Kotor, Montenegro

We had a good breakfast at our hotel in Bar, then walked down the boardwalk to check it out. It was fairly busy with locals. Bar is a stop on the cruise ship circuit, and the ocean-front restaurants are built to handle the peak rush.

There’s websites where you can see the cruise ship schedules by port of call. There’s not that many at this time of year so I was able to book our trip to avoid the cruises.

Checked out of our hotel and drove to Stari Bar (‘stari’ means ‘old’). In 1979, the original location of Bar was hit by an earthquake and they relocated the town about 4km to the waterfront. Stari Bar is now slowly being restored as a tourist draw; it’s cool to wander around the ruins of the old castle that overlooks Stari Bar.

It was then a 90 minute drive to Kotor. Having learned from a couple other stops on the trip, this time I contacted the hotel ahead of time to figure out the parking situation.

Along the way we drove past the Sveti Stefan hotel island. You’ve probably seen pics of this on Instagram. It’s a very high end hotel, and only guests are allowed on the island. There was a convenient lookout point on the side of the road so I stopped to take a pic.

We also passed through Budva. When researching the trip, one of the options was Kotor vs Budva. A few travel blogs recommended Budva. Having driven through it, I’m glad we chose Kotor, it’s more to our liking. Budva I think has a better beach scene but that’s not our thing.

Google Maps showed 6km to our destination and I still couldn’t see the steep hills that surround Kotor. Then, we drove through a 1.6km long tunnel. Ah, that’s why I couldn’t see Kotor on the approach!

There was a bit of traffic entering the city centre. There was a cruise ship leaving at 5pm, the only cruise we’ll encounter.

Parked our car in a lot just outside the old city walls, and rolled our suitcases to our hotel (much easier than carrying backpacks).

Checked in, and then went to explore the old walled city. It’s really magical walking around the narrow alleys. Found a restaurant for lunch, and enjoyed fresh seafood and a bottle of Serbian white. It was excellent.

The sun was just starting to set (it was about 4pm) so we walked around taking pics with the dusk lighting. We just wandered - you can’t get truly lost cause of the walls.

We relaxed back at the hotel. We were still full by 8pm so just went out for some small bites. Had the most excellent olives. I tried a local draft beer which was refreshing.

It was a long-ish day, both of us had forgotten that we had visited Stari Bar in the morning. Also, in case Gerry or Tanya are reading, it’s country number 92 for me :) We were actually in Montenegro yesterday, but I forgot to update the country count until just now.