Thinking Allowed: Montenegro beach crawl

We are spending this month in the extremely scenic Montenegro. I spent my first few days wondering why Serbia would so easily part with so much pristine coastline and mountains. Especially as the parting led to Serbia becoming entirely landlocked. As it turns out, the answer, like many political decisions, has nothing to do with nature- something more things along the lines of equal partnerships being impossible when one half of the partnership has a tiny fraction of the population. So, in 2006, with a 55% majority vote, Montenegro became its own country. The small population of the country is largely offset by the large number of mountains and beaches and tourists. Last year, about 2.5 million travellers visited Montenegro - four times the actual population. All this to say that late fall was the ideal time to visit: beach chairs were all packed up and beaches were free, the Adriatic was still warm enough to swim in, cruise ships in port were tapering down, and old town Kotor was generally quiet.

We rented a car for the first week of our stay so we could explore further afield. Conditions were so great for swimming that we ended up mostly with a week long beach crawl. Except for our day hiking up in Lovcen National Park every other day was all about water. We spent a day strolling through the quiet coastal village of Perast, boating out to a small island, and swimming off the docks of town. We spent a day exploring Herceg Novi and lounging and swimming in a small protected beach underneath a cliff. We spent a day walking along the coast at Sveti Stefan and swimming at the perfect and posh Queens beach (over 200 Euro a person in the summer!). We spent a stormy afternoon playing with the waves in the rain and fierce winds at Jaz beach. We spent a day boating on lake Skadar. We spent another morning at Kings beach at Sveti Stefan (Tova's favorite spot) and then Mogren beach just outside of Budva. We put our bathing suits (and the rental car!) to pretty good use. Despite what others may tell you, late fall is definitely is the perfect time of year for a beach holiday in Montenegro!