Amsterdam, Gotland, and Montenegro

We left San Francisco and landed in Amsterdam late the next morning, jet-lagged but ready to explore. A train and a tram got us to our hotel, the lovely W Amsterdam, and once we’d dropped our bags we went looking for beer at In The Wildeman, a cozy tasting house with dozens of Dutch and Belgian drafts. From there we walked to the Rijksmuseum, home to an outstanding collection of Dutch Golden Age paintings. The centerpiece is Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, a colossal, dynamic militia portrait that’s occupied pride of place in the museum’s Gallery of Honour since it opened in 1885; Johannes Vermeer’s luminous The Milkmaid was another highlight.

We wandered back to the hotel by way of Amsterdam’s canals, a 17th-century engineering marvel that earned UNESCO recognition in 2010 for its sheer scale—over 100 kilometers of waterways, ninety islands, and 1,500 bridges, all designed and built when Amsterdam sat at the center of a trading empire stretching from Brazil to Indonesia. That evening we took a car out to De Kas, in a converted 1927 nursery greenhouse in Frankendael Park. De Kas grows some 300 varieties of produce on-site and serves a delicious, largely plant-based set menu built around whatever was picked that morning. The skies opened up just as we finished dinner, and the short dash to our car left us thoroughly soaked.

After an excellent breakfast at the hotel, we walked to the Van Gogh Museum. Vincent’s borther Theo amassed most of the collection, and it stayed in the family until his nephew donated it to the Dutch state in 1962. Today it’s the largest collection of Van Gogh’s work anywhere, and it’s a fascinating chronicle of his art and his short, turbulent life.

Leaving the museum, we spent a few hours strolling through Vondelpark before visiting the Anne Frank House, a truly arresting experience that drives home some of the horrendous realities of the Holocaust. Otto Frank moved his family into the hidden back rooms of this 17th-century canal house in 1942. He was the only member of his family to survive the war, and he devoted himself to publishing his daughter’s diary and preserving the building.

We found a change of pace at Café ’t Smalle, a traditional pub with a handsome wood-paneled interior where we tasted some Dutch craft beers and genever. Genever is a Dutch spirit dating to the 16th century, distilled from malt wine and infused with juniper berries (it started life as medicine before the Dutch turned it into a drink, and the English later reverse-engineered it into gin). We tried some oak-aged genevers that bridged the gap between Scotch and old-style genever—fun to try, if not exactly my new favorite liquor. Then we took a cruise along Amsterdam’s canals with Pure Boats, getting a great historical overview of the city and a unique perspective on its architecture from the water, and capped off the day with some tasty cocktails at Law and Order Cocktail Bar.

We left early the next morning for the airport, bound for Copenhagen and a connecting flight to Visby. Our flight out of Amsterdam was delayed by about an hour, and we missed our connection; there’s at most one flight a day from Copenhagen to Visby, so the airline couldn’t rebook us until the following day. We scrambled to find an airport hotel, then took the train into the city and relieved our travel stress with some delicious cocktails at bird : downtown. We strolled through Nyhavn’s canalside rows of colorful townhouses and took a water taxi out to Reffen, a sprawling outdoor street food market on the harbor covering just about every cuisine imaginable. We ate dinner on the sand by the water, then called it an early night.

Our rescheduled flight left Copenhagen at 7am, and after a short connection in Stockholm, we finally made it to Visby. Set on the island of Gotland off Sweden’s southeast coast, Visby is a beautiful town steeped in history, ringed by mostly intact medieval walls and dotted with the ruins of a dozen once-monumental stone churches. At the height of the Hanseatic League, Visby was one of Northern Europe’s wealthiest ports, known as “regina maris”—queen of the sea. But the 14th century was brutal: the Black Death ripped through the town in 1350, and Danish king Valdemar Atterdag conquered Gotland in 1361 and forced open the city gates after his army crushed the last defenders. After the Protestant Reformation, the abandoned Catholic churches fell into disrepair and were left roofless, some later quarried for stone.

