Kotor, Montenegro

Breakfast was so-so at the hotel. I was surprised they had a buffet with so few guests, I thought it would have been cheaper for the hotel to offer à la carte.

There’s a couple of popular walks in Kotor. The shorter walk, variously called the Walls of Kotor, is up the city walls to the castle of San Giovanni (260m); the longer walk, the Ladder of Kotor, follows an old horse path through to the pass to the village of Njeguši (940m).

We did the shorter walk today. It’s off-season so there were hardly any other people on the walk (there were less than five other people at the castle at the top while we were there), although later in the day there were maybe 20 people. It’s also a much more comfortable temperature in December for walking. (It was a high of 11C today).

There’s stone stairs the whole way up (single file), and it took us about 30 minutes to get to the top, including lots of photo stops. There’s great views from the castle.

The pics were better on the way down (it was about 11am by this point) cause the winter sun had finally swung around the surrounding peaks to shine on the whole of the old town.

We went back to our hotel to clean up and change out of our trekking gear, and then headed out for lunch.

Decided to try Galion, around the bay, to get views of the old city from the outside. Turns out they had a five-course tasting menu so we didn’t even look at the rest of the menu.

The food was excellent. Our favourites included the grilled octopus, a mushroom broth, and a seafood risotto, although we really liked every course. We took pics of each, and when we counted them after, there were actually eight courses. No wonder we were full. Six of the courses were matched with wines, all from the Balkans.

After lunch, we did some souvenir shopping in the old town. Heather bought a cool-looking cat bag (a bag with an image of a cat). Kotor is another ‘city of cats’ and they do love their cats here.

We were too full for dinner, so later in the evening just went out for a quick drink. Ended up at the wine bar we saw the first day. They were playing tunes we liked (Manu Chau) and the place had a cool atmosphere. It ended up being a rather full unplanned day!