Dates: 08-10 September 2024.

Cymru drawing “Monty” in the UEFA Nations League was a great opportunity for a short city break in Podgorica.

In hindsight, I made the poor decision to not spend the night in a hotel before the early flight from Gatwick, opting instead to sit/snooze in Café Nero from about 01.30. I powered through though and met Mike at Podgorica airport – he and Lyndsay had spent a few days touring Kotor and the surrounding areas.

After breakfast, including a fresh orange juice coffee (yes, really), we took a look around the very small old town:

We then stumbled upon a riverside bar and “beach”:

We had a bit of a paddle then a couple of beers with a few other Red Wall members:

Moscow Bridge in the background:

The apartment I’d booked could only accept cash, but I wasn’t willing to hand over 100% of the fee up-front because there were no bath towels. It turns out the person at the other end of the Booking.com messages was a friendly and slightly nutty young girl who was happy to traipse around, finding us at a restaurant to collect the apartment key (and half the apartment fee) so she could drop-off the bath towels.

We asked her about the code for the apartment building front door as it was closed when we walked past it en route to the restaurant. She insisted the door is never closed and there is no code…

Unsurprisingly, after several Kronenbourg Blancs and a good catch-up, we returned to the apartment to find the front door locked. Thankfully, she responded quickly to my text message despite it being almost midnight and appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She got chatting with a local resident returning from a pizza run and it turns out the resident’s wife got him to set up a code only the day before!

Next day was matchday, and with it came a day of rain of biblical proportions. Jason and Simon arrived early and we headed for food. As the rain continued to fall we had little choice but to stay in the pub… Though only if it didn’t flood!

Due to the dire state of Montenegro’s usual home stadium in Podgorica the match had been moved to Nikšić, an hour north west of the capital.

Stadion Kraj Bistrice:

Half time pyrotechnics!

It was an odd game with Cymru taking a 2-0 lead inside three minutes. The game then turned into a bit of a lottery due to the incessant rain. There were chances at either end and the 2-1 win could easily have been 6-4 instead.

Great atmosphere, until we got held back for twenty minutes:

Mike flew home the day after, so Jason, Simon and I wandered the city and climbed-up to the top of Gorica park.

Googling ‘Titsland’ yielded nothing useful:

Views from the summit of Gorica park/forest:

In the evening we found a great place for salty beer food and amusingly-named flights of beer like “The Beer Doctorate”.

So much salt, so very good:

An attempt to find another craft beer place came to naught as it appeared to no longer exist, but we did enjoy a taxi ride in a Tesla there and back to the original place thanks to a breakdown in communication!

Podgorica feels like a city that was minding its own business being a provincial city and now finds itself thrust into the limelight of being a capital city. As a city break destination, I can’t really recommend it. It was a fun trip but if I were to revisit Montenegro in the future, I would look to do as my brother did and tour the more historical Kotor and the beautiful surrounding areas.