What a visitor's money does in Montenegro: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Euro (EUR) · 1 EUR = 1.15 USD · 1 EUR = 0.86 GBP
Montenegro uses the euro without being in the eurozone, which surprises people — it adopted it unilaterally. Cards are taken in the towns and much less so in the mountains, where cash is the rule.
Avoid: machines charging five euros a withdrawal, which several here do
Use: CKB, NLB Banka, Erste Bank
Montenegro uses the euro without being in the eurozone. Fees to foreign cards are high by European standards — CKB is usually the cheapest — so take one larger withdrawal.
A short ride in Kotor: €4–8 across town — middling
Cheaper, but supply is thin outside Podgorica and the coast in season.
The bay does Adriatic seafood — buzara, black risotto, grilled fish by the kilo — and the mountains behind it do smoked ham, kajmak and lamb under a sač. Njeguški pršut, cured in the village at the top of the Lovćen road, is the thing to stop for.
Mountain food: cicvara (polenta with cheese), kačamak, lamb under the bell, and the smoked ham and cheese from the villages. The restaurants in Žabljak are simple and the portions are not. Bring what you want for the trail from the town.
Albanian and Montenegrin at once: byrek and qofte in the town, fish at the river restaurants on Ada Bojana where they lift it from the water in nets. Mala Plaža is the pricey strip; the town up the hill is not.
Seafood in the old town at Adriatic prices; the konobas up the hill and in the villages behind do the same fish for half. Buzara (shellfish in wine and garlic) and the black risotto are the dishes; the Vranac wine is local and good.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
KotorMontenegroA walled Venetian town at the head of a fjord that is not a fjord, under 1,200 metres of rock
BudvaMontenegroA walled old town on a spit of rock, a beach either side of it, and the loudest summer on the Adriatic
DurmitorMontenegroBlack Lake, the Tara canyon a kilometre deep, and forty-eight peaks over 2,000 metres, from a village at the top of the country
UlcinjMontenegroThe far south: a pirate old town on a rock, a twelve-kilometre beach of grey sand, kitesurfing, and a town that is more Albanian than Montenegrin