Alice Hancock

The hidden charms of Montenegro

It's a crowd-free alternative to Croatia

  • From Spectator Life
Kotor, Montenegro [iStock]

The first thing you should know about Montenegro is that it is wildly more dramatic than you might imagine. It would be frankly rude not to pull up on its precarious mountain roads and gawp. In summer the Adriatic shines; in autumn the mountains compete with New England for glorious, rich colours.

The second thing you should know is that there is a relaxing lack of big-hitting sights. And anything you do want to do won’t take long. Even the most beautiful and Venetian of the tiny Balkan state’s towns take an afternoon at most to peruse, leaving plenty of time for lingering coffee stops and long fish lunches in the family konobas strung along the coast (which, if you were pushing it, you could drive end to end in around three hours).

The third thing you should know is that the Montenegrin’s signature snack, the savoury pastry borek, comes in four flavours – ‘meat, cheese, cheese or cheese’ – and bakeries will have run out by lunch.

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