The Bay of Kotor
Trip dates: March 10, 2017 - March 11, 2017
After our fun time getting lost on the roads of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we ended up not reaching the Bay of Kotor until it was already dark. So instead of nice views of the bay, we drove around the black emptiness that was the bay on a twisty turny road. We finally made it to Kotor in the evening and could see the lit up walls for the fortress of San Giovanni, which we would be hiking the next day.
We checked into our hotel right outside the old city walls and, for not the first time, thought we were the only occupied room at the hotel. Well, at least we got a nice upgrade and had no problem doing late checkout the next day! We kept it simple the first night and ate at a local grilled meats place that was super cheap (only 10 euro for both of us) and tasted great.
The next morning, we woke up early and had a big breakfast from our hotel. Seriously, food just kept appearing in large portions for just the two of us.
We then walked through the old city of Kotor on the way to the fortress walls. There are two primary paths up the fortress. I say primary because there are other paths up the walls but apparently, they either aren’t recommended or aren’t safe. Regardless, we didn’t explore to find out. We took the main route that goes from inside the city by the northern entrance and costs 3 euro if someone is there to collect (luckily for us, there wasn’t anyone there in the off season). There aren’t a lot of signs on how to get there, but we basically went to the eastern edge of the old city and kept walking north until we hit a big staircase that didn’t lead to someone's house. The other entrance is outside the walls a few hundred yards away and involves going up goat tracks that switchback up the mountain; this path provides some different views and less stairs than the one we took.
Before arriving in Kotor, Lishan had read that this hike was quite difficult and allotted extra time for us to make it up to the fortress and back down. We thought it would be one of the hardest climbs yet on this trip, with something like 1400 odd steps. The path is relatively steep with both stairs and a rocky incline; you can choose to utilize whichever suits you. However, we didn’t account for all the extra training and hikes we had done along the way, so this hike wasn't too bad at all!
We had also read that the views at the top of the fortress are considered one of the best in Europe. While the view of the Bay of Kotor was grand, something was taken away given that you had a gradual view the whole time. So as you're climbing, you get higher but it has less of a “wow” effect since you're seeing essentially the same view almost the whole time. We felt our hike at the Starigrad Fortress in Omiš gave us more of that “wow” effect, with a big payoff at the top, since you didn't have a view along the way. Well, feel free to compare photos and let us know if you agree!
On our way back down, we also explored the top of the goat path that takes you down to the alternate entrance. It was fun climbing in and out of the walls that lead to the path, but we chose to go down the steps rather than the switchbacks since going downhill with a gravel decline is way less fun.
We were also extremely lucky in that altogether, we saw maybe 5 people on the way up to the top, and 15 people on the way down. We were early for a hike for once! In summer, apparently, it is very crowded and that would be way less fun navigating some of the steep walkways with tons of other people. The walkways, especially the part with the stairs, are not very wide at all.
We casually saw some of the sights in the old city itself, such as the famous churches of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church and the Cathedral of Saint Tryphon. We also passed by the cat museum, but didn’t go in. There weren’t a lot of people around and we also wanted to get a move on to check out nearby Perast to grab lunch before heading to Dubrovnik.
Perast is only about 20 minutes away from Kotor and is also a UNESCO world heritage site. There’s a church on an island close by called our Lady of the Rocks (just like Lake Bled in Slovenia) and it’s known for some really picturesque views. Of course, given it was off season, the boats weren't running to the island. There were also very few restaurants open so our hopes of grabbing a quick, cheap meal were dashed. Instead, we ate at one of the only open restaurants which was pretty pricey. Turns out, the quality also wasn’t great and the seafood was some of the worst quality we had in the Balkans.
Food aside, Perast was quite photogenic and had very gorgeous views of the Bay and surrounding mountains, so we took lots of pictures on our way out.
Following Perast, we started our trek into Dubrovnik and back to Croatia! It’s funny that you start to notice the small differences about drivers in each region and start to make generalizations. For example, one generalization we made was that drivers in Montenegro are actually much slower and follow the rules more than Croatian drivers. We saw many more cars going the speed limit here (which is unheard of in Croatia). Who knows if this is really true or not, but we had fun trying to identify the region of car drivers before we could see their license plate just based off of their behavior!
The border crossing into Croatia was the longest crossing we had out of any of our previous ones from BiH or into Montenegro. There was a line of 8 or so cars and multiple buses all stopped at the border crossing. It ended up only taking 20 minutes, but I can’t imagine how long it might take in peak season.
Anyways, more about Dubrovnik in the next post! We’ll be ditching Fi and meeting up again with our traveling friends Shawn and Amanda while getting to explore Dubrovnik’s many different sights.
