2023 Balkans - Day 3 Perast, Kotor and Kotor Bay, Montenegro

We drove this morning from Herceg Novi along the panoramic coast of the Bay of Kotor to the town of Kotor. Technically four bays, it has been designated as one of the most 25 beautiful bays in the world. 

Little towns huddle along the coast.

A crane from the Montenegro’s former shipyard looms as a reminder of past industry. After the Dayton Peace Accord ended the Bosnian War in 1995, the shipyard was closed. 

Clusters of buoys mark the location of mussel farms. They are attached to submerged cages, and harvested by boat as seen above.

Perast, with its one street, 16 Catholic churches and 17 Renaissance and Baroque palaces in various states of repair, is now a village of 400 residents. In its heyday, there were a few thousand. Venetian and Russian nobles sought to outdo each other with their magnificent summer homes. 

Just off the shore are two unusual islands. One, St. George’s Island, is a bonafide island housing a Benedictine monastery and a big cemetery. It’s picturesque, like everything else along the bay. But you cannot visit it.

A few hundred meters away is Our Lady of the Rocks, a church constructed on an artificial island. According to legend, two sailers passing this spot in 1452 found a painting of the Madonna and Child on a rock. One of the men was miraculously cured, and they felt a church should be built on the spot.  Generations of sailers left rocks at the spot in gratitude for their safe return to port. Boatloads of rocks were also ferried here and purposefully sunk until sufficient land was created to hold a church. 

A small, ornate chapel forms the core of the present building, with donated paintings and thousands of silver plates. The miraculous painting of 1452 is over the altar. 

The adjacent building is a museum of artifacts donated or gathered from the island. 

We continued on to the delightful town of Kotor. Dating back to Roman times, the town is encircled by a tall stone wall, which was started in the 9th century. Improbably, construction continued for the next thousand years. The loop enclosing the town proper was competed by the 14th century, and then it was extended up the adjacent mountain. It climbs over 800 vertical feet to St. John’s Fortress. 

You can pay 8 Euro for the privilege of climbing to the top (the hike is about 3/4 of a mile, with 1350 steps) for incredible views, but we didn’t have the time. Instead, we climbed to the top of the regular city wall to take a photo. 

Part of the fort can be seen in the ramparts running off the top right corner above. 

The city map shows the extended walls snaking up the mountain, with the city tumbled into the lower left corner. The big wall above is the cream colored straight line running up the lower left side.

Kotor’s Old Town, or Stari Grad, is full of restaurants, shops, churches, cats, ice cream, and charming, twisting little streets. So much atmosphere! No wonder it is one of Montenegro’s three UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The icing on the cake - Kotor is known as the City of Cats. There are hundreds of well-tended, friendly cats milling about. They are said to be descended from seafaring cats, and tended by residents who place food and water out for them. They sun on cobblestone streets and frequent the outdoor seafood restaurants, weaving between legs of diners while waiting for a scrap. For cat lovers, it’s fetching. For others, it’s probably annoying (but falling into the first category, I wouldn’t know)

After a walking tour of the Stari Grad and a couple of hours of free time to wander around, grab some lunch and a few geocaches, we headed back to Herceg Novi for our last evening in Montenegro. 

BONUS TRACK

Greg spotted this lad in the Maritime Museum of Montenegro, which is housed in an early 18th century palace. He was the young boy chosen as “Junior Admiral”  of the Boka Marines (Bay of Kotor Marines) in 1924. The Boka Marines were established in the early 9th century, and serve as an elite corp with special functions, dancing in special formations during annual events. It’s apparently quite a big deal to belong. Marshall Tito even visited the museum in 1969 and was proclaimed an honorary admiral of the Boka Marine. 

Perhaps he is a distant relative of Greg’s. See any resemblance? Donna, maybe you have an old photo of Greg in his band uniform?