Montenegro may be small, but it packs a punch, writes Mary Lambie Montenegro was not on my travel bucket list. I never knew enough about this small Balkan state to have formed any opinion about it at all. I knew (dimly) that its coast was on the Adriatic Sea, with Croatia to the north and Albania to the south.
That was it, the sum total of my knowledge. That changed this year. I have a long-time friend who, on a whim 20 years ago, bought a rustic, two-bedroom house in the quaint seaside resort of Risan.
She wanted a bolthole away from her hectic London life. Initially, there was a flurry of visits and a renovation of the relic, and then she basically ignored it for a decade. In July she decided it was time to renew acquaintance, and invited me along.
READ MORE: Where’s the next big place to go in Europe? Welcome to Slovenia In 2004, the purchase of the house always made sense: a three-hour flight from Heathrow into Dubrovnik, then grab a rental at the airport, drive south 20km to the Croatia-Montenegro border , then push on down the scenic Bay of Kotor road into Risan (population 1800). Door to door, five hours tops..
