There is a saying I always use about the cities I visit, "If I said that I love every city I visit, I would be doing an injustice to the cities that I really feel at home." Budva is one of these cities.

Budva is a small city in Montenegro, a small country influenced by the Venetians and got its name by combining their words – Monte (Mountain) and Negro (Land). Budva, about an hour from the capital Podgorica, offers different experiences to its visitors with its old and new cities. Since Budva has been under the patronage of the Venetians throughout history, you can come across Italian influences and medieval architecture. The Old Town, called Stari Grad, is also on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List.

Budva has recently become one of the popular cities in the Balkans in terms of summer tourism. This small city, which has a long coast to the Adriatic Sea, is very rich in terms of swimming areas and beaches. There are numerous places where you can swim in Budva, including the center.

Although the dark mountains, from which the nation takes its name, stand tall all around the city, the sun rising from between those dark mountains transforms the clear waters of the Adriatic into a sparkling turquoise aquarium.

You can sail to the cool waters of the Adriatic with boat tours or spend your time on wonderful beaches. I'm thinking I'll be writing about those boat tours and Kotor – another Adriatic pearl – in my next travel piece.

Svet Nikola

When you come to the center of Budva, an island view welcomes you in the middle of the sea. Sveti Nikola Island is the name of this island, which you can reach by boat taxis from the marina. They also call it Hawaii Island.

This island, opposite the castle, can be seen from almost every point of Budva. It allows you to wake up with a wonderful island view every morning, especially if you are staying in a hotel high up. Every summer that I go to Budva, I stay at the same hotel and wake up every morning with the view of Sveti Nikola in the middle of the deep blue waters of the Adriatic.

If you want to get away from the crowd of hotels in the center of Budva, you can stay in apartment-style flats built on the hills. Altezza is one of them. When you raise your head while swimming in the infinity pool, the desolate view of Sveti Nikola takes you to different lands as you watch the deep blue of the Adriatic and the deep blue of the sky at the bottom of the dark mountains that stretch out as far as the eye can see.

You can reach the Sveti Nikola island in 10 to 15 minutes by boat taxi from the marina. When you set foot on the island, you see that; There is no trace of the noise of the city center.

A quiet activity awaits you. That calm activity feels itself, especially when swimming in the sea. How can you say? Well, when you swim, you swim with a thousand and one kinds of fish. There are many different plant and animal species on the island, which is also the natural habitat of deer and rabbits.

The sea is covered with pebbles, both inside and outside, so you should definitely bring your sea shoes with you. The beach, where there are mostly pebbles, does not allow you to experience the blur created by sand and you feel like you are swimming in a natural aquarium.

The underwater creatures and fishes of the Adriatic accompany you while you swim. When we were there – probably away from the rush of the summer season – only the fish were there to be our hosts and welcome us.

Jaz Beach

The Jaz Beach, which is approximately 2.5 kilometers (1.55 miles) from the center of Budva, is one of the three biggest beaches on the Montenegro coast. This beach is a favorite among sea lovers, especially its turquoise color.

Sveti Stefan

There is actually a lot to tell about Sveti Stefan. This is not just a beach. It's actually an island. A certain part of the island's coast is open to the public. The island itself and a large part of the sea coast are generally closed to everyone.

Sveti Stefan Island, especially on the way to Budva, has a beauty where you can stop by the roadside and catch some wonderful shots. It offers a dazzling view from the hill. This small island, where fishermen lived until the 1960s, became one of the elite holiday destinations of the 60s and 80s with the Josip Broz Tito regime – the former president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Sveti Stefan Island was frequented by celebrities such as Sofia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Orson Welles, Kirk Douglas and Liz Taylor at that time. Although it lost some of its popularity in the 1990s after the partition of Yugoslavia, the Montenegrin government rented the island for 30 years, allowing it to be turned into a hotel and regain its former vitality.

If you are not a hotel customer, you are not allowed to enter the island.

There are two ways to visit the island.

The first is to see the island from the sea with a boat tour like I did. The boat stops close to the island and you have the chance to swim in these turquoise waters.

Another is that you can go to the island by land and enter the beach, but you have to pay a certain amount of fee to enter the beach.

I preferred the Adriatic boat tour, which takes about six hours, and goes to Petrovav and Kotor as well, so I saw the island and on top of that I had the opportunity to see and visit many towns and cities on the Adriatic coast.

Best of all, I had the pleasure of swimming in many bays of the Adriatic.

Petrovac's Lucice Beach

You can go to Petrovac, a holiday town, by boat or road. Located in Petrovac, 20 kilometers from Budva city center, Lucice beach is a small beach but surrounded by lush green hills; it is a stunning beach.

Slovenska Beach

Many facilities are lined up side by side along Slovenska Beach, which is located almost in the center of Budva city. It is ideal for those who want to swim in the sea without using a vehicle or boat.

Mogren Beach

You can reach Mogren Beach, one of the blue flag beaches of Budva, from Stari Grad, the old city center.

The beach, which consists of pebbly sand, is one where you need to pay a fee to enter. On the way to Mogren Beach, which you can reach via a pleasant path, you can see the ballerina statue in the middle of the sea, which has become the symbol of Budva.

There are many legends about the statue that adorns the wonderful Old Town view behind it. The statue belongs to the famous Belgrade artist Gradimir Aleksic. Tales are, unfortunately, somewhat tragic.

When I first went, I heard that the statue belonged to a dancer girl, and that she fell into the sea and drowned, and that this statue was erected in her memory. The second time I went, I heard that the statue was a dancing girl waiting for her sailor lover. Rumor has it that the girl's sailor lover sailed to distant seas. The girl waits for days and months on the rocks, but no one returns. This story inspired the sculptor and this work emerged.

I don't know if the girl was a dancer or if such dramatic legends really happened, but the walls of the old city in the background and the view of the Ballerina in the foreground; together are enough to enchant me. Like every corner of Budva that stole my heart.

Budva attracts people not only with its beaches but also with its narrow streets, stone houses and historical churches from the Middle Ages. This is a city that gives me a big breath, even though it is small enough to fit in my heart. For some reason, being in Budva feels good to me day and night. Leaving myself here in the narrow streets of Budva on the days when I don't swim and getting lost among these streets somehow feels like not getting lost but finding myself.

With its seafront walls, stone houses, and narrow streets, the Old Town is the pearl of the Adriatic, and at the same time a gateway to the Adriatic.