Hotel Dolce Vita in Bečići

Hotel Dolce Vita sits on a hillside in Bečići, on Montenegro's coast, just 150 meters from Bečići Beach and shaded by ancient olive trees. This double room accommodates 2 guests, with 1 bedroom, 1 bed and 1 bathroom across 22m², and comes with its own terrace and solid wood furnishings. In-room comforts include air conditioning, LCD TV with cable channels, mini-bar, safe, telephone and a bathroom hairdryer, plus card access, panic lock, fire sensor and SOS button. The newly built hotel is open year-round and holds 32 apartments and rooms alongside a reception with safe, restaurant, bar, sauna, gym, billiards room and table tennis. A summer garden terrace behind the building offers shade for a drink or a quiet read, and there is an elevator, video surveillance and 24-hour hot water. Well suited to couples wanting a short walk to the sand. From 172 EUR per night.

About the area

Shade is the local currency on this stretch of the Bečići slope. The plot sits inside an old olive grove, and the trees are what make mid-afternoon bearable a hundred and fifty metres above the sea. This is the resort end of the settlement, where the large hotels hold the shoreline and most of what a summer family needs is packed into a short downhill walk: the aqua park, supermarkets and bakeries, ice-cream counters, and the rank of pedalos and inflatable rings drawn up on the sand. The rise also buys a breeze and a view over the bay that the seafront buildings block.

The beach below is the reason people come — a broad band of sand and fine gravel with calm, clear water and a long-standing reputation as one of the best on the Montenegrin coast. A paved promenade follows it in both directions. North it leads past the marina into Budva's Stari Grad, a compact grid of stone lanes behind sea walls, about half an hour away on foot. South it ends at Rafailovići, where fish restaurants sit almost on the waterline and the cooking is worth the walk back uphill. For a change of scene, Sveti Stefan and its causeway-linked islet are five kilometres down the coast, and the road inland climbs quickly toward Lovćen, where the air is ten degrees cooler by mid-morning.