By the Sea in Budva
After our first two weeks in Kotor we moved to Becici, just on the outskirts of Budva, for the last three weeks of our time in Montenegro. We were so disappointed to leave the beauty of Kotor and the surrounding area but were feeling optimistic about being right on the Adriatic Sea where the temperatures would be even hotter than they were in Kotor and there would be beaches aplenty.
As we drove into Budva, my heart instantly began to sink. It was gridlock traffic and felt like a mixture of one giant construction zone and large, ugly buildings. Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I’m an extremely detail-oriented person! Typically, when we book places to stay, I look up the town, the area, some photos, etc. Or, on the flip side, I hear a lot of recommendations about how amazing somewhere is and I just book it on a whim. I’m what Jon refers to as “unpredictable” at times!
Well, we ended up way up a very steep hill. We are ALL about walking and we walk for hours every day. While we have a car now, we try to use it as minimally as possible. Being so far up such a steep hill meant I was instantly feeling trapped. There was no way to go down into town or to the beach on foot for us. We needed the vehicle for transport every time we left the apartment.
It was nice being close to the beach. The stretch of beach in front of Becici was a little sketchy, but we walked along and through the tunnel through the hill to the Budva side, which did have a lovely long stretch of beach. There was a beautiful boardwalk for a good stretch of the beach, complete with cafes and playgrounds for the kids. This was our favourite area of Budva. The girls would play in the sand or at the playground while we sat and enjoyed a coffee and stared at the Adriatic, soaking up the sun. We also got a nice 25-minute walk in each direction to get to our favourite café on the beach. We spent a lot of time here!
Given the short notice for our Kotor cancellation and having more limited options, we did significantly less due diligence. No recommendations on where to go, and only a small amount of research time. The research I completed showed a beautiful old town similar to Kotor. And the place we rented was gorgeous, with a free spa, gym, pools, and more! It also showed it being directly across the street from a beach.
Further along the beach, about a 45-minute walk from where we parked in Becici, we did reach the old town of Budva. And it was just as cute as the photos online showed! It was much smaller than Kotor but felt just as old and authentic, and we enjoyed it just as much but in a different way… at first. Until we realized that Budva is very much a tourist destination and almost everything in the Old Town was closed still. We were hard-pressed to find something to do for more than an hour at a time there. It was a lovely walk into the Old Town, and we would regularly walk over, have a coffee and wander, buy candy at the Pirate Candy Shop, and then walk back to the beach or to the car to head home.
This is pretty much where Budva’s charm ended. The rest of the town was definitely not our scene. We found that Budva very much gave us Cancun or La Manga vibes. A place that attracts 20-somethings looking to party, rather than families. There were tons of bars, clubs, strip clubs, and gambling places all over. Most of the city looked a bit run down, as well. And trying to drive anywhere within Budva was a nightmare with the gridlock and lack of parking.
We kept as open a heart and mind as possible for the first four days, trying very hard to appreciate the good parts of Budva. But in the end, I could not stay there for three weeks. I was very unhappy there. We booked another place in Kotor for our second week in Budva. We left most of our belongings in Budva and took off to go back to Kotor.
We thought it would be a great way to break up our time in Budva – one week there, one week back in Kotor, and one week back in Budva. And while we were doing our two weeks in Budva, we could also get out and explore other areas. So, that’s exactly what we did.
We had warned the girls before ever leaving Canada that we would have adventures and misadventures and that we would just need to roll with the misadventures. And Budva was definitely a misadventure. We tried hard to enjoy the good parts of Budva and mix in some day trips to explore other areas of Montenegro. We can say with certainty that we will never return to Budva in the future.