ON TOUR: Montenegro

Montenegro, Mediterranean glamour without the prices.  And now Luton too.

BTN’s Editor-at-Large, Jeff Mills, revisits a former part of Yugoslavia, now a serious player in business and leisure travel. It has been independent since 2006.

If your geography is not so good Montenegro is located on the Adriatic Sea and is a part of the Balkans, sharing borders with Albania to the southeast Bosnia and Herzegovina to the north, Croatia to the northwest and Serbia to the northeast.  It has applied to join the European Union but this is not expected until 2025. Its currency is the Euro.   

There could well have been a tear in my guide’s eye as he remembered the good old days in Montenegro. ‘You should have been here years ago when this was part of Yugoslavia, it was a fine country and tourists loved it’. And from his perspective at that time in the area’s history, I’m sure he is right.

‘I, too, remember Yugoslavia’, I told him, though from a rather different point of view. For my guide the memories may well have been of a great leader, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, a ruthless pseudo communist dictator who ruled the country with charm, a benevolent air and a very successful charm-offensive public-relations campaign.  For all his faults he was very anti-Nazi and was supported by Churchill.

It may be a long time ago, deep in the mists of time admittedly but my memories of pre-1980 Yugoslavia, on the other hand, run more along the lines of cheap and often very nasty concrete-clad mass-market hotels aimed at Eastern Bloc tourists, which served up unimaginative, some may say inedible, food and virtually undrinkable wine. But many British tourists loved it.

There was cheap nightlife, some clubs which even put on shall we say ‘interesting’ cabaret acts involving strippers and sequins. And there were exotic foreign luxuries, too, such as fiery slivovitz plum brandy, which gave you the mother of all hangovers, and beige-coloured Yugo cars, very popular as taxis, which made East Germany’s Trabants seem almost like Ferraris by comparison.

Fast forward more than a few years and it is all different now, as each of the former Yugoslav States strives to come up with new and inventive ways to attract business travellers and tourists with plenty of money to spend. And Montenegro is up there with the leaders. But it all comes down to value.

Montenegro may be developing flashy superyacht marinas, such as the latest, Portonovi, being billed as the glitziest of them all with a number of luxurious apartments, available for both sale and rent, as well as a yacht club, spa and a spectacular One&Only resort hotel, the first in Europe, but the country is still the bargain of the century for holidaymakers and it’s likely to remain so for some time.

The country may not have quite returned to the days when, like other jet-set destinations such as Saint Tropez, Monaco and Italy’s Amalfi coast, it was a magnet for the likes of Princess Margaret, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton – often spotted cavorting in glamourous boats or sunning themselves on the terraces of smart restaurants, but it is heading in that direction – just without the eye-watering prices you would have to pay in other Mediterranean countries.

These days the highlights of a visit to Montenegro, whether on business or for leisure, are many and varied.

Spend an afternoon and evening in the city of Budva, for example, once with an unwelcome whiff of old-style mass-market Spanish Costas about it, but now a haven of atmospheric bars and restaurants in the shadow of the ramparts, and there’s a superb crescent-shaped beach, too.

Then there’s Kotor with its high city walls, tiny alleys, churches and Italianate mansions, a reminder of Montenegro’s Venetian heritage. Visit early evening, after most of the huge cruise ships have set sail, order a glass of local white wine outside a cafe and bask in the peace of one of the most beautiful places in the whole country.

Later a table on the glass-enclosed terrace at the Galion restaurant will provide you with exceptional views over the bay as the waiter recommends octopus salad, fresh barbecued fish and home-made pasta dishes.

The Palmon Bay Hotel and Spa in Herceg-Novi, which manages to combine slick efficiency with plenty of local touches, offers business travellers and tourists alike a good base. Guest rooms are excellent, if a touch clinical, but it provides pretty well everything you may want and there’s a private beach on the doorstep.

If you fancy trying somewhere other than the hotel for dinner book a table at Feral, a fine seafood restaurant on the old town’s waterfront. Don’t bother with the menu, just ask for a starter of assorted seafood and then the catch of the day and eat just as the locals do.

But my all-time favourite is sunset and dinner at Ribarsko Selo (the name translates as Fishermen’s Village), a rustic fish restaurant tucked away on the Lustica Peninsula between Miriste and Zanjice Beach where a bottle of Savina the excellent white wine produced just along the coast, and a fish from the tank, delivered each morning by local fishermen, made me seriously consider moving here for the whole summer.

My accommodation was the solitary apartment, with its own pool, said to be a favourite with visiting senior business people in need of privacy and a bit of peace and quiet. From about €150 a night for two, including breakfast. And that has to be a bargain, though there are bungalows in the grounds for even less if your budget is really tight.

You can fly to Dubrovnik (just over the border in Croatia) with British Airways and easyjet.  Wizz Air is about to start a twice weekly service to Podgorica from Luton and Tui offers holiday flights from some UK airports.  Kotor is a popular cruise port.

See also BTN 25 August 2014  ON TOUR: Kotor

www.portonovi.com
www.palmonbayspa.com
www.ribarskoselo.com
www.tui.com
www.montenegro.travel/en

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