upper monastery closes to visitors during services and the road up is single track with a queue on it. Trips take the morning slot for a reason.
When the swell shuts the cave, the walls are still there.
The bura comes down off the mountain and the cave boats stop going out. Kotor does not much care. The stone in the old town is more interesting close up in flat light, the konobas serve all afternoon, and Lipa Cave is the same temperature whatever the sea is doing.
By place, bay to border
By kind of day, hull or road
Kotor, Perast, Budva, then north to Durmitor: the fortnight almost everybody ends up doing.
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