Vacations On The Bay of Kotor 🇲🇪
Travel notes, film photos, and a map of 17 places I enjoyed.
Last summer, I spent six weeks around the Bay of Kotor. It is a picturesque UNESCO World Heritage bay on the Adriatic Sea with crystal clear water surrounded by small medieval towns and the mountains of the Dinaric Alps. I have never been to Norway, but I assume that’s what fjords might feel like. Except that, in the middle of the summer, it’s blazing hot in Montenegro.
In these travel notes, I cover the basic prerequisites that you want to nail so as not to ruin your holiday and share my favorite places.
If you find this guide helpful, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share it with your friends who might benefit from it 💙 And if you've already been to the Bay of Kotor or Montenegro in general and have additional recommendations, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below this post.
PS If you are viewing this post in your email app, consider opening it in a browser by clicking the post’s title — it’s just too long to fit into an email.
The guide
All the places from this guide, complete with descriptions, are marked on the Google map. Feel free to use it on your phone and share it with friends.
Rent A Car
Due to the natural landscape, it is hard to get by without transportation. Most of the time, you only have one road tucked between mountains and sea. Walks are very limited and you are forced to take the same road both ways. There are public buses and taxis available, but you definitely want to rent a car to commute freely.
Stay Close To The Water
One thing you want to get right while staying around the Bay of Kotor in summer is to have as direct access to water as possible. Seriously, with burning heat, every meter counts. Over six weeks, we stayed at three different Airbnbs. Trust me, the convenience of getting to swim might make or break your holiday. And if you don’t go for swims choose another season when the temperature cools down.
In Dobrota, we stopped close to the beautiful Church of St. Eustachius. It took only 5 minutes to get to the beach. Well, it wasn’t exactly a beach. Along the shore of the Bay of Kotor, you either have a stone pier or a narrow piece of small pebbles land. Beach clubs are limited in both quantity and quality. To spend all day at the “beach“, a single towel might not be sufficient.
In the newly built luxury small town of Portonovi, there is no direct access to water besides the two lavish beach clubs that clearly don’t deliver. As a result, the closest public narrow beach was overcrowded and messy. We ended up taking a 30-minute car ride one way to the Restoran Lavanda which provided guests with comfortable beach beds on a stone pier across the road. Unfortunately, at some point, the restaurant was asked to remove the beach beds since the pier should remain public.
The absolute best experience we found on Đuraševići Coast. It doesn’t have awe-inspiring views of the mountains you find in Dobrota, Perast, or Risan, although sunsets are still breathtaking. The best part about Đuraševići Coast is that dwellings there are located below the main road, right on the waterfront. Each building, usually consisting of three stories, two apartments per story, has its own uninterrupted access to water. Because of the size of the buildings, there is a limited number of guests, so everyone has their own beach bed.
I don’t insist that Đuraševići Coast is the best area to stay in the Bay of Kotor — in fact, it does lose in terms of views — but rather make a strong point for having as direct access to water as possible. There is nothing else like walking out of the door and diving into the water.
Food
With Montenegro being located on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, I expected lots of affordable catch of the day. It turned out that you mostly find it in upscale restaurants and there is nothing particular about it. There are many down-to-earth mussels and oyster farms around the bay that also offer fresh catch. We tried Restoran Uzgajalište Ostriga, and it was fine, but not so much as to recommend it.
Same with vegetables. Supermarkets offer subpar quality, and you have to look elsewhere. One such place is Kotor Food Market. Finding a parking lot might be a challenge, as may be the price negotiations with street merchants. But quality and diversity, including freshly picked forest berries and mushrooms, make up for that. Another excellent spot is Pert. It is more expensive than supermarkets, but you taste what you pay for and you don’t have to argue about the price.
Where Montenegrin cuisine excels is at roštilj (grill) and pekara (bakery). Both are abundant, affordable, and mouthwatering. They are such staples that you can hardly go wrong. For roštilj, I would recommend Tanjga in Tivat or Kotor, as they have some of the widest selections of meats.
My favorite thing about pekaras is that, besides bread, all sorts of hearty pies, and a wide selection of local sweets, most of them feature a wood-fired oven where they make pizza. I wouldn’t dare to compare it to its Italian predecessors, but it’s a fun and crusty flatbread you take to a beach or savor at home. Again, most of them are decent, but this one in Dobrota lets you choose between sizes, starting from 25 cm and up to 60 cm.
Now that we covered the basics, I would love to highlight a few of my favorite places.
Oh, what an absolute gem Ćatovića Mlini is! I would love to go back to Montenegro just because of this place. I don’t know what’s more impressive: the serene nature, hidden just a few hundred meters away from the main road; a century-old mill built out of stone right above underground springs; or the splendid menu. Pictures simply don’t do the justice.
Amidst a plethora of roštiljs, Tiha Noć does something different by bringing Turkish cuisine to the Adriatic coast. Well, Turkish cuisine is quite meaty itself, but it does meat differently and features options beyond just meat as well. My favorites are the cheesy pides (a distant narrow puffed relative of pizza) and paper-thin lahmacuns (another very distant crispy relative of pizza).
If you feel like there is too much meat and dough in these travel notes, you are exactly right. Here is another pizza place. Fantastic Neapolitan style, this one. But besides delicious Italian cuisine, Soul does occasional cultural events, which is rare in the Bay of Kotor.
Having a third-wave coffee spot around is always nice, but being able to buy freshly roasted beans while on a summer vacation in one of the most beautiful resort places on Earth is a rare privilege.
Views
You don’t go to Montenegro just for the swims obviously. It’s a truly breathtaking natural landscape, and from atop is where you have the best views of it. I put the pin on the Horizont bar, but you don’t have to go to the bar itself. Just come here at sunrise and sunset and appreciate the beauty in its purest form.
With all the praise for the beauty of the Bay of Kotor, I found my favorite beach outside of it, on the Adriatic coast. You can park a car at an auto camp and access the beach passing through it. The beach is rocky, with plenty of spots to dive from.
The quiet road among pines and olive trees to this small chapel is already delightfully peaceful. The chapel is located on the top of a hill which opens up beautiful views of the sea and the mountains.
Unlike Portonovi, this newly-built luxury small town turned out charmingly intimate. Although built completely from scratch, it doesn’t feel too artificial. Even if you don’t come for the mediocre dining experience, it is still nice to just walk the promenade or sneak into one of the somewhat-private-but-still-accessible beaches.
If you find these travel notes helpful or exciting, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share this article with your friends who might benefit from it 💙
If you've already been to the Bay of Kotor or are planning to go and have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below this post.
Check out my other travel notes too!