Kotor, Montenegro – July 27, 2024
July 27, 2024
Last updated on August 17th, 2024 at 02:24 pm
[This is a rough draft to get started. We’ve done a lot of traveling so far, and are behind in sleep, so we’ll keep this updated as we have a chance. When this isn’t here anymore, you’ll know that we’re finished with the page!]
Kotor is Montenegro’s picturesque capital set amid glorious mountains and dramatic scenery. Towering cliffs soar above the narrow Kotor ria—a submerged river canyon often called Europe’s southernmost fjord. Kotor is also home to one of the Adriatic’s best-preserved medieval Old Towns. The charms of this red-roofed city are endless, from the mismatched towers of its Romanesque cathedral to its narrow streets. Its stunning Venetian walls were built in 1420, remnants from Kotor’s nearly 300 years as a province of the Venetian Republic.
This is our first visit to Montenegro. We started our day with breakfast at Mamsen’s in the Explorer’s Lounge as we watched the ship travel through the Bay of Kotor on our way to the Montenegrin city of Kotor. Mamsen’s has a delicious waffle served with sour cream, strawberries, blueberries raspberries, blackberries, syrup and thin slices of a Norwegian cheese decoratively curled.
The Bay of Kotor is beautiful – blue, calm water, high wooded hills/mountains with small villages at the water’s edge as well as climbing the hillsides. There are two cruise ships in the bay today. The other ship is a huge Royal Caribbean ship that is too big to dock at the port, so their passengers will tender ashore. Our cruise director, Philip, provided commentary as the ship slowly moved toward the city of Kotor, boasting of the advantage the Viking Sea had of docking right outside the old city because it was a smaller ship.
Our tour was a 1 1/2 hour walking tour through the old city. Our guide gave us some history of the area, which again as in Corfu, the people of the area looked to the Venetians to protect them from the Ottomans, setting up 400 years of Venetian rule. Our guide’s take on the breakup of Yugoslavia was interesting. In her opinion life was going along well for everyone and then some of the people decided to fight, with the European Union intervening after which life is not as good as it was before. She does not seem to be in favor of the country’s current quest for entry into the EU.
We walked around the city, from small square to small square. The first square was called Flower Square by the locals. We visited Saint Tryphon Cathedral, consecrated in 1166 on the remains of a former temple dedicated to Kotor’s patron saint, Saint Tryphon, St. Tryphon Cathedral takes you back to an era when Kotor was a bustling seaport of the medieval world. After an earthquake in 1667 brought down the cathedral’s Romanesque facade, it was rebuilt in the mature Baroque style you see today. Inside the cathedral we saw a unique stone ciborium over the main altar added to the cathedral in 1362, a masterpiece of 14th-century stonecutting art from the then-famous Kotor sculpture school. The frieze of the ciborium depicts scenes from Saint Tryphon’s life in bas-relief. Many of the columns and arches in the cathedral are made from red stone from Đurići, in the Bay of Kotor.
Our next stop was the Maritime Museum. Many of the men of the area spent a lot of time away from home at sea. In the museum were paintings of various sailors from the history of the area. Upstairs were paintings of prominent families, gifts brought back to the town from other areas, including furniture, jewelry, clothing, large vases, etc. There was also an entire room displaying various guns and weapons. Throughout the old city, we encountered many cats. Some were friendly and some ignored us. Cats were brought to the city to control the rodent population and are now cared for by residents of the old city.
After the museum, we continued our walk on narrow curving streets taking us back to the square near the old city gate where our tour ended. As we walked, our guide pointed to shops displaying products crafted by local artists, most having displays of various cat related items for sale. Our guide said shops selling leather goods, jewelry and watches sold items from Istanbul, Turkey.
Our tour ended at 10:30 am, so we decided we wanted to walk around some. We walked up stairs to an area along the wall with outdoor café seating. We walked on toward a church, but the walkway access ended, so we walked down. While consulting the map we rested near a fountain and noticed an area that looked devoted to the cats. Several cats were eating and drinking. We saw a women feeding kittens with an eye dropper. Joyce was glad we saw evidence that the cats were being cared for. We walked around the back side of the old city. We say Tarfiq, our waiter from dinner last night, and a friend from the ship. Tarfiq immediately called us by name, which surprised us as he had only waited on us once. He was giving his friend a tour as this was the friend’s first time in Montenegro. More narrow streets, interesting buildings and street musicians. We came to the water on the other side of the city from where we entered and saw a staircase leading up to the walkway on the wall, which we took back to the city gate we originally came through. Walking the wall gave us great views of the city, the bay and our ship. Before leaving the old city we did some shopping – earrings for Joyce and a Christmas ornament to commemorate Montenegro.
Back on the ship, Alan booked a speed boat trip he had been looking at. We ate lunch and rested a bit before our 3 pm speed boat ride.
We booked the speed boat tour through Viator. The meeting place for the tour was a 1 minute walk from the ship. Two brothers were our guides/drivers for the 10 of us on the tour. We had a 25 minute exhilarating ride to the mouth of the bay to the Our Lady of the Rocks Island. This is a man-made island with a church. The legend’s story is a sailor saw a picture of Jesus or the Madonna and child in the water that wasn’t wet. He saw the picture the next day and threw a rock in the water. Other sailors saw the picture and did the same when returning to Kotor after successful sea voyages, creating the island. On the island we visited Church of our Lady of the Rocks, which contains 68 paintings by Tripo Kokolja, a famous 17th-century baroque artist from Perast. We had about 30 minutes to explore the church and surrounding island. Very near this island is another small island, not man-made that is held by the government and cannot be visited.
After the island, the boat took us to Perast about 5 minutes away and we had about 30 minutes to explore there as well. Perast is a small costal village that appear to crawl up the side of a mountain. We walked along a street horizontal to the bay. Alan thought a street went up the mountain then ran parallel to the street below before coming down to the bay. He decided to explore it, but when it didn’t parallel the bay, reversed and came back down. Joyce enjoyed walking along the street near the dock. There were outdoor cafes with bright colored flowers, boats and the vibrant blue water of the bay. The brothers returned for us at the end of 30 minutes and we enjoyed another exhilarating ride bouncing on the waves back to Kotor.
Back on the ship, we rested a short time and then went to dinner in The Restaurant. Joyce enjoyed Sea bass as a main course and chocolate creme brûlée for dessert. The ship stayed in port until about 11 p.m. this evening. There was an privileged access concert attended by some of the people on the ship. Our stateroom was on the side of the ship overlooking the Old Town of Kotor, so we had a front row seat to watching some of Kotor night life and listening to some of the music pulsing from various establishments. We blogged, read and worked on pictures until time to watch the ship leave the port.
