Staying in the Old Town of Kotor, Montenegro

From Mostar in Bosnia we headed for Kotor in Montenegro. There are no direct buses from these two destinations, despite them being favourite stops for travelers and backpackers, in fact the public transport in this region in the world is definitely not first class and sometimes there is only one bus a day or even every second day for certain places!

We organised a transfer through the hostel we were staying at in Kotor, it wasn't cheap but for only a few euro extra we saved about 4 hours or more of bus travel! We were also lucky enough to coincidentally meet our room mates for our hostel in Kotor on this transfer!

The above view is our first glimpse of Kotor Bay in Montenegro, the mini-bus driver was nice enough to pull over and take us over to a very unsuspecting lookout point to check out this amazing view. 

We had four days in Kotor, which meant a fair bit of down time and relaxation, it was really nice to chill but it also means that I didn't take many photos so I will just have to make reference to the ones I do have!

Some pictures of us wandering through the old town of Kotor. In most 'tourist' cities featuring an old town the prices of accommodation in the old town are absolutely exorbitant and we could never afford to actually stay in the heart of one. Lucky for us Kotor is actually affordable and for the first time in our travels we were able to stay right in the centre of the old town, which was really cool. 

Having said this we only really ate in the old town once as we were directed to a restaurant/cafe/take away place by one of the hostel workers, where you could get the same food for half the price. We made sure to visit there a few times and take advantage of the bargain meals ($6 for squid is verrrrryyy cheap!).

A picture of Michael standing outside of one of the gates to the old town.

On a mountain behind the old town is the Kotor Fortress, this is located 1,400 steps above the old town of Kotor. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has amazing views over the Bay of Kotor.  I can only assume that the fortress was linked to the defence of the city back in the day. 

This is a shot of me, not even close to half way up and already a pretty amazing view. You can see the giant cruise ship in the background - there was usually one or two cruise ships docked in Kotor a day. This meant the whole old town (which is very small) was completely inundated with annoying cruise ship tourists each day for a few hours!

Michael and I at our first stop and Michael tackling the stairs - a very good travel work out!

This was quite possibly my favourite view point about half way up to the Kotor Fortress (or maybe slightly further along?), the views were amazing and I found in kind of incredible that there were absolutely no barricades or fences so people could literally walk around anywhere and just had to make sure they didn't put a foot wrong haha!

An awesome picture taken by our new friends and room mates: Daniela and Jake, who hiked up to the fortress with us. Another travel couple who were really great room mates and really fun to chill out with during our time in Kotor!

Michael striking his favourite "I love life" / "I'm really sweating a lot here" pose.

Most of the photos from this point are taken from the top of the Fortress overlooking the Bay of Kotor or very near to the top. We finally made it up the 1,400 steps!

Michael's artistic photo.

Below is actually a really good shot of the old town of Kotor. It is in a triangular kind of shape and points into the bay - it is actually a really small old town, I am not entirely sure how we got lost so many times. 

Took me a while to get a photo of the Montenegrin flag but it finally blew in the right direction! Some other photos of Michael and hanging around at the top of the Kotor Fortress and admiring the amazing view! Jake or Daniela suggested that I pose for the photo on the bottom right and although it was a great idea for a cool photo I was totally scared!

The above photo, while not being overly flattering, does a really good job of capturing the Fortress and the view below. The Fortress itself seemed pretty incomplete and was kind of crumbling down around us but provided an amazing platform for some of the most incredible views I have seen in Europe. Below me you can see the very small town of Kotor and sticking into the bay you can seen the even smaller old town of Kotor. 

Michael took this photo on the right, it gives you some idea of the steps we had to climb up to make it to the top of the fortress - of course it looked way more impressive in real life :-P

The following day we decided that we were still feeling athletic and adventurous and embarked on a 42km bike ride around the Bay of Kotor. 

Unfortunately the ride wasn't exactly what we thought it would be, we had to ride on the side of the main road, being overtaken by cars, buses and trucks who didn't always leave a huge gap. In our failure to anticipate this we also hadn't hired helmets so we were both feeling a little anxious for most of the ride. From the photo above it is not hard to tell that the views of the bay are amazing and it is a beautiful area but I was concentrating on my riding more than my photo-taking!

Above right is Michael riding through the small town of Perast where we stopped for lunch, the ride through here was much quieter and not filled with cars passing us at high speeds. 

About 3/4 of the way through our ride we had to get a short ferry ride as the bay doesn't entirely meet up. This cost us a grand total of 1 euro each and was about a 10 minutes ferry ride - very short! I took a few pictures of the bay as viewed from the ferry. 

From here it didn't take us too long to make it home. I think altogether, with a lunch stop and other stops along the way, it took us about 4 hours to ride around the Kotor Bay. 

The above photo was taken on the opppsite side of the bay to the town of Kotor - right on the water you can see the old town of Kotor. If you look carefully you can also see the stairway/path that we followed to reach the Fortress of Kotor - the Fortress is at the very top right of this photo. 

This is a random photo of Michael outside of the walls of the Old Town of Kotor. He was very proud of himself as he had just gotten a hair cut - FYI if anyone is ever in Kotor they do very cheap haircuts and spend a lot of time and attention on you. This took the better part of an hour and Michael had his hair washed twice as well as blow dried and styled!

That pretty much sums up our time in Montenegro, which is currently being labeled the "new Croatia," ie. new up-and-coming backpacking country. From here we had to catch the dreaded night bus to Ohrid in Macedonia!

We had a really fun, albeit very relaxed, time in Montenegro and were really lucky to meet some really nice people along the way.

xx