I do love an uneventful journey. I think I still have a spot of anxiety from when we went to Mallorca and if it could go tits up it absolutely did go tits up with utter malevolent glee culminating in a Segway accident, which Tarrant is still seeing a physio for a year later. Apparently nothing beats a Jet2 holiday. Anyway! Flight left on time, EasyJet didn’t lose our checked luggage, rental car was waiting for us when we landed and we located and checked into our apartment in Budva without a hitch, all whilst driving on the right hand side of the road as my knuckles turned a fetching shade of white. Smooth.

We tend to not make plans for the arrival day in case of hideous delays resulting in late check-ins and nothing but a desire to face plant a pillow for eight hours straight so it’s always a bit surprising when we find ourselves with Time To Spare. Obviously we slid straight into default mode which is “pub”. Budva is a beach town and it was pissing down with rain so we headed to Azzurro Beach Bar in order to sit under giant umbrella and apply Nikšićko and ćevapi to our faceholes whilst gawping in the general direction of the Adriatic. Nikšićko is the national generic lager and it’s absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with it. Tastes a bit like piss water after the second one but point to a generic lager that doesn’t. Ćevapi are kebabs. They look a bit like turds but they taste like they’re conjured from the joy of angels. Apparently they’re popular all over the Balkans and I get it. They’re banging.

We just hung out until the weather cleared then headed into Stari Grad, which I believe just means Old Town. It’s the old, walled city of Budva. Think narrow streets lined with souvenir shops and places to eat. It’s actually pretty great. We pottered around for a while, parted with €5.50 each to go into the Citadel for some pretty sweet views over Budva. There’s a library here too, and a room full of model ships. I’m not sure why. We just wanted the view to be honest, and we were quite happy just strolling around the streets until we sat down for another beer. Very important to stay hydrated when it’s hot, and it was hot despite the earlier rain.

Street cats are most definitely a thing that exist here. As soon as our food arrived at our table earlier we were joined by an expectant feline who, after realising that “gazing imploringly” wasn’t working employed the “gentle pawing” technique. I love cats but my general fat bastardry trumps my bleeding heart. Sorry, kitty. Day one though and we’d already spent a significant portion of our afternoon making squee noises at indifferent kittens that were playing around a tree. They seemed to be cared for, plenty of people were feeding them and bowls of water had been left out. They were so fucking adorable though. I had to remind myself that we still had two weeks in this country and I doubt the company we rented the car off would be too happy if we returned it after the back seats had been used as a scratching post.

A couple of beers later and we were very, very tired. Our flight was at 6.35am that morning and despite the fact we’d stayed at a hotel at the airport sleep was still broken as we still had to get up early and were irrationally paranoid that we’d sleep through an alarm that not once, ever had we slept through. We shuffled home, grabbed a slice of pizza from a fast food takeaway down the road and settled in for an early night under the glorious air conditioning unit which is currently my favourite inanimate object.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

---

Budva, Budva Municipality, Montenegro

Stayed at: Apartments Petkovic Budva, Budva

Useful shit to know…

• We used MTL Rent A Car. They don’t have their own office at Tivat Airport but Europcar let them use theirs. I got a Whatsapp the day before from the bloke who would be meeting us to let us know where to go.
• For 12 days they charged us €336. We paid for full insurance at €119.94. On the day we added wheels and windows which should have been €8 a day but he let us have it for €5 a day, so an extra €60. It cost an extra €30 to drop it in Kotor.
• No issues with them at all. Communication was great. Would recommend them.

• The €5.50 to get into the Citadel is cash only.

• We did our own tourist registration here. We had to provide the name of the owner and the address of the property.
• It was €1 per person per night plus a 30c fee.
• You can do it at any tourist information. We arrived on a Sunday so we did it on the Monday with no issues.