We checked into the cozy Kalk Hotel, then set out to walk the town walls, which still run for 3.4 kilometers and bristle with 36 medieval towers. We were in Visby for a wedding, and the bride and groom asked us to join them for a swim, so we strolled out along the coast to a jetty and took a dip in the surprisingly warm Baltic Sea before retiring to Kasai by the Beach for a refreshing drink.

Lauren and I drove out to Hogklint, a limestone cliff south of Visby that offers a wonderful view of the town and coastline, then visited Barlingbo Bryggeri to try some local beers over dinner. Back in the main town, we stopped at Värdshuset Lindgården, where Lauren tried a creative gin and tonic. We met up with the bride and groom later that night; Sweden was playing France in the World Cup knockout rounds at 11pm, and the match was projected on a huge screen in a town square. Sweden fell behind early and never recovered, but watching a national team play with a crowd of locals is always a good time.

We slept in a bit the next morning to recover from the late night, then drove to the northeast tip of Gotland and took the ferry across to the island of Fårö. We rented bikes and rode out to the Fårö Lighthouse, had an excellent lunch at Restaurant Fårögården, and stopped at Sylvis Daughters Bakery for a delicious dessert. We walked the coast at Langhammars, a shoreline of strange, wind-sculpted rock stacks—not, as is often said, the setting for the famous chess-with-death scene in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (that was filmed in southwest Sweden, years before Bergman set foot on Fårö), but the backdrop for two of his later films, Persona and Shame, shot after the island became his home for the rest of his life. Our last stop on Fårö was Helgumannens, a small traditional fishing village. Back in Visby, we had a fantastic dinner at Lilla Bjers Krog, another farm-to-table restaurant with a greenhouse vibe, where the steak was the highlight.

We began the next day by driving south to Klintehamn to catch a ferry to the island of Stora Karlsö, the second-oldest nature reserve in the world (after Yellowstone). The island is a crucial breeding ground for tens of thousands of common guillemots, whose three-week-old chicks leap from the cliffs into the sea before they can fly—too soft and downy to be hurt by the fall, they tumble down to parents waiting below. We walked the trail circling the island, taking in the birdlife and the views, then caught the ferry back to Gotland in the afternoon.

On the drive back to Visby we stopped at Gotland Whisky, a distillery built inside a former sugar mill. We toured the operation (the tour was actually quite good, not always true of distillery tours) and tried some unusual but very tasty single malts, made from grain-to-glass barley grown on the island. Back in Visby that evening, we went to the wedding’s welcome dinner at Frimis, a beautiful outdoor spot next to the ruins of St. Nicolai church.

The wedding itself was on Friday. In the morning we visited the Gotland Museum, which houses a remarkable collection of artifacts from Visby’s various historical eras, especially Viking-age relics and some striking human remains.

The ceremony was held back at the St. Nicolai ruin, and the bones of the roofless medieval church made for one of the most incredible wedding venues we’ve ever seen. Between the ceremony and the reception we took another lap around the town walls and stopped by Visby Glasblåseri to see some beautiful locally blown glass, then spent the rest of the night dancing.

We stopped by the goodbye breakfast the next morning, then headed south to a Viking grave. Consisting of about 100 stones in the rough shape of a ship, the grave is a remarkable piece of history in a beautiful sylvan setting.

We flew to Stockholm, and landing in the early afternoon. A train took us into the city, where we checked into the chic At Six hotel and set out on a walking tour of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s old town, with a street plan largely intact from the 13th century. We stopped by the Royal Palace, Storkyrkan (Stockholm’s oldest building, consecrated in 1306, and home to a dramatic wooden sculpture of St. George slaying the dragon, commissioned to celebrate a 1471 victory over the Danes), Stortorget, Mårten Trotzigs Gränd—the city’s narrowest alley, just 90 centimeters across at its tightest point—and Riddarholmen Church. We climbed up to Mariaberget for gorgeous views of the city, then walked back across Gamla Stan to Skeppsholmen for an alternate angle of the cityscape. We had dinner back at the hotel, stopped by Lucy’s Flower Shop shop for some fantastically creative cocktails, and went to bed early.

Our flight left Stockholm early the next morning. Connecting through Copenhagen, we landed in Dubrovnik and drove across the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina, and from there into Montenegro. We picked Montenegro because it was a less-traveled destination, especially in the middle of summer, somewhere neither of us had been, and it promised an amazing combination of rugged mountains and beautiful Adriatic beaches.

We reached the mountain town of Žabljak in the early evening and checked into the North Story Hotel. Žabljak is earnestly trying to become a destination mountain resort, and while the infrastructure is still catching up, the mountain views are unbeatable and the hospitality is excellent. We ambled through town for a drink at Caffe Bar, then had a very good dinner at Restaurant Or’O.

In the morning we set out to explore Durmitor National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1980 and one of the most beautiful parks in the Balkans. We drove the Durmitor Ring, a 76-kilometer loop offering an endless stream of breathtaking views over mountains, valleys, and idyllic little towns, as well as a scattering of glacial lakes. Stopping at Sedlo Pass, we set out to climb Bobotov Kuk, one of the highest peaks in Montenegro at 8,278 feet (2,523m). Lauren made a wrong turn along the way, but I pressed on to the summit and found beautiful views and a dog napping contentedly in the sun at the top. We returned to Žabljak for a tasty but high-calorie traditional dinner at the River Bridge Hotel.

The next day we drove out to Crno Jezero (Black Lake) and hiked to Zminje Jezero, another alpine lake ringed by stony peaks. Back at Crno Jezero, we had a fabulous lunch at Nacionalni restoran Crno jezero—a whole roasted golden trout served over local vegetables—though a gang of adorable puppies made a determined effort to beg some of it off our plates.

We left Žabljak and drove east, stopping at the Tara River Gorge, Europe’s deepest canyon at roughly 1,300 meters, spanned by the Đurđevića Tara Bridge. Built between 1937 and 1940 using the largest wooden scaffold ever constructed, the bridge was Europe’s largest concrete arch bridge of its era. The bridge’s designer later helped blow up its central span in 1942 to slow the Italian invasion during World War II, before it was eventually rebuilt. We walked out onto it (currently under renovation and closed to vehicle traffic) for views of the gorge below. Continuing on to Lake Biograd, we hiked around the lake before reaching Kolašin and the luxurious Hotel Wulfenia. We walked through town and had an outstanding dinner at Sherpas Restaurant.

In the morning we drove out narrow, winding roads to Štavna, in Komovi National Park, a rugged massif of three peaks. Lauren and I split up to climb separate summits: she took on Vasojevićki Kom, while I attempted Kučki Kom, the range’s highest point at 2,487 meters. Both are challenging hikes with incredible views, but Kučki Kom is longer and steeper, with class 4 scrambling and a knife-edge summit ridge. Remarkably, we reached our respective summits at almost the same time and were able to wave to each other and take photos across the gap between the mountains. My hike covered about 8 miles and 3,500 feet of elevation gain.

Afterward we drove to Morača Monastery, a 13th-century Serbian Orthodox monastery founded in 1252 by Stefan Nemanja, famous for a fresco cycle depicting the prophet Elijah fed by a raven (one of the most celebrated works of medieval Serbian art, and remarkably, it survived Ottoman occupation of the region relatively intact). We returned to Kolašin for an excellent dinner at Vigor, the hotel restaurant.

Rising early the next morning, we drove to Lake Skadar, the largest lake in the Balkans, and took an excellent boat tour with Kingfisher through its picturesque lily fields, stopping by Monastery Kom. The lake is a biodiversity hotspot, with dozens of endemic fish species and more than 250 species of birds. After the boat trip we visited the exquisite Garnet Winery, tucked into a tiny hill town, which offers excellent wines alongside local cheeses and vegetables, and then Winery Lipovac, a much larger but equally friendly operation with tasty wines and a gorgeous hillside setting.

We drove on to Cetinje, Montenegro’s historic capital since the 1480s, when Ivan Crnojević moved his court there to escape Ottoman pressure. As soon as we entered the city, we discovered that the presidents of Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were all in town for a summit, with most of the city center closed to traffic. After a stressful scramble to find parking and haul our bags to our hotel, the Gradska Cetinje, we had dinner and drinks, waiting out the VIPs before we could finally bring the car into town and collapse gratefully into bed.

We spent the next morning on a walking tour of Cetinje, visiting the Museum of King Nikola (who ruled from 1860 and declared himself king in 1910, briefly making Cetinje the capital of an internationally recognized kingdom), Cetinje Monastery, Djukanović House, and Vlaška Church. Then we drove out to the coast and stopped at Sveti Stefan, a gorgeous fortified islet that spent five centuries as an ordinary fishing village before its residents were evicted in the 1950s to convert it into a luxury hotel that later hosted the likes of Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe.

We pressed on to Budva, a walled town on the coast some 2,500 years old, first settled by Illyrian tribes and later colonized by Greeks and Romans. We had a tasty lunch at Casper Bar, then took a walking tour past the main town gate, the Orthodox Church, Holy Trinity Church, and the Citadel, including its library and the beautiful views from its walls. In the early evening we reached our hotel, the absolutely incredible Chedi Lustica Bay, and had an excellent Japanese dinner at one of its onsite restaurants.

We drove along the eastern side of the Bay of Kotor for some pictures in the soft early morning light, then in the afternoon continued on to Perast, a small town where we walked around and had lunch at Restaurant Conte before taking a boat out to Our Lady of the Rocks. This small manmade island grew, according to legend, one stone at a time over centuries: after local sailors found an icon of the Madonna and Child on a rock in the bay, they took to laying a new stone there every time they returned safely from a voyage. Its main attraction is a votive tapestry embroidered by Jacinta Kunić-Mijović, whose sailor husband failed to return from a voyage in 1803. She spent the next 25 years working the piece while she waited for him, weaving in gold and silver thread, pearls, and eventually her own hair when the precious materials ran out. You can trace her aging in the tapestry as the woven hair shifts from blonde to gray.

Our next stop was the Kotor, a beautiful medieval town on the bay, Roman in origin and shaped over more than 350 years of Venetian rule. We tried some excellent beers at The Nitrox Pub, guided ourselves on a walking tour of the old town, and then hiked the town walls, a truly impressive feat of fortification that climbs high into the steep hills above the town. Then we headed back for an excellent dinner at Noa Lustica Bay.

The next day we rode the Kotor Cable Car. The summit was a little disappointing and heavily touristed; we hiked around for a while looking for a better vantage point over Kotor and the bay, but the cable car ride actually offered the best views of the whole excursion. We returned to the hotel and spent a delightfully relaxing afternoon at its private beach.

Sad to leave the Chedi, we took the Kamenari ferry across the Bay of Kotor and reached the border crossing into Croatia in good time. Unfortunately, the line to cross still took almost an hour, which by all accounts was relatively quick. We checked into our hotel, then walked into the magical medieval old town of Dubrovnik.

We wandered through Saint Blaise’s Church, the Maritime Museum, and the Rector’s Palace, then stopped by Glam Bar for some deilicious Croatian craft beers. Next came the obligatory walk along the walls of Dubrovnik, two kilometers of fortifications, up to 24 meters high, mostly dating to the 1400s when the city reinforced its defenses against the Ottomans, and the reason Dubrovnik earned its nickname, the Pearl of the Adriatic. The views of the town and sea were stunning despite the sweltering heat. To cool off we stopped at M’arden Dubrovnik, a wine bar with excellent Croatian wines and supremely knowledgeable, friendly service. Our last meal of the trip was a fantastic dinner at Restaurant Marco Polo.

We got up early the next morning to drive to Dubrovnik airport and fly to Amsterdam. Our long layover there gave us time for one more trip into the city, so we spent it walking around, trying a stroopwafel, and grabbing a smoothie before boarding the long flight home.