The country of Montenegro is a pretty quick day trip from Dubrovnik, so we decided to take a drive and explore there for a day. We had heard that the Bay of Kotor is a spectacular natural wonder — it’s a fjord-like body of water with beautiful blue water and striking “black mountains” (hence the name Montenegro…black mountain) rising almost seemingly from the water’s edge. So we definitely wanted to check that out!

We crossed the border in just about an hour and then drove a bit further around the spectacular bay toward our destination, the town of Kotor. All along the bay are little villages with sometimes no more than a single restaurant, a few shops, and a church or monastery (literally every town seemed to have its own church — there were so many!) We encountered a few “larger” towns, but even these were still quite small. Montenegro feels noticeably grittier and less affluent than its neighbor Croatia, with more of the remnants of old Communist “architecture,” but it is still a gorgeous seaside location with cute little hamlets, and the views of water and mountains are stunning.

Once we reached the town of Kotor, we found a sketchy parking lot (really just two men who let us park our car in their lot and, we hoped, would let us drive it out again when we were ready to leave) and went off to explore the old town. Kotor is an old Medieval town, and, like Dubrovnik, is also fortified, with walls surrounding it to protect from invaders. Unlike Dubrovnik, though, the part of the walls you can walk on are not really around the main part of the town, but rather stretch up far onto the steep mountainside. It makes for a very dramatic look, but we decided not to climb these walls with the boys as it would have been a bit too intense with two young ones. I’m sure it was spectacular views from up there though!

After some lunch and a brief wander through the narrow alleys and piazzas of the old town, we went to find a nearby playground we had passed so the boys could run around a bit. There were some teenage boys who had randomly set up a trampoline, a bouncy castle, and motorized “go kart” type cars and were charging 1 euro for any kids who wanted to partake in the activities. Isaac was thrilled to be able to drive a “real” car 🙂

Once we were ready to head back, we made our way back to the car (which, thankfully, the men let us take out of their parking lot) and started back on the road toward Dubrovnik. We stopped along the way for some photos, including one of the most famous Bay of Kotor sites: a church on an island in the middle of the bay. Legend has it that fishermen saw an image of Mary in the reef and started dropping rocks on the reef every time they passed by. Over time, this grew into an island on which a church, “Our Lady of the Rocks,” was built. You can get a boat ride out to this island, and if we had had more time, this would have been fun, but alas, maybe next time.

There were actually a lot of activities to do in Montenegro — some beautiful national parks with awesome hikes and views, as well as boat tours around the bay — which surprised me for such a small country. It’s definitely worth a visit when in that part of the world, and I was glad we took the day to go check it out!