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A short cottage break in Montenegro:
On dreary winter days when you see your laptop wallpaper of somewhere sunny you visited three years ago, and you realise you have to actually go somewhere again. Not just anywhere, though. Somewhere that feels a bit undiscovered, even if it isn’t. That is how I ended up in Montenegro and more specifically how I got to rent a small stone cottage above the Bay of Kotor with a terrace that looked like it had been stolen from a postcard. I have done the all-inclusive hotel thing. It has its place, typically when you want someone else to decide what you are eating for breakfast. But holidaying in a villa or cottage in Montenegro is a completely different thing. You get a kitchen where the coffee machine takes three tries to run and you don’t even care because the view from the window is doing most of the heavy lifting. You get outdoor space that is actually yours, which means breakfast in pyjamas at noon and wine on the terrace at six without hotel bar prices. You can come back sandy from the beach and not think too much about walking through a hotel lobby. Montenegro is compact enough so that you can sample a lot of landscapes in one trip, and the diversity of cottages and villas is also reflected in this. Around the Bay of Kotor, you will see everything from sleek modern buildings with infinity pools in Dobrota to crumbling stone houses in Perast with more history than your school curriculum. If you’re looking for beaches and a bit of nightlife, the Budva Riviera has no shortage of places, so many of them tucked into hillsides to get the best out of it: peace in the villa and chaos in the old town when you’re feeling like it. To the north of Durmitor the accommodation goes from wooden chalets to pine forests and silence so complete you can hear your own thoughts, which is wonderful or alarming depending on the mood. At the top end you can afford to spend some serious cash on a luxury villa at Sveti Stefan with a private pool, an outdoor kitchen and a housekeeper who leaves homemade fig jam on the counter. It is very pleasant. On the other hand, budget cottages in villages like Njegusi or further up the Lustica Peninsula have exposed stone walls, beds that creak sympathetically and plumbing that makes interesting noises at three in the morning. The hot water is typically solar-powered and mood-dependent. But you are paying less per night than you would for a grim airport hotel in Luton and you’re living in the past. Both of them offer stories to take home, but different ones. What struck me the most was the food, and how it changes on location and where you are sitting. The coast is heavy on Italian and Mediterranean influence. You’ll eat grilled squid that has been swimming earlier in the day, risottos that take twenty minutes and three glasses of wine to make up your mind, gelato outside on harbour walls at sunset. You get inland and the food gets heavier, more Serbian-influenced, all smoked meats and kaymak and bread that could stop a door. These worlds collide at the local markets. In Kotor’s market you will find an elderly woman in traditional dress selling goat cheese next to a stall run by a young guy from Podgorica who is playing techno from his phone and selling imported olive oil. But the best moments are the quiet ones. I remember sitting on that cottage terrace with a cup of coffee that was cold because I didn’t drink it and watching the light play out over the bay. It is the kind of stillness that makes you realise how noisy your regular life is. Of course, the contrast is half the fun. Later that day we drove into Budva and got caught in a crowd of teenagers on scooters, ice cream queues and the general happy chaos of a coastal town in summer. You need both rhythms. The silence helps recharge you and the noise reminds you why you wanted to escape from it in the first place. You meet all kinds. There is the fisherman who has been mending nets on the same wall since 1974 and regards tourists with suspicious affection. There is the grandmother who speaks no English but communicates entirely by force-feeding you pastries. And then there was our caretaker in Lustica, a man known as Miodrag, who wore one flip-flop and one work boot at the same time and said it gave him a ‘balanced perspective’. He said he could forecast rain by the ache in his left elbow and the mood of his donkey, his meteorological department. He was usually slightly drunk on his own grappa, and he told terrible jokes about the Montenegrin pace of life. "We are not lazy," he said with enormous dignity, “we simply understand that rushing is a form of sadness.” He was impossible and hilarious and I think of him on London trains. Montenegro is not polished like the Amalfi or Cote d’Azur. It is rougher around the edges, more chaotic, electricity flickering. That is precisely why a villa or cottage holiday works so well there. You are living in it, buying bread from the same bakery as everyone else, getting lost on dirt roads, arguing with the coffee maker. You come home with olive oil on your clothes, a slight hangover from Miodrag's grappa and the confidence that you are coming back. I am already looking at cottages for next year and it’s only November.
Have a great vacation in Montenegro from the EUCottages travel team
