After a month in Bosnia-Herzegovina we came to Montenegro, our first stop was Herceg Novi. Montenegro is full of beautiful, historic cities and sea side towns. On this page you can read all our Montenegro travel tips to make your trip great. For more tips and ideas, head to the bottom of this page, where you can find all our blog posts from Montenegro.
In comparison to Bosnia, Montenegro sees many tourists throughout the year. When people started to venture outside Croatia, Montenegro was the destination to hit. Unfortunately we didn’t really fall in love with Montenegro, and only spent 4 days here. We had plans on staying longer and visit more places, but in the end we decided to leave as we thought it was too many tourists and way to expensive.
However, if you are looking for a small country with lots of different landscapes, and an easy destination to go to, Montenegro is great. It is cheap compared to Western Europe, but after Bosnia, it felt expensive for us. I think I will give this country another chance one day, and see some more off the beaten path places. But for now this will be a very short guide for Montenegro.
Montenegro Travel Map
As we only hit 2 places in Montenegro, Herceg Novi and Kotor, I can only say anything about those. We had no issues finding accommodation and I guess it would look similar for all tourist spots. There was a a lot to choose from, even though we found it a bit pricey, but as we were there in low season so got some good deals in the end. We mainly used AirBnb and Booking.com.
As a couple it was very easy to find apartments for a good prices. We try to stay for about €20-25 per night, but this was almost impossible at our two stops. Would probably be easier to find cheaper accommodation in non touristy places. We never stayed in a hotel.
Food in Montenegro is similar to the rest of Balkans, a lot of grilled meat. But in Montenegro they also have a lot of fish as many cities are along the coast line. We enjoyed the Montenegrin cuisine, especially good was the home made stews and pots the traditional places served during the day.
Montenegro is a very small country, but with a varied landscape, with both coast line and mountains. There is also many beautiful historical cities and towns to visit. Montenegro is very well catered for tourism and you will find many activities in most places.
We arrived to Herceg Novi, in the north, by bus from Trebinje and continued to travel by bus all the way to the south and into Albania. Bus is king in the Balkans in general, and same goes for Montenegro. The train lines are not developed, and mostly used for goods. Bus is super easy to travel by and you can go between most places directly or with one change. It is also the cheapest way to travel in Montenegro.
Bus lines that go often we didn’t bother to pre book, we just went to the bus station 30 minutes in advance and bought a ticket. But for lines that only goes once a day or early in the morning we tend to buy the ticket one day in advance just to make sure we get on it.
Bus stations are usually in quite good locations to head into the cities. Both Herceg Novi bus station and Kotor bus station was very close to old town in both city.
Cost of Travel in Montenegro
We try to live on a budget of €1000 per month per person, €2000 in total for the two of us each month, which gives us €66 per day in total.
We are not super cheap when we travel as we still want to experience the places we go to. We tend to choose accommodation where we can cook, at least breakfast. But we do not usually eat all our meals at home.
Below you can see how much we spent in each category. The total cost for 4 days for the two of us was €315.50, which ends up being €79 per day for the both of us, which is quite a bit above budget and also the reason why we left so soon. However, I am sure you can do Montenegro cheaper than this.
- Accommodation: €98 31.1%
- Food: €158.5 50.2%
- Activities: €16 5.1%
- Travel: €19 6.1%
- Coffee: €14 4.5%
- Alcohol: €6.4 2.1%
- Miscellaneous: €3.9 1.3%
Categories Explained
Accommodation: we opt for places with a kitchen, where we have a private bathroom. We prefer staying in apartments and we usually do not go for the cheapest option, but still keeping it under midrange.
Food: in this category all restaurant visits and supermarket purchases are included. We try to keep this cost low but we really do enjoy trying local food. Included in this category is also drinks with dinner and lunch, we usually drink water or a soda to lunch and a beer or a glass of wine with dinner – however all alcohol drunk outside of meals is not included in this category. Restaurants are kept to budget and midrange places, we tend to go to a nicer restaurant about once a month to celebrate. In Herceg Novi and Kotor we had some issues finding good budget options, except for the bakeries.
Activities: all actives are included in this category, such as museums, entrance fees to attractions etc. However, this tend to be low as we prioritise other parts of our travels.
Travel: this category includes all transport between places as well as within cities. Here we try to opt for the cheapest options. We only use taxi/uber when we need to and walk a lot within cities. The biggest part of this category is the busses we take between destinations.
Coffee: we love to try to find the best coffee places everywhere we go. Therefore we decided to have a coffee category which includes all coffee we drink except for the coffee we have for breakfast. We usually have one or two coffee stops per day.
Alcohol: all alcohol that is not consumed with a meal is added to this category. We are not big drinkers, but enjoy a glass of wine or a beer from time to time.
Miscellaneous: in this category we add things like toiletries, cigarettes, ATM charges etc.
All our blog posts from Montenegro
Why we didn’t fall in love with Montenegro
Montenegro was the country which many of our friends and family said we would love. This small country sees a great deal of tourists, especially during the summer months as it has many beautiful towns along the sea. However, after a few days we had enough and decided...
A Very Short Kotor Travel Guide
Kotor is a beautiful little town in Kotor Bay, Montenegro. It sees thousands of tourists every year and is known as the city of cats. The bus ride to Kotor from Herceg Novi was absolutely beautiful, gorgeous views along the bay all of the way. This is our very short...
Herceg Novi Travel Guide: What to do and where to eat
Our first stop in Montenegro was the seaside town Herceg Novi. We didn’t know much about it, it was mainly a good location so we didn’t have to spend too long on the bus. It was a very touristy place compared to what we were used to in Bosnia. Since it was...