Cute Kotor
We were originally supposed to spend five weeks inside the walls in Kotor. Due to the last-minute cancellation by our host, we needed to pivot. We managed to find somewhere to stay here for two weeks, and then move on to Budva for the following three weeks.
For the second time this year, we got to spend time with family! Jon’s sister, Christine booked a trip to visit Kotor for two weeks. She arrived in town four days after we got here. It’s been great getting to catch up with her and explore together. It also meant Jon and I got our first date-time since we left Canada, which was lovely! We went for a walk and had lunch on the boardwalk while she entertained the girls for a couple of hours one afternoon.
Kotor is unbelievably cute and quaint. It’s got a lot of historical charm, with most of the buildings seeming to date from the 1500s to 1700s based on plaques on many of the buildings and the city gates. It is a fairly tourist-centred city, being a cruise port of call destination. We arrived before the tourist season officially kicked off, which was completely intentional. I’ve heard what an amazing city this is but also how insanely busy it gets. And given how much we abhor busy places, we made sure to come at a shoulder season when the weather would be nice but not during a tourist season. And I think we timed it perfectly! We did see one cruise ship come in our first week here, and it was crazy how busy the city got. And to think, they sometimes get three or more cruise ships at a time!
Kotor has so much medieval charm. All the stone buildings, amazing little wine shops and restaurants/cafes everywhere, yummy bakeries, various churches, some sections of walls that remain intact, and a legit draw bridge at one of the gates over a moat into the city. In front of Kotor is the Bay of Kotor, which is like a fjord. It’s so beautiful and peaceful and the water is crystal clear! Behind Kotor are mountains. This town and the surroundings are so pretty they look like they came to life from a fairytale!
We spent several days enjoying old town Kotor and all its charm, including the cats and cat shops (more on all the cat stuff another time!). We also found the most delicious gelato shop, Moritz Eis. I’m not normally a huge ice cream fan, but I made a few exceptions since their gelato was just so heavenly here!
There is a stunning boardwalk along the Bay leading from the next town over, Dobrota, to Kotor. The new accommodations that we found were in the Dobrota area, rather than in Kotor itself. But we quickly grew to love that fact. It’s only a 25-minute walk from our apartment into Kotor, all of which is along the water except the rather steep hill from our apartment to the water. But, that steep hill meant we had a stunning view of the Bay from our massive apartment balcony!
It did not take long for us to decide that we loved the boardwalk along the water more than we liked being in old-town Kotor itself. There were tons of restaurants, cafes, playgrounds, a beach (of sorts) and a great grocery store. We spent a lot of time on the various outdoor patios, sipping a cappuccino or glass of wine, enjoying the sunshine and beautiful waterfront views, and actually getting to relax and chat while the girls ran off to the nearby playgrounds or fed the various street cats. We had two favourite locations we frequented more than the others, Platanus and Little Bay. Little Bay did not have a playground but did have a beach where the kids would sit and play.
Every Saturday, Kotor had an impressive outdoor farmers market. So many fresh fruits, veggies, local prosciuttos, cheeses, olives, and other food treasures. We found the stall where all the locals were lined up and the woman did not speak a word of English. We managed the first time with a lovely bilingual local woman helping us with translation and then were able to communicate weekly what we wanted. We fell completely in love with a local dietary staple called kajmak. Seriously, this is one of my all-time favourite foods now and I NEED to find a source to buy this when we get back to Canada!
What is kajmak? It’s a dairy product. Often they refer to it as cream cheese. It is a consistency of cream cheese but melts extremely easily when heated, like butter. It tastes a lot like an English clotted cream. It’s used for everything. They put it on beef patties, serve it with sausages, give you a scoop with breakfast (sometimes on the side, sometimes right on top of your eggs), use it as a spread on sandwiches, spread on toast, and so much more. Honestly, it’s so good that I would often just eat it by the spoonful from the carton! LOL, I cannot get enough of this stuff.
Kotor is such a beautiful and relaxing place, and it’s definitely been a soothing balm to our souls after the chaos of how busy Marrakech was followed by the intense road trip week and sickness that the others got along the way. Our first week here was pretty rainy and cool, but thankfully the weather started to improve significantly and got hot enough we have already developed nice tans! I think it helps we have mostly still been exposed to the sun all winter and we never truly lost our base tan, too! Kotor is definitely a gem and is appreciated by so many tourists in Europe, but seems to be completely unheard of to most North Americans. If you haven’t considered Montenegro as a travel destination, I recommend you look into it